[Closed] How to listen to music

What rig have you got?

Rig?

A spliff makes the worst stereo sound fantastic, I think the problem lies there. But life moves on.

You need a proper hifi set up.  I believe there's someone on here who can give you pointers.

Streamed mp3's, through a phone, to cheap headphones, will give you the worst way possible to listen to music. This is still OK to some (actually, a lot) of people though.

If its not acceptable to you, then you need to upgrade your set up.

More knowledgeable people on hear (see what I did there) should be able to help.

Depends on the headphones. The quality is so variable and a lot of mainstream headphones have a hollow harsh sound or heavily exaggerated bass to cover for failings in the rest of the audio spectrum. High prices don't guarantee quality either, especially with fashionable brands!

You can get decent sounding headphones for peanuts from Superlux and Status Audio to name two.

Tried some budget closed back Audio Technica's recently, they were shite. TBH there's a lot of snake oil out there and a lot of modern headphones sound worse than designs from 30 years ago.

I really like Google Play for music but for me it's for the car or headphones walking to the station/shops etc or Bluetooth speaker as background noise (cooking, DIY, bike fettling etc).

Those situations are ok because the music isn't the main focus so lower quality is tolerable and I can cost effectively listen to a wider variety than Incan afford to buy.

if I were sitting down to have a proper listen it isn't really up to the job. It is really noticeable if you know the song / album well. I like my metal and the difference between a CD of (say) Master of Puppets and the online version is noticeable even to my untrained ears.

CDs etc do deliver better but need something ok-ish to play through. I use a blu ray player, AV receiver and some large bookshelf speakers. It's not ideal but it is an ok compromise given it is intended to be a jack of all trades setup.

Start at the beginning..

What type/style of music are you listening to?

Here you go these are still one of the best budget headphones you can buy. You''ll see them on peoples heads on TV and in studios. The design dates back to the 80's. Unfortunately the better 7509 are discontinued and the 7506 differs only by warranty and a gold plated jack!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mdr-V6-Lightweight-Stereo-Headphones-Sony-Black/dp/B00001WRSJ/

A decent stereo amp and a set of decent bookshelf speakers.. But it depends what you already have.

An AV amp is more versatile.

Streaming music is hit and miss.. If the source is crap, you can't really polish a turd no matter how good your speakers and amp are.

Good cables are essential.

Directional, obvs.

I don’t get the whole “quality of sound” thing.

Isn’t it supposed to be about the music? Either it’s good or it isn’t. And if it’s good, then you try to listen to it under optimal conditions.

But good music is still good, even when the equipment sucks.

Maybe the OP just needs to listen to better stuff.

We need to know what you’re using to gain some idea of what deficiencies there might be. Then we can make some recommendations.

Myself, I listen to CD’s played on a Cambridge Audio DVD-99 multi format DVD player, coupled to an old Yamaha DPS-AX2 A/V amp via fibre optic, with an old Sony 5.1 speaker system, or ripped 320Kb tracks ripped into iTunes on my Mac Mini which is connected to the same Yamaha amp via fibre optic TOSLink

For listening outside the house, I’ve got an old iPod 160Gb Classic, which doesn’t get used that much these days, I normally use my iPhone 6+, with MeeAudio Pinnacle P1 IEM’s, (In-Ear Monitors), either with a 3.5mm to Lightning adaptor and the ‘phones own supplied cable, or the same ‘phones with a Shure Lightning cable - MeeAudio use MMCX connectors on some of their earphones, same as Shure do. There is a definite difference between the standard 3.5mm jack and the Lightning connector, there is a DAC in the £10 Apple Lightning adaptor, and one built into the Shure cable, which bypasses the built-in DAC in the phone, which isn’t bad by any means.

I never use any streaming services, I find their financial structure regarding payments to artists abhorrent, so I occasionally buy downloads, but normally CD’s and rip them at 320Kb variable bitrate; having done a number of direct comparisons with Lossless, there is no significant difference between them, listening through my IEM’s. I do use Apple Earpods, their sound quality is pretty good, but there’s no way to block background sounds, whereas my Pinnacle IEM’s have triple-flange eartips which block 26dB of background sound, the same as industrial hearing protection.

I’ve also got a pair of Ultimate Ears TripleFi 10 Studio IEMS, which have three drivers, which sound superb, but are fairly bulky compared to the Pinnacle P1’s, the TFi 10’s are roughly £350, the Pinnacle P1’s about £180.

There is a noticeable variation between the different earphones I use, but there’s more variation in the actual recordings I listen to, and it’s very noticeable with a decent set of ‘phones; the old computing term GIGO applied just as much to recorded music as it does ordinary digital information, if you don’t know it, it stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out!

Maybe you need some new music?

Try switching to ecky.

