Good headphones make a BIG difference
-
Quadrophenia1
- Member
- Posts: 872
- Joined: 14 Jul 2011 01:36
- x 88
Good headphones make a BIG difference
I've been listening to captures using moderately priced earbuds. The other night, I decided to try my good pair of Sony MDR-V6 closed-cup headphones. The MDR-V6 has been universally praised as being possibly the best sounding headphone in the World for under $100 in price. You would have to purchase a pair of good $300 Grado's or $300 Behrdynamic's to find a better sound than these $80 Sony's. WOW..... what a listening difference compared to the earbuds!! Some captures I had only listened to with earbuds literally "come to life" with good closed cup headphones on.
-
sarmgk
- Kingpin
- Posts: 147
- Joined: 29 Dec 2015 18:16
- x 25
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
I am a big believer in software too. I always play the files through Audition looking for background sounds or trying to catch noises that could be enhanced.
-
yeppie
- Site Admin
- Posts: 7942
- Joined: 17 Dec 2005 03:06
- x 5087
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
I switched from cheap office-headphones to Sony MDR XB500 a few years ago and it was like a sexsounds-revelation for me 
Before that I was wondering what people told they would hear in those recordings ... Often I couldn´t hear that. Audition can be very helpful too although I mostly listen with winamp.
Before that I was wondering what people told they would hear in those recordings ... Often I couldn´t hear that. Audition can be very helpful too although I mostly listen with winamp.
Sexsounds are Poetry for Adults
-
reggind
- Knight
- Posts: 2063
- Joined: 23 Feb 2014 06:14
- x 343
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
I recently re-discovered the software that came with my notebooks sound card. It has an EQ but also some DSP tricks for enhancing the spacial aspects of recordings. They can really make some recordings pop.
I have found that recordings I tend to play over and over have an amalgamation of content that I like and a sound stage that I like. I tend to bale on recordings with good content sometimes if I don't like the way they sound.
I have found that recordings I tend to play over and over have an amalgamation of content that I like and a sound stage that I like. I tend to bale on recordings with good content sometimes if I don't like the way they sound.
-
moanspy
- Member
- Posts: 68
- Joined: 28 May 2015 09:29
- x 4
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
Good headphones make a BIG PROBLEMS ! I was in the next room listing to some moans on my new Good new headphones when suddenly my wife came in and caught me in the act !!!!!! she heard the moans ....
-
reggind
- Knight
- Posts: 2063
- Joined: 23 Feb 2014 06:14
- x 343
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
Ouch!!! So what did you tell her?
-
moanspy
- Member
- Posts: 68
- Joined: 28 May 2015 09:29
- x 4
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
The first think that came to my mind is telling her that a friend of mine did a bad joke with me i thought its a football video but it was some weird sounds ! she didnt buy it i think ! she just thought am watching online porn ! some times shit happen
-
Quadrophenia1
- Member
- Posts: 872
- Joined: 14 Jul 2011 01:36
- x 88
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
I know everyone has their favorite brand and model of headphones. It's not unusual for true audiophiles and real music lovers to drop more that $300 on a real top-notch pair of headphones. But I honestly have to say that for under $100...... the Sony's have shockingly good wide spectrum sound and dynamic range. The MDR-V6 and MDR-7504 have been broadcasting legends for over 30 years.yeppie wrote:I switched from cheap office-headphones to Sony MDR XB500 a few years ago and it was like a sexsounds-revelation for me
-
Turmoil123
- Kingpin
- Posts: 157
- Joined: 16 Jun 2014 07:22
- x 109
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
I went from poor ear buds to mediocre ear buds and it made a HUGE difference. I can't wait to listen with real headphones.
-
moanspy
- Member
- Posts: 68
- Joined: 28 May 2015 09:29
- x 4
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
Just a general question , does good headphones alone make a big difference or the computer it self or the sound card ?
-
reggind
- Knight
- Posts: 2063
- Joined: 23 Feb 2014 06:14
- x 343
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
IMHO they all play a big part. Generally the phones are the weakest link though. That being said if you spend a lot of time with the EQ plugins, you can get pretty good sound out of $1 earbuds.
