is there an ultimate headphone…or even headphones? one’s that sound great for almost all types of music and don’t suffer from comfort / fit issues and have a cable that nobody would bitch / whine about?
and to really throw a wrench into this…do these exist at different price levels from reasonably affordable on up?
also, to liven up the conversation even more…what about DAC’s and Amps? are there any that can do it all without breaking a sweat while maintaining affordability?
Not currently. Everyone’s ears are unique we all have preferences as well and very specific biases towards certain sounds and genres. And to many the perfect headphone also has to sit on a specific price range to be perfect. I don’t believe there is a perfect headphone for everyone but I do believe everyone potentially has a perfect headphone dac or amp.
I wish… I find what we get are good all rounders at differing degrees of fidelity along the price to performance curve but there are ultimately never going into truly excel in any area. You do get VERY close if not there with a few headphones in the higher tier apparently like Diana V2, LCD 24, Verite closed but they exist past the 1000 dollar range
As for DACs. That’s gonna be a big no from me unfortunately. Moving out from my cheaper dacs to my Hugo TT2, the difference was startling. There’s always a limitation. A weakness or compromise in the cheaper stuff compared to the more expensive thing that becomes more and more apparent. Poor implementation of dac chips, amps that have fucky dynamic range if you push the volume slightly.
Like the amp section on my Micro Black Label
You push the volume, the dynamic range and balance goes out of wack. Stuff like kick drums cross the sound stage and end up right in your ear. The TT2’s in built amp? Constant even keel on detail, space, imaging and separation.
ahhh…but those are the outliers, which we don’t need to address. most people hear the same and when you look at how different one’s feel about headphones, there is usually a general consensus as to whether it’s good or bad. so let’s avoid the extreme’s.
EQing a capable headphone results in a perfect one. I’m not a Harman fanboy but their target is pretty much what I would consider to be the best for all genres. There’s no pair of headphones that exactly follows the target except for some cheap headphones with poor quality drivers.
And even they don’t match the target like how EQed headphones can.
I lowered the bass though, but that’s because the 58x (what I EQed) has lots of THD in that region. Too much sub-bass ruins the headphones’ sound.
Not in my case. But that is due to the fact that I have some form of audio related ADD. 
I have several headphones that I really love, but after a week (or less), I just HAVE to change to another.
Another oddity on my part is that if I like a headphone, I like the headphone.
I see a lot of people state:
“I love this headphone for jazz”, “I love these headphones for classical”, “I love that headphone for hip hop or metal”.
I don’t get that.
I know that my Grado’s are bass light, my Elex’s are Very intense and my HD660’s are super lean, but that is what they do.
I just change sound signature every time I get a little restless.
I always liked simplicity. If everything doesn’t sound well on a pair of headphones, well, it’s not for me. “The” perfect headphones that fit everyone’s taste and everyone’s ears? Obviously it doesn’t exist. The perfect headphones for you? Well that’s easier to find.
Find what you like, don’t trust “Harman neutral”, do your own, like, “Marzipan neutral” graph for what sounds, to you, the most neutral/natural or even the most fun, because all ears are different. Then look at headphones in your price range with a similar graph. And ask about their soundstage, detail… that’s pretty much it. With that, the next headphones you buy without even trying em could be pretty much perfect “out of the box”.
There’s also, well, modding. Hell, good luck finding a graph for stock T50RPs online. You will find tens, hundreds of different T50RP graphs… for the hundreds of different mods available. Some headphones are like that.
For the amp? The 200$ Asgard 3 is great, “too good for the price”, “scales” well, and pairs well with 500$+ headphones even, according to some people here. So I guess you could very much get the Asgard 3 and be done forever, and never have to worry about “is this amp a bottleneck”.
For the DAC… under 400$… ESS can sound bright, AKM can sound smooth… but the difference is negligible. Basically choose the color you prefer.
Couldn’t agree more. If you need to charge 5k for a headphone to justify it being perfect, then it’s far from it IMO.
The one thing I agree most with Zeos is the fact that we should be hella more demanding on things in the stratospheric level of prices.
I think that high end audio is very much like high end cars. DACs aside, if you do one thing extremely well, then it usually means a compromise (albeit a small one most of the time) in another area.
Speakers, headphones and IEM would probably be the things this rule applies most to.
I wonder if / when someone will come out with a premium headphone designed to the harman curve.
Ollo Audio S4X is pretty much it (graph).
For half the price, obviously, AKG K371s (graph).
But don’t spend money on this stuff unless you’re sure you like the harman curve.
I have both, the Ollo are so nice, great detail and soundstage, gonna try EQ tonight to take the highs up just a touch
If by high end you mean $1000+ then I’m gonna say never. Maybe thus us just my Harman hate boner acting up but the harman curve tends to not be a common thing in high end headphones or IEMs to my knowledge. They all seem to go for more unique tunings that sound like what the designers think sounds best, not what a graph says sounds best.
I couldn’t dissagree more a true unicorn or aperfect headphone needs to suite everyone’s demand at least the way I look at it. and knowing the people closest to me running my own personal experiments and just hangiong out ona bunch of forums and groups on the internet about headphones. the one thing I learned is everybody is different. there are just halmarks of the headphone space like a hd 650 or dt 880 that many do like but for the most part is really not a lot of people’s definite favorite more so they get acknowledged for what they offer. but we always try to pair them with specific amps and dacs even cables in some cases because they are inherently not perfect and we mix and match to our personal preferences. while the collective audiophile preference is basically the same a fairly neutral natural sounding piece of gear I feel as though most people are outliers in that respect and the people that like the super flat natural sounding pieces of gear are the outliers IMHO
5xx series isn’t premium…I’d debate whether even the 6xx series is premium. 8xx for sure…
and I read this is a neutral headphone. harman isn’t neutral.
To him, it is.
(To me, definitely not, lol)
I don’t think the HD560s is necessarily harman tuned. It might be generally close in the upper mids, but the bass is “too low” and the treble “too high” to mach the curve.
Edit: I found some comparison graphs.
I’m too focused on more traditional headphone FR graphs, so I need to look at them instead of DIY’s to make sense of an FR. DMS put up an obviously compensated graph of the 560S in his vid but doesn’t say what compensation or measurement rig he used. My guess is that he used the equipment in the Abyss shop, which is likely pretty good and may well be the more-or-less industry standard GRAS+Precision combo.
So the following graph is based on the theory that DMS did indeed use a GRAS rig, it is NOT meant to be have any more weight than that. ALL I’m trying to do is remove the unknown compensation curve from DMS’s graph:
The blue line is a very rough approximation of DMS’s orange line. Refer to the DMS graph for actual detail. By comparing the 560S to the Oratory1990 raw for the 650/6XX I get something I can relate to.
Clearly it’s not the Harman 2018 (which is shown in green on the graph). Instead, it has a roughly technically flat bass, neutral mids, quite recessed upper mids (2-4 kHz), and more of a peak at 4.7 kHz than the 650 has. I’ll be curious to see how my graph stands up once Oratory1990, Jude, Crinacle or some other GRAS rig user gives us the real thing.
I simulated this on my DT1990 and found the result quite pleasant for acoustic instrument/vocal music, despite the upper mids roll-off. Downside is that it encourages raising loudness to compensate for the lack of upper-mids clarity.
Among many of us the RAAL SR1a is considered a true endgame - and it is not necessarily about the price, but rather the performance in general, apparently there is nothing that sounds like it.
I also know people love the ES Lab ES1a.
