Headphones sound good/bad with old/new recordings

You guys ever notice that some headphones sound good with old recordings and some sound not so good? or vise versa? some sound good with new and some not so good?

Or maybe they sound good with new recordings but not old or vice versa?

Is this a thing, or is it my imagination? I listen to music with a lot of electronics in it so maybe its more a thing happening to my music. Music from the 80’s new wave doesnt sound so good sometimes depending on what headphone im listening to them with.

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No this does happen. For example, my Koss KSC75 sometimes are too harsh for tracks that have a lot of sibilance or weren’t recorded well. That’s when I go for my Nighthawk. They tend to tone that down and sound better all around by toning the harshness down. Then again I’m quite sensitive to 6-7.5khz

Nah your right that’s all due to tuning and presentation. If it’s a bright super revealing headphone older tracks will suffer but if it’s a darker or smoother headphone older tracks will do a bit better.

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isn’t that what ‘mastering’ is all about? aside from perhaps the rip quality and whether it’s lossy or not.

Yes it’s largely the master, if an important frequency range is recessed in the master, commonly we adjust with additional volume that tends to result in other frequency ranges that are overpowering.
A lot of earlier popular music was mastered so sound good OK on equipment that didn’t have the best treble reproduction to start with, so they tend to be pretty treble forwards when played on equipment that does.

You are not imagining things. It’s even wilder with real old stuff pre-1950’s, 40’s, etc

Well usually in my experience I find that lesser headphones don’t do my 80s New Wave justice but they seem to sound better with newer stuff. But recently I was listening to a set of lesser headphones that played my 80s stuff very well but was lacking with the newer stuff. so I was surprised at this.

Again I think it’s hard to define ‘lesser’ or ‘greater’ to a certain extent. Just because one is more expensive doesn’t mean it is better. Some ‘lesser’ headphones can be tuned very similarly to ‘greater’ headphones, or the tuning may just suit that particular genre well.

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Exactly. There are so many songs from the 80s to me just sounds fucking right on the k240s over other headphones I own.

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I dont believe so. from my experience if your listening to the best a certain price range offers you will hear a difference. 100 dollar headphone are not gonna sound as good as 300$ headphones. 300$ headphones are not gonna sound as good as 600$ headphones and so on…

Well as a general rule, yes I would agree. For example if you are comparing a 300 dollar detail oriented pair vs a 600 dollar detail oriented pair, the 600 dollar will most likely win. But say you want detail, and you have a 300 dollar detailed vs a 600 dollar ‘dark’ pair. You would probably want to go with the detailed pair if that’s what you want.
But yes, as a general rule that’s pretty correct, with maybe a few outliers here and there.

Well that depends on the song song recording quality and tuning. There are certain songs I would much prefer to listen to on a HD 58x over a LCD 2 or DT 1990 or vice versa purely die to presentation and tuning