My personal take is the soundcard spec's are much more important for recording than for playback.
For recording, The chip that does the actual transcription, the analog to digital converter (some times called a/d or adc) sets the limit on what can be recorder. The bit depth, typically a minimum of 16 bits, with the high end being 20 or 24 bits). And the frequency that the a/d runs at, typically a minimum of 44.1Khz, with the high end being over twice that, puts a hard limit on the highest frequency that can be recorded. Than there is the wildcard in the analog side, the microphone preamp. This is the part of the card that takes the very feeble signal from the microphone and boosts it up to a level suitable for the a/d converter to process. All amplifiers add noise and distortion to the signal, and I call the preamp the wildcard because if you have a poor mic preamp in front of a great a/d chain, your results are going to be limited by the poor mic preamp. The take away is that the recording side is dealing with little itsy bitsy signals that require a lot of care to get turned into the bulletproof digital files we enjoy playing with.
On the output side, playback, we are working with bulletproof digital signals to start with, and while there can be differences in the amplifiers in computers and sound cards etc, IMHO, they have a much easier job. Ditto wit the job of turning the digital audio back into analog, the d/a converter. The technology for them had a big head start before personal computers got popular as they are the heart of CD players. So by the time computers came along, the a/a technology was pretty mature. The take away from all of that is IMHO you will get better playback performance from a modest soundcard then recording performance. The differences in sound cards is more likely to be more apparent in recording than playback.
All of that said there is also an art to using equipment. For example, the technology and spec's of the sound section of your low end notebook are probably better than any of the equipment that the Beatles recorded their first few albums with. But you (and I) lack George Martins artistry with the equipment. He also had some very nice mic's and some very nice rooms, but it was really his skill...
My personal take is the soundcard spec's are much more important for recording than for playback.
For recording, The chip that does the actual transcription, the analog to digital converter (some times called a/d or adc) sets the limit on what can be recorder. The bit depth, typically a minimum of 16 bits, with the high end being 20 or 24 bits). And the frequency that the a/d runs at, typically a minimum of 44.1Khz, with the high end being over twice that, puts a hard limit on the highest frequency that can be recorded. Than there is the wildcard in the analog side, the microphone preamp. This is the part of the card that takes the very feeble signal from the microphone and boosts it up to a level suitable for the a/d converter to process. All amplifiers add noise and distortion to the signal, and I call the preamp the wildcard because if you have a poor mic preamp in front of a great a/d chain, your results are going to be limited by the poor mic preamp. The take away is that the recording side is dealing with little itsy bitsy signals that require a lot of care to get turned into the bulletproof digital files we enjoy playing with.
On the output side, playback, we are working with bulletproof digital signals to start with, and while there can be differences in the amplifiers in computers and sound cards etc, IMHO, they have a much easier job. Ditto wit the job of turning the digital audio back into analog, the d/a converter. The technology for them had a big head start before personal computers got popular as they are the heart of CD players. So by the time computers came along, the a/a technology was pretty mature. The take away from all of that is IMHO you will get better playback performance from a modest soundcard then recording performance. The differences in sound cards is more likely to be more apparent in recording than playback.
All of that said there is also an art to using equipment. For example, the technology and spec's of the sound section of your low end notebook are probably better than any of the equipment that the Beatles recorded their first few albums with. But you (and I) lack George Martins artistry with the equipment. He also had some very nice mic's and some very nice rooms, but it was really his skill...
-
enigma63
- Member
- Posts: 61
- Joined: 26 Jun 2011 12:49
- x 124
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
So got to agree, good headphones make a huge difference.
I do a fair bit of travelling on aircraft and got fed-up of barely being able to hear films that I'd got on my iPod or laptop so I treated myself to a pair of Bose Q35 noise cancelling headphones - Yes, I know that a lot of audiophiles don't like noise cancelling but they suited my need.
To test them out I was looking for some interesting sound files and rediscovered my store of sex sounds - Wow what a difference!
As an added benefit it brought me back to this forum
I do a fair bit of travelling on aircraft and got fed-up of barely being able to hear films that I'd got on my iPod or laptop so I treated myself to a pair of Bose Q35 noise cancelling headphones - Yes, I know that a lot of audiophiles don't like noise cancelling but they suited my need.
