Which headphones of Drop's currently available?
I have some rewards points to burn but there's no obviously good options on Drop right now for headphones Contenders Ultrasone - maybe? I don't own any Ultrasones, so curious. Looks like garbage travel headphone which could be useful also. Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro. - Maybe? I have the DT 880 Good price point, really uncomfortable headphones but could be interesting to try the upgraded version. E-MU - strong contender but $400 is a bad price point for what it is. Which of the above would you choose and why? Nothing else on Drop is relevant to my interests, because Already own 6xx 820 800 s Ether cx Garbage / Consumer grade Meze 99 - garbage bass canons, hard pass No gaming headphones obviously Sennheiser wireless - no to wireless/bluetooth Hifiman - I have 2 of drop hifimans and they make really bad cheap shit on Drop, hard pass on HE-R7DX Aeon - I own the closed, Drop refuses to address #padgate so no reason to buy open Beyerdynamic 177x - wireless, nope Too similar 8x / 560s...
Mar 28, 2024
I have already committed to the buy, but I do hope that darin one days add's an EQ profile to each preset(yes darin I am aware that you don't want to give your customers the illusion that by adding EQ presets for a few particular brands that people might misinterpret this as a sign that the dsp was made for only those phones, but something like adding the top 10 most common headphones used in the head-fi circle, AKA HD650's for instance would be welcomed . I mean Come on darin, the 650's are the baseline for anyone getting into head-fi audio plus they are used by a large majority of headphone users.
I find overall Genelec's are the best for the 650's, and music that was mixed and mastered thin, lifeless, and lacks bass and warmth can be brought to life with the Italian speaker preset. Ultimately there is no one preset that excels at all genres of music, the same apply's to real life speakers. Which is why I find darin's inclusion of having numerous presets from different speaker brands/room setups a unique concept.
By the way folks, garbage in garbage out. High fidelity audiophile recordings, in other words properly mastered albums sound best with "Out of Your Head" and mainstream, hotmastered/brickwalled albums are not pleasant(with hi-fi gear) with out having to resort to using replay-gain, or limiters. Probably this might start to sound complicated and go over some less than savvy people's head, but then again I would imagine darins demographic primarily is composed of knowledgeable head-fi people anyways. Keep in mind for those reading this, I have an expensive DAC, dedicated headphone amp and semi high end($500) headphones. The cheaper your audio setup, the more forgiving flaws in modern poorly mastered music are. I find for badly record music the Zen preset can help quite a bit since that speaker seems to be very colorful, warm and forgiving.
My fav presets with Sennheiser HD650(dark/vield and non fatiguing characteristics) are:_____ Genelec's Italian Speakers Sasha
Overall I find OFYH is the only DSP that comes close to actually recreating the sound of having real speakers with distinct characteristics in front of you that no other DSP has yet to achieve. Cross-feed dsp, Dolbyheadphone(horrible) can't even begin to touch what this does.
Also Darin has pointed out that in the future they are looking to get a version out for games(lower latency) which would be incredible, cause CMSS and DH for pc games wreaks the sound quality in exchange for immersion.
Thanks for the post. I really appreciate it. I am always happy when people "get it" or understand what I am trying to achieve.
Headphone EQ or even speakers for that matter is a big philosophical and technical discussion. But I don't think we have room here to take on that discussion.
Briefly, including an EQ into Out Of Your Head is in the works. I think it's helpful as long as it's done well.
I don't know if I would get more complaints about how this or that EQ curve makes their headphones sound worse. But they could always disable the EQ or apply their own EQ settings.