Where should I go next?

[mainelyme]

Hi all,

I've been messing around with headphones lately. I started with this collection of equipment:

AirPods
Bose QC 35 gen 1
Energy Connoisseur C-1 bookshelf speakers
An old Denon home theater receiver
An Apple Music subscription

I had some rewards points at Best Buy and decided to order a set of Sennheiser HD 560S headphones, wondering what kind of difference these would make. I plugged them into my Denon receiver, which was connected to my iMac's headphone jack. They sounded pretty good, especially when I brought up the bass and treble a little on the receiver, but I felt like there was something not quite satisfying about them. People say that these headphones really expose low quality source material, so I signed up for a free trial of Tidal HiFi. People also say that an external DAC and headphone amp will help a lot, so I ordered an Audioquest Dragonfly Red to test.

Tidal and the Dragonfly both helped, and I enjoyed that setup for a little while. Then my wife tried it out and immediately said that her AirPods Pro sound at least as good. I don't love sticking anything in my ear canals, so I had stayed with the regular AirPods, which are satisfactory for calls or podcasts but very mediocre for music. Same goes for the Bose headphones. Music sounds messy, easily distorted, and maybe a bit too bright. Cheap-sounding, I guess.

So I ordered a set of the AirPods Pro, which sound fantastic! I can tell the Sennheisers resolve things a little better, especially lower frequencies, but the AirPods Pro sound much more open, clear, energetic, enveloping, and realistic. They sound almost as good as my Energy speakers. Not quite, but close.

The Sennheisers, on the other hand, almost seem muffled by comparison, especially the higher frequencies. Is this is the Sennheiser "veil" that I'm now reading about? I can hear details in my music, but the overall timbre is just...fuzzy? As though somewhere along the way, the music went through an old tape recorder and then was cleaned up and remastered. I've also tried plugging them directly into the DAC, before anyone asks.

I thought, maybe I just like the way Apple tunes things, so I managed to get my hands on an open-box pair of AirPods Max. I found them to be somewhere in between the AirPods Pro and the Sennheisers. Bass was a little on the boomy side, but they seemed slightly more "energetic" than the Sennheisers. And yet, in terms of clarity and openness, more like the Sennheisers than the AirPods Pro. I returned them.

Is it my ears? Do I not like headphones? Should I be looking at Grados, or Beyerdynamics, or Hifiman Sundaras if I want to continue to chase that thing that the AirPods Pro give me? I certainly don't mind sticking with the AirPods Pro, but now I'm curious.

 

[perezr10]

Oof, once you start down the headphone rabbit hole it seems like you never stop. I have no advice for you since music preferences are so personal and I’m easily satisfied with just about everything. But I enjoyed your post and thought you communicated your ideas pretty well.

 

[EntropyQ3]

Hi all,

I've been messing around with headphones lately. I started with this collection of equipment:

AirPods
Bose QC 35 gen 1
Energy Connoisseur C-1 bookshelf speakers
An old Denon home theater receiver
An Apple Music subscription

I had some rewards points at Best Buy and decided to order a set of Sennheiser HD 560S headphones, wondering what kind of difference these would make. I plugged them into my Denon receiver, which was connected to my iMac's headphone jack. They sounded pretty good, especially when I brought up the bass and treble a little on the receiver, but I felt like there was something not quite satisfying about them. People say that these headphones really expose low quality source material, so I signed up for a free trial of Tidal HiFi. People also say that an external DAC and headphone amp will help a lot, so I ordered an Audioquest Dragonfly Red to test.

Tidal and the Dragonfly both helped, and I enjoyed that setup for a little while. Then my wife tried it out and immediately said that her AirPods Pro sound at least as good. I don't love sticking anything in my ear canals, so I had stayed with the regular AirPods, which are satisfactory for calls or podcasts but very mediocre for music. Same goes for the Bose headphones. Music sounds messy, easily distorted, and maybe a bit too bright. Cheap-sounding, I guess.

So I ordered a set of the AirPods Pro, which sound fantastic! I can tell the Sennheisers resolve things a little better, especially lower frequencies, but the AirPods Pro sound much more open, clear, energetic, enveloping, and realistic. They sound almost as good as my Energy speakers. Not quite, but close.

The Sennheisers, on the other hand, almost seem muffled by comparison, especially the higher frequencies. Is this is the Sennheiser "veil" that I'm now reading about? I can hear details in my music, but the overall timbre is just...fuzzy? As though somewhere along the way, the music went through an old tape recorder and then was cleaned up and remastered. I've also tried plugging them directly into the DAC, before anyone asks.

I thought, maybe I just like the way Apple tunes things, so I managed to get my hands on an open-box pair of AirPods Max. I found them to be somewhere in between the AirPods Pro and the Sennheisers. Bass was a little on the boomy side, but they seemed slightly more "energetic" than the Sennheisers. And yet, in terms of clarity and openness, more like the Sennheisers than the AirPods Pro. I returned them.