I don’t get the whole “quality of sound” thing

Depends what you mean by quality.  Blind listening tests showed over and over that people can't tell the difference between different bitrates of mp3 once you get past about 150. Most of the time when people say they can hear a difference in the quality it isn't about high or low quality it is about tonal quality.  Records tend to have a warm rich tone, CDs, which produce sound which is more accurate, tend to be brighter and sharper.

It also doesn't help that modern music is recorded " hot" meaning they push the channels to the max just below the point of distortion.

Having said that I did notice my speakers sounded better when I made my own cables from 100% copper core quadshield rg6 with compression fit connectors.

A crappy smartphone and some overpriced headphones not need an overpriced ‘filter’ to make the tunes come alive.

I don’t get the whole “quality of sound” thing.

Isn’t it supposed to be about the music? Either it’s good or it isn’t. And if it’s good, then you try to listen to it under optimal conditions.

But good music is still good, even when the equipment sucks.

Maybe the OP just needs to listen to better stuff.

Amen brother.

Currently listening to a load of old soul on youtube on these:

...and I'm quite happy. Mind you, some of the original recordings are such poor quality it doesn't really matter.

I blame the volume limit on modern headphones and portable music players. Everything sounds better when it’s on the cusp of exploding your eardrums.

First of all, make sure you are wearing the appropriate clothing for your location. You don’t want anybody to think you’re anything less than immensely wealthy and well-connected. Even if you are, in fact, a bit of a donkey.

I don’t get the whole “quality of sound” thing.

Isn’t it supposed to be about the music? Either it’s good or it isn’t. And if it’s good, then you try to listen to it under optimal conditions.

But good music is still good, even when the equipment sucks.

To an extent. I'm no audiophile and suspect the law of diminishing returns strongly applies but I forgot my earbuds on a trip one time so picked up a cheap pair in duty free, and they were so bad the music was virtually unlistenable.

In visual terms, imagine going to the cinema. Of course you want seats 1/3 of the way back and in the middle so it's right in front of you. If you got given a seat at the end of the front row - you'd be watching the film at an angle and you wouldn't enjoy it as much but it'd still be a decent film. These buds were like being given a shit seat and then being told you had to watch it through a pair of safety glasses that someone has been at with a sandblaster. You could make out shapes, but that was about it 😉

I blame the volume limit on modern headphones and portable music players. Everything sounds better when it’s on the cusp of exploding your eardrums.

Here here!  I miss proper loud gigs as well.  The only place I can get proper volume these days is in my car but then as a 40 year old bloke in a Jag listening to dirty Berlin Techno at volume I must look a proper knob...  oh well, I am at least nearly enough not to care what people think.

I sincerely hope you dress in the correct footwear for the experience although...a Jaguar... hmmmmm.... hope one doesn’t park it directly outside ones’ club. You wouldn’t want a rig like that to lower the tone.

OK, I`ll try to answer some of the questions.

Headphones are JBL E65BTNC

Phone is pixel 2

Music is on Google Play.

I listen to trip hop, jazz, funk, garage rock, blues.

I know the source and equipment, maybe with the exception of the headphones is not hifi equipment but I thought it would give me a better sound than it does.

How SHOULD an equalizer be set? Is it jet play around with it to get a personal preference? Or is there a standard setting that should make everything sound good?

20 years ago when I converted all my cds to mp3s there was a belief that 128 was effectively lossless as the human ear couldn't hear the parts that were being trimmed out to achieve the compression. Is that actually true or was it BS back in the day?

128 I can hear a difference on a lot of music, especially if I know it well. A bit above that and I don't think I can, 320 I very much doubt I'd hear any difference in a blind test Vs lossless, but I've never tried.

A lot of my music comes through Google Play or my own CDs ripped lossless, through a Sonos to a reasonable amp and floorstanders. The convenience of streaming means I listen to a lot of different music and enjoy it, it may only be excellent quality Vs perfect, but is good enough for me.

Even [i]I[/i] won't go as low as 128kb/s and I believe it's all about the [i]music[/i], not the sound quality!

I was listening to minidiscs yesterday on LP2. Shocking.

The bitrate on streamed and downloaded music is good enough that I can't hear the difference/it doesn't bother me.  All my CDs were ripped at 320 but some stuff I've acquired/dj mixes and the like is as low as 128 and it's fine if it's not critical listening.  Someone said they could teach me what to listen for but it would ruin much of my listening so I was better off ignorant.

I'd suspect the headphones are the weak link.  £100 will probably buy you a good set of phones but with bluetooth and noise cancelling at that price you're asking a lot.  I was given some reasonably expensive Skullcandy headphones a few years back and I found them exhausting - the frequency response was seriously messed up overloaded bass.

I've got a pair of Sennheiser HD25s that I love (picked up for a well under £100 on eBay) which sound lovely to me.