To test them out I was looking for some interesting sound files and rediscovered my store of sex sounds - Wow what a difference!
As an added benefit it brought me back to this forum
-
edtraveller
- Member
- Posts: 2510
- Joined: 13 Jan 2007 18:25
- x 3983
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
Quadrophenia - Point Taken!!
I own Sony MDR headphones - noise cancelling so can edit my stuff on an airplane or in a coffee bar with no one the wiser. Reggind - to your point, for my under door recordings I bought an Olympus LS-P2. Voices are great, but the ambient has been brutal. Found out my settings were at the highest mic sensitivity - so set to 'Low' and test recorded some office noise and between that setting and the resolution of 3 mics - the result was very clean - can't wait to test soon on some under-door action!
I own Sony MDR headphones - noise cancelling so can edit my stuff on an airplane or in a coffee bar with no one the wiser. Reggind - to your point, for my under door recordings I bought an Olympus LS-P2. Voices are great, but the ambient has been brutal. Found out my settings were at the highest mic sensitivity - so set to 'Low' and test recorded some office noise and between that setting and the resolution of 3 mics - the result was very clean - can't wait to test soon on some under-door action!
=🛏=
❤
=
=
=
=
-
psymedia
- Member
- Posts: 46
- Joined: 09 Mar 2014 12:00
- x 10
Re: Good headphones make a BIG difference
A pro's opinion
If you have read some of my other posts you will know audio of any kind is my life and blood. Apart from this hobby i earn my crust in audio post production of various kinds, music, screen, forensic to name but a few.
You need to think about the entire chain, from recording quality (sample rate and bit depth ie 44khz @ 16bit - CD quality) thru playback software, hardware, amplification and moitoring (speakers or earphones) so here's the crib list with examples of why...
Recording
Get yourself a good recorder, cheap chinese c**p is not worth it by the time you pay delivery from china you could have bought yourself a good quality 'dictaphone', Voice recorder' with a micro SD card slot ( reasonable quality recorders with low onboard storage are cheap if they have the microsd slot thoses cards are also cheap 8gb will give you 45hrs of high quality stereo recording @192kbs mp3) - my personal recording are with an olympus voice recorder for the oudoor and a studio condenser microphone in a ventilation shaft recorded by wavelab on pc for the indoor recordings.
Playback
1. software
Forget media player! for quick auditoning or when you know where within the file the interesting material is, VLC is first class, checkout the EQ in 'effects' the '2 pass' works wonders and by default with the mouse wheel you get full volume +25% gain on the original.
Getting serious Audacity works well for a freebie but im a 25yr veteran of Steinberg products for work and pleasure, Wavelab is the main weapon in my armoury (can be torrented ver6 is a good stable recommendation) lots of in built goodies like changing the gain on a file (coaxing out the quiet sounds), EQ's, denoisers, analysers a very good feature is resmpling by some computer wizardry you can input a recording from a cra**y nokia 8bit recording and 'resample' to glorious studio quality i used this to find awesome rampant rabbit masturbation recordings on files i thought for 4 years were empty files of sleeping friend..... but it also supports 'VST' plugins. Read on.......
RX production suite torrent it, it can be used as an 'insert' within wavelab and offers many tools, on and offline denoising, hum (electrical noise) removal, reverb removal, clicks crackles pops sractches u name it you can reveal whats under it....
2. Hardware
HDRealtek onboard sound - disable in bios and buy a real soundcrad if your serious! 100$ will get you something that runs on USB/firewire/PCI/PCIe, the lowest specs you should be lookng for in a soundcard are 96Khz @ 24 bit anything above and beyond is a bonus for the average user. Analog to digital convertors are another consideration, where are they - if they are in your PC ie with an onboard soundcard or cheap PCI card you will get plentiful unwanted noise from interferance from the cooler and other component - to hear quiet clean sound get your A/D convertors outside your pc box!As pro as you can go is PCI/E card with a chunky (mine is 1.5") multicore digital cable to a breakout box that houses the A/D convertors + all connection sockets 2.5meters from the PC. second hand an ESI 1010 offering 8x analog in's & outs plus stereo digi in and out on a PCI interface can be had for 75$ these days, i use one to listen to sounds and mix dolby 5.1 tracks for media clients it offers 192khz @ 32bit. perfect for our hobby.