Is it my ears? Do I not like headphones? Should I be looking at Grados, or Beyerdynamics, or Hifiman Sundaras if I want to continue to chase that thing that the AirPods Pro give me? I certainly don't mind sticking with the AirPods Pro, but now I'm curious.

Headphones are interesting but you seem really confused.
Which is understandable if you use internet forums as a source.
First off, headphone listening is SUBJECTIVE. The colorations of each individuals ears differ greatly above a thousand hertz or so, thus anything you read about treble response from users is immediately suspect. And it typically differs with for instance positioning of the headband on the head. Not only that, but different measurement setups differ not only between themselves but also in their interaction with the headphones, thus not even relative measurements are necessarily really precise. It gets even worse when you use phones that bypass the outer ears and go straight to the ear canal.

You have to build your own experience base.

Or buy something decent and just stay with it. It’s not that big a deal, honestly, and I say that as someone who has spent absurd amounts of money and time on these things. Because first off, unless you made the recording yourself and know the characteristics of your microphone setup, you have no reference, no base from which to judge just how your music is supposed to sound. (Many of us technically minded headphone nerds substitute a known reference with a synthetic one, for instance third-octave pink noise, which is a decent yardstick for frequency linearity.)
Also, our auditory system have no problem dealing with a bit of coloration. It does it all the time, a voice sounds very different if you have the speaker in front of you in your kitchen, behind a door, outdoors, et cetera. But you have no issue determining who is speaking or what they are saying in spite of this, and it is the same with music. Minor coloration doesn’t affect our ability to listen into the music, even for those of us who like to listen analytically.
Distortion can be an issue, but unless you listen at levels that will eventually damage your hearing (don’t!), decent headphones have very low distortion indeed.

If you keep your Airpod Pros clean, they’ll do the job arguably as well as pretty much any other quality headphone, if ”the job” is to allow you to appreciate good music and good music recording practice.

 

[mainelyme]

Thank you for the response, EntropyQ3! I suppose I am confused, but I am coming to understand that what audiophiles value and what I value don't intersect all that much. I have little interest in resolution, fidelity, frequency linearity, or listening analytically. I just want my music to sound real and compelling, or at least more like it does through loudspeakers. With the Sennheisers and the AirPods Max, I still get the sense that I'm listening to slightly tinny little speaker drivers positioned right outside my ears. And I know how I perceive sound is unique to me, that it's the whole ear, perhaps my whole head, and not just the cochlea that influences it. Really I'm wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience, or at least might be able to suggest other options based on how I've described my listening preferences.

 

[mainelyme]

UPDATE: It's my ears. I took a decongestant a couple days ago and everything changed. The Sennheisers sound fabulous. I bet the AirPods Max do too.

I've really struggled with allergies since moving to San Diego. Didn't know it was affecting my hearing too.

 

[EntropyQ3]

UPDATE: It's my ears. I took a decongestant a couple days ago and everything changed. The Sennheisers sound fabulous. I bet the AirPods Max do too.

I've really struggled with allergies since moving to San Diego. Didn't know it was affecting my hearing too.

It does!
And it is healthy for us with an audio interest to remember just how large a variable we ourselves are.

Since you seem honestly interested, I would like to point you to a good resource to test both yourself and your gear.
https://www.audiocheck.net
Check the frequency response of your ears, and then go to the blind tests where you can check for your ability to discern differences under optimal testing conditions.
For a sanity check on claims and discussions about compression you might want to try this place out for a quick check:
Quick codec test
Mostly to gain peace of mind when it comes to codec angst.

If you spend a little time on these introductory baseline tests, you will have armed yourself with personal experience, and will be a lot less likely to be swayed and manipulated by whatever claims you encounter in the audio field. Enjoy!

 

[turbineseaplane]

As an aside, in general with Audio, just please remember it's super subjective and what works great and sounds great for you in your use cases is all that matters.

This forum, and indeed many with audio emphasis, will have endless amounts of users insisting that "X is amazing" and "Y is trash"....and what X,Y (and Z,etc) are will tend to be all over the place.

Very often the usage case, environment and individual user can make it so subjective that getting anything useful out of it can be a fools errand - sadly.

 

[Cashmonee]

As an aside, in general with Audio, just please remember it's super subjective and what works great and sounds great for you in your use cases is all that matters.

This forum, and indeed many with audio emphasis, will have endless amounts of users insisting that "X is amazing" and "Y is trash"....and what X,Y (and Z,etc) are will tend to be all over the place.

Very often the usage case, environment and individual user can make it so subjective that getting anything useful out of it can be a fools errand - sadly.

100% this! Not only is there the chance you won’t hear what others hear, it may not matter to you! If you are listening casually while surfing the internet, chances are you won’t be paying enough attention to the music to think about “layers“ or frequency response. You won’t be trying to separate out instruments. At the end of the day, none of these Bluetooth headphones are for critical listening. For that, find a quiet room and get some open backs with a decent amp and dac.