I can hear the amplifier gain before the song starts. As the song begins, I first notice the keyboards coming in from a mile away - distant in the background. When Gwen Stefani starts to sing, I can hear the echo they dubbed in... All so artificial, all so beautiful. The room starts to fill as an orchestra appears in different corners, near and far. I hush myself and listen to the private show streaming through my aural devices - bits and bytes on a hard disk, travelling through a decent sound card, to a small hippo box amplifier, to either my Sony MDR-7506 or Beyerdynamic DTX800s. You know your ears are ruined to sub-standard audio when you start complaining about mp3 fuzz and rant about how only flac (or any lossless format) sounds wholesome on Rihanna's 'Love the way you lie' - you wish there were no other formats available in the world.
To do a lightning comparison, I would have to say I indeed got the Sonys at a steal for 200 SGD back then. When compared against the unamplified Beyers, they provide just the right oomph - the appropriate distance or soundstage while only sacrificing a modicum of clarity. The Beyers in comparison whilst scoring in treble clarity, lacks the punch or clarity of bass probably due to a wider soundstage, sometimes sounding a little too far away. Unamplified, the Beyers serve to give me excellent reproduction of audio with unrivalled tonality at the higher frequencies, but the Sonys one up that and manage to bring a smile to my face as I listen to flac recordings of Professor Layton.
Amplified with a hippo box, things are a little different. You can tell you have excellent headphones when you can hear the amplifier gain as you pop the jack in - these are the Sonys. However, I can't confirm if it is a flaw of the headphone drivers, or with the flac recording itself, that I can hear buzzing as high notes are reached: I believe either the drivers are straining to reproduce sounds it can't as more juice flows through the amp, or simply just due to crappy recording on the part of the production. The Sonys amplified, sound even greater than normal - more audible nuances, greater separation of tones, greater enjoyment. One peeve for people like me (who prefer a neutral balance), is have is that the amp pushes the bass to be a little strong.
The Beyers (I'm listening to them now), pair even better with the amp - a match made in heaven in fact. The wide soundstage is now a boon as sounds are louder, clearer, and the bass is more distinct - Music now sounds like an actual reproduction. The Beyers now pretty much supersede the unamplified Sonys while offering very very pleasant and enjoyable sound while amplified Sonys can be grating on certain songs.
Of course this is just a comparison between the two headphones I have. I also auditioned Grado Sr80s and Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pros. Grados are excellent for the entry level, offering excellent balance and sufficient clarity, but cannot compete at the level I reference in this lightning comparison. The Beyerdynamic DT 770s are heaven in a head-can, and its more expensive cousins even more so. However for 100 SGD more and being super-unportable, I settled for cheaper instead.
Conclusion: Sonys unamplified, Beyers with an amp - Now I just have to decide which set to use as my travel cans and which as my home relaxing set-up - They're both horrendously big =S. Perhaps in the future, when I can afford to splurge 1k+ on in-ear Shures, I can throw this problem out the window, till then, c'est la vie.
Songs used for comparison:
The Eternal Diva - Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva [FLAC]
4 in the Morning - Gwen Stefani [FLAC]
Derezzed - Daft Punk (Tron Legacy OST) [FLAC]
Pirates of The Carribean (On Stranger Tides) OST [FLAC]
Final Fantasy XIII OST [FLAC]
Love the way you lie (Part 2) - Rihanna [mp3]
(buzzing as Rihanna sings high notes - lossy mp3 at fault)
Animal - Neon Trees [mp3]
(production values not as good, closed sound on both cans)
and many more I should not bother to list...
Both headphones + 1 amp obtained from Jaben Network, at The Adelphi, Singapore.
Sony MDR-7506s approximately $200 purchased in 2009
Beyerdynamic DTX800 and hippo box purchased as a set for approximately $199 on the day of this blog post.