3. Monitoring
Various speakers and headphones are designed for different uses you wouldnt want to listen to any recordings on this site on a 12" subwoofer, as to loudspeakers you need something with a full frequency range but with software EQ out the low frequencies (bass), for headphone you need something different for 'this material' than normal music, look at the specs for your headphones anything that boosts bass is great for music but useless here, you need headphones with a 'peak' in the medium frequncy range - senheiser HD range are spot on for this, your music will sound tinny thru these but adult love songs will shine.
Just My 2 pennies worth - Psy
If you have read some of my other posts you will know audio of any kind is my life and blood. Apart from this hobby i earn my crust in audio post production of various kinds, music, screen, forensic to name but a few.
You need to think about the entire chain, from recording quality (sample rate and bit depth ie 44khz @ 16bit - CD quality) thru playback software, hardware, amplification and moitoring (speakers or earphones) so here's the crib list with examples of why...
Recording
Get yourself a good recorder, cheap chinese c**p is not worth it by the time you pay delivery from china you could have bought yourself a good quality 'dictaphone', Voice recorder' with a micro SD card slot ( reasonable quality recorders with low onboard storage are cheap if they have the microsd slot thoses cards are also cheap 8gb will give you 45hrs of high quality stereo recording @192kbs mp3) - my personal recording are with an olympus voice recorder for the oudoor and a studio condenser microphone in a ventilation shaft recorded by wavelab on pc for the indoor recordings.
Playback
1. software
Forget media player! for quick auditoning or when you know where within the file the interesting material is, VLC is first class, checkout the EQ in 'effects' the '2 pass' works wonders and by default with the mouse wheel you get full volume +25% gain on the original.
Getting serious Audacity works well for a freebie but im a 25yr veteran of Steinberg products for work and pleasure, Wavelab is the main weapon in my armoury (can be torrented ver6 is a good stable recommendation) lots of in built goodies like changing the gain on a file (coaxing out the quiet sounds), EQ's, denoisers, analysers a very good feature is resmpling by some computer wizardry you can input a recording from a cra**y nokia 8bit recording and 'resample' to glorious studio quality i used this to find awesome rampant rabbit masturbation recordings on files i thought for 4 years were empty files of sleeping friend..... but it also supports 'VST' plugins. Read on.......
RX production suite torrent it, it can be used as an 'insert' within wavelab and offers many tools, on and offline denoising, hum (electrical noise) removal, reverb removal, clicks crackles pops sractches u name it you can reveal whats under it....
2. Hardware
HDRealtek onboard sound - disable in bios and buy a real soundcrad if your serious! 100$ will get you something that runs on USB/firewire/PCI/PCIe, the lowest specs you should be lookng for in a soundcard are 96Khz @ 24 bit anything above and beyond is a bonus for the average user. Analog to digital convertors are another consideration, where are they - if they are in your PC ie with an onboard soundcard or cheap PCI card you will get plentiful unwanted noise from interferance from the cooler and other component - to hear quiet clean sound get your A/D convertors outside your pc box!As pro as you can go is PCI/E card with a chunky (mine is 1.5") multicore digital cable to a breakout box that houses the A/D convertors + all connection sockets 2.5meters from the PC. second hand an ESI 1010 offering 8x analog in's & outs plus stereo digi in and out on a PCI interface can be had for 75$ these days, i use one to listen to sounds and mix dolby 5.1 tracks for media clients it offers 192khz @ 32bit. perfect for our hobby.
3. Monitoring
Various speakers and headphones are designed for different uses you wouldnt want to listen to any recordings on this site on a 12" subwoofer, as to loudspeakers you need something with a full frequency range but with software EQ out the low frequencies (bass), for headphone you need something different for 'this material' than normal music, look at the specs for your headphones anything that boosts bass is great for music but useless here, you need headphones with a 'peak' in the medium frequncy range - senheiser HD range are spot on for this, your music will sound tinny thru these but adult love songs will shine.
Just My 2 pennies worth - Psy