I’m not sure about where they source their drivers, but I believe they are custom made. iBasso was the first to implement a silicone suspension for headphone drivers.
I am not sure if it is the same Tesla Flux technology used in Beyers, but it works extremely well. I’m not sure about the FR, but I can tell you that it is far from being bass-light. HD598 is bass-light, iBasso SR2 is an example of neither too much nor too little bass quantity. It has much more bass quantity than the HD598, is is quite capable of rumble, but also has better bass qualtiy (tighter punch, better more body, clean).
If you go for a bass-heavy headphone from a HD598, your ears would be quite surprised. HD598 has a very light bass response, so I think iBasso SR2 is a valid recommendation for OP. If you have a bass-heavy headphone, you sacrifice the mid-range, and OP did bring up he cares about female vocals (something that I primarily listen to). I also listened to bass-heavy genres and music and didn’t find SR2 lacking.
But that depends, if OP wants bass-head level of bass… in that case he might want to look for something quite bass heavy (Campfire Audio Cascade, purplehearts… which aren’t available to him).
Edit- I am not sure if the SR2 is using the exact same drivers as the SR1, but to me it seems like that’s the case.
Nothing jumps to mind. WanCat, the standard advice you’ll get on this forum is to start with several low-priced headphones with a variety of sound characteristics to gain ears-on experience before spending on anything pricier. People on this forum typically re-sell items to help fund subsequent purchases. The Canuck Audio Mart website is devoted to just this methodology, lol.
But everything is more expensive up here. The Koss PortaPro is a classic budget headphone that’s often recommended. There’s almost a cult following of this headphone. Everyone says it punches 'way above its weight. In the US it sells for $40. Today, Amazon Prime says $69.27C + tax, or about twice US. And I was surprised to see it that low. If only it took half the work to earn a Canadian dollar, sigh.
Nevertheless, if you can hack the buy-try-sell approach it’s surely the way to go. To compensate for the dollar disadvantage my personal strategy is to spend more time researching each purchase, but that only gets you so far. Most of the information available is personal experience reports. But that’s like buying a pair of shoes because lots of people say they’re extremely comfortable. If you have unusually high arches or unusually wide feet, you could – literally – be cruising for a bruising.
Voja – so you’re recommending WanCat take a $800 to $900 (depending on customs and regional taxes) gamble that everything about the SR2 will suit him as perfectly as it does you. Interesting.
Crinacle measured both (FR only). They may well have the same driver but they’ve clearly been implemented night-and-day differently, just like the DT 1990 vs the DT 1770.
Sorry if I made it seem that way, but that is not the case. I completely forgot about the customs… my bad.
I just find that I came from a similar space as him. HD598 was my primary headphone until recently. To jump from a HD598 to a bass-heavy headphone… that’s a BIG jump. I’m not sure how OP’s ears would handle that.
Totally understandable! I envy you the European commonwealth and strong currency, if your country is in that.
Couple thoughts since my previous posts. The iBassos use a bio-cellulose driver as well as the silicone surround, both of which are not beyerdynamic tech. Sounds like a fascinating mix. As I listen to my 1990’s with the SR2 EQ I’m falling in love with the in-your-face elevation centered on 1 kHz. I’ve added a bit of bass boost, which could possibly better simulate the SR2’s tech, plus some extra treble. The resulting mix adds a heaping helping of clarity that my aging ears are totally on-board with.
@WanCat just in case you want to check. You can get the SR2 from the US distributor Urban HiFi. They can ship to Canada… but like Maynar said, customs…
Might be the case in the EU, but… I’m in Serbia, which is a country in Europe, but not in the European Union. Definitely not cheap to import stuff to Serbia. If you order anything with DHL, FedEx, UPS, you have to pay:
40 euros for the frowarding agency just to allow you to clear the package from the customs
Besides that:
10% customs fee
20% taxes (PDV)
The importing duties can cross well over 50% of the real value of the package, especially if it is lower value. The customs fees are present for anything over 50 euros - and from what I hear, in America you are allowed to import goods up until 1k USD. I’m not sure if that’s the case.
I am personally 100% free from graphs and all that stuff. I really listened to the SR2 and found it a very good headphone, I loved it for the slight mid-range elevation - my experience is completely opposite to Crinacle’s. iBasso is not known for copying other company’s work - iBasso DX100 was the world’s first digital audio player (DAP) that could play DSD while utilizing the Android OS, and it was also the world’s first Hi-Res (24bit/192kHz) digital audio player.
I think iBasso is great at being ahead of the industry, while also being somewhat an “underground” company that not many know.
Also, the mid-range elevation didn’t feel too “in your face”, it was extremely pleasant - it felt so refreshing to not have the low end overwhelm the mix, and also have the sparkle in the top end without being piercing. To me this headphone is the perfect combo. They are more intimate, meaning that if you want for that airy quality, you definitely need to look at full open backs. But for what it is, I love every bit of it. No joke, SR2 is a 10/10 imo. The elevated mid-range does make the overall presentation feel balanced, it puts it in level with the lows and the highs.
Edit - oh, I should mention that I completely avoided the customs because my SR2 was marked with a low value. Lucky =)
I was reading through you discussion with voja with regards to strong bass vs a more balanced approach that the SR2 seems to show in the graph that you included.
Regarding graphs, I find it difficult to imagine how exactly the sound would differ by just reading them. (If only we Canadians had as much access to sampling different headphones)
On another note, how reliable do you find sound tests for headphones to be? I have tried listening to sound tests from Z Reviews but I can’t quite wrap my head around how that works when you have your own headphones influencing the sound. If I could understand how they work, I think this method would help me decide which types of sounds I like and what headphones work with me.
Also, thanks for the site recommendation for used headphones! That will really help when I finally come to a decision.
Thanks for the recommendation! After reading through your discussion with Maynard, I realized I had overlooked the fact that very heavy bass focus may be a bit of a shock coming from the 598s.
I also asked Maynard but I will include it here as well. Like you, I don’t really understand graphs too well and having a listen to the music or how it could potentially sound would be much more persuading when picking between headphones. Do you think sound tests (like the ones you can find on YouTube) are reliable? If not, what would be the next best option?
It’s not that I don’t understand graphs, it’s jut that I don’t like them - except for “neutral” headphones. For me, music comes before anything else, and to me headphones are just a tool for listening to music. So instead of reading graphs, I listen to my ears and also don’t pay attention to most reviewers since they are… crap.
Listening to youtube tests is not ideal, but it’s better than buying blindly. It is the best if you can listen to the headphones first. I truly cannot stress enough how important listening to gear first is. You can read all the reviews, watch all the videos, but at the end of the day, you don’t know how it sound to you until you listen to it.
iBasso SR2 is not too bass-heavy, and it isn’t as warm and “boring” as HD598 - that’s why I prefer it over HD598 for music listening. However, it will cost you just 40 bucks to get it shipped to Canada (DHL), that’s excluding customs fees.
If you want an upgrade from the HD598 and it’s more affordable than getting the iBasso SR2, I would definitely recommend HD600, but it is neither closed-back nor more intimate.
Open-backs are the king of the home audio space. Imo I don’t see any advantage to getting a closed-back unless you want privacy; if you want intimate then open-backs have you covered; the HD6xx comes to mind. Not having spent more than $500 on a headphone, the only closed-back that impressed me was the MMX300 w/ the Dekoni Choice Leather pads. Now those have soundstage! They made my PM3s sound wimpy and they’re probably better than the Drop Pandas too, but my cheaper DT990s still trounce them.
Zeos is the founder and owner of this site, but I can’t off-hand recall a single post from a single forum member that doesn’t agree with your puzzlement. They certainly don’t do anything for me, but that’s at least in part because I have zero experience with the genres of the demo tracks he uses (our tastes seem to be antithetical). At a guess, let’s say you already have a pair of headphones that your ears have adapted so well to that everything sounds perfectly normal in terms of bass, mids, and highs. Now if you listen to the demo with those headphones on, then any differences you hear when listening to the demo would indicate an actual difference you would hear if listening to the headphone being demo’d in real life.
But frequency response is just one piece of the puzzle. How can a more dynamic headphone being demo’d make your less dynamic headphone sound more dynamic? Ditto for detail, sound stage, etc. These are the great mysteries that only inner circle initiates know the secret of, lol.
Agreed. Also, if you want to isolate yourself from your surroundings (perhaps you live in a busy city or a busy environment in general), then you will benefit from isolation from closed-backs.
The only person that did very correct youtube tests was Tharbamar. He used the exact same tracks and had a couple for different genres. But I personally don’t think you can tell much from it besides hearing how it sounds compared to other products on the exact same setup (e.g. one will sound brighter than the other). But it will remain essential to listen to audio equipment, because you will never be able to hear sound from words on a computer screen… not even from words on paper
You have to listen to it with you very own ears (if possible!)
Kinda feel like the “sound tests” are secretly just a ploy to get more videos (views, ad money) out per week. I check Z’s channel everyday and I can’t count how many times I’ve been disappointed by a new “sound test” video instead of another review…
Well, he’s a good guy but he does need to make a living and the number of hits each of them gets tells me they provide value to a significant number of people. Not for me to judge. In the meantime we’d be happy to turn you on to a bunch of other YT reviewers to fill those voids of disappointment, lol.
I only watch the three amigos (Zeos, DMS, Josh). But I also lurk the audio forums (all of em) to see what’s the new best thing. If you know of any other great headphone review YTrs then pls let me know because as great as those three are, nothing can fill the void that was created when Tyll left the scene…
Speaking of Tyll, I still don’t understand what happened with his website and why it is redirecting to Sterophile… so many great resources from Tyll lost.
Thank the gods for archive.org, AKA The Wayback Machine. InnerFi can be found here. Start with that link and navigate where you will (yes, it’s painfully slow). Multiple snapshots of the site exist there throughout its history.
InnerFidelity and related sites were purchased by a new owner just before Tyll retired (who swears the two events are unrelated). The new owner replaced Tyll with Rafe Arnott. Rafe was on board with the new owner’s ideas on how to expand hit counts, but that policy just drove the site into the ground. So the new owner first replaced Rafe with another guy, then a few months later decided he no longer wanted to pay the bills on InnerFi and replaced it with a link to Stereophile. The idea is that there will be expanded headphone coverage on Stereophile to take InnnerFi’s place.
I would be okay if the whole site was transferred to Stereophile, but it’s total bs like this.
Sucks that you put decades of work into something and you have a strong following, and then all of this disappears. Tyll left with a bag of $, but the followers were left with…
Since you mention DMS, he is the producer of the Abyss channel’s content on YouTube. You may find that entertaining. I personally watch PSAudio (Paul McGowan), The Headphone Show, formerly Resolve Reviews (Jonathan Park and Chrono), ’DBS Tech Talk (David Sylvia), Currawong (Amos), Wheezy Tech and The Headphone Experience (William Murdoch). For more YT Tyll content from days gone by search YT for the defunct Home Theater Geeks, episodes 69, 91, 92, 133, 154, 172, 243, 279, 297, 325 and 370.