I’d suspect the headphones are the weak link.  £100 will probably buy you a good set of phones but with bluetooth and noise cancelling at that price you’re asking a lot

That's sale price, they are normally £180 and reviews are generally very positive about the sound quality.

GPM also streams at 320kbs, and I am sure I heard somewhere that if you upload your own library at a lower bitrate, if the song you want to listen to is available at a higher bitrate on GPM it will automatically play the better quality file.

I sincerely hope you dress in the correct footwear for the experience although…a Jaguar… hmmmmm…. hope one doesn’t park it directly outside ones’ club. You wouldn’t want a rig like that to lower the tone

Of course I don't park it outside the club -  the valet does!

The headphones connected by Bluetooth to the phone is probably the weak point.

You could try a USB DAC/headphone amp and connect to your phone. Then use a wired connection to the headphone amp.

You don't need to spend an absolute fortune on the DAC, you would probably notice a difference even if you only spent £20 or £30.

I recommend: decide on your maximum affordable budget, get down to your nearest Hifi shop and try out different makes of headphones, get Spotify onto your phone, link your ‘phones to your mobile with a good quality cable.

My recent experience suggests that an intervening DAC will lift the SQ, but given the extra expense, it might be a good idea to think about it later...

The headphones connected by Bluetooth to the phone is probably the weak point.
You could try a USB DAC/headphone amp and connect to your phone. Then use a wired connection to the headphone amp.
You don’t need to spend an absolute fortune on the DAC, you would probably notice a difference even if you only spent £20 or £30.

Any recommendations?

See above.

I was listening to minidiscs yesterday

Best physical format for music in my opinion. I loved them.

reviews are generally very positive about the sound quality.

I've not checked but audiophile reviews or tech reviews?  Last time I looked there seemed to be a lot of headphone reviewing done by people who knew nothing about sound qualilty.

Streamed mp3’s, through a phone, to cheap headphones, will give you the worst way possible to listen to music. This is still OK to some (actually, a lot) of people though.

A lot of kids are happy enough just playing the music through the phone speaker, regardless of whether anyone around is happy to listen.

Anyway, decent buds (not the ones that come with the phone) or proper headphones can improve phone output, but it depends a lot on the phone hardware. Majority of phones sound terrible but with the use of a decent equaliser it can improve it a lot. Annoyingly Android doesn't have a system level equaliser but you can get apps to do it. Spotify has a built in equaliser which works well (I use it for car audio and did transform it to a crap experience to fairly okay for a car).

Though my headphone socket has broken and I can't get the jack to stay in there now. Am looking at USB audio. Needs to be USB-C I think (mine is) and then there's complication as to whether there's a DAC in the phone USB output, in which case a passive adapter is okay (but could be crap DAC in the phone), or get an adapter with a DAC in and then depends on the quality of it plus reading around it seems like there are incompatibilities with some phones. Additionally you might want to charge the phone while listening to something and you can combined charge and audio adapters, but my experience of charging phones while listening to audio is potential for interference, especially in the car.

Bluetooth audio isn't always great. Limitations there in compression etc and then the quality of the DAC in the headphones.

Whats the issue with BT then? Why would an analogue cable sound better?

You can’t beat the experience of personal comparison.

Get yourself down the shop.

Any recommendations?

I bought this for a 2nd system in my workshop, it performed really well for the money, however, I didn't use it as a headphone amp, just to feed a hifi.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Behringer-UFO202-U-phono-Audio-Interface/dp/B002GHBYZ0/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543573005&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=beringer+usb+dac

If you want to spend a bit more this always gets good reviews. Never used one myself.

https://www.richersounds.com/headphones/headphone-amplifiers/audioquest-dragonfly-black.html

Don't waste money on fancy cables and stuff.

Some Android devices need USB Audio Player Pro to output digital audio through the USB, others don't.

http://www.extreamsd.com/index.php/products/usb-audio-player-pro

But I have already bought my headphones.Like I said before I`m not an audio snob and my own ears are probably not good enough to appreciate high end stuff. All I want is something that sounds "good enough" to me.

Reading others posts it sounds like a DAC could be a good investment in the future, and a cable will be better than BT.

You can’t beat the experience of personal comparison.

Get yourself down the shop.

Very true.

However, it's the opposite of what the resident STW audiophile did.

Well quite. Being as my nearest Hifi shop is so far away I’d have to get on a plane, I had to resort to published reviews and advice from like-minded audiophiles on the Cult Of NAIM forum.

Fortunately, it worked out fine. When I lived in the U.K., personal auditioning was my preferred option, of course. What’s your point, BTW?

Don’t waste money on fancy cables and stuff.

Unless of course, having heard the difference, you don’t consider an improved SQ from better quality equipment to be a waste of money. And stuff.

In my V70 with the Premium Sound System upgrade from Dynadio.

https://www.dynaudio.com/car-audio/in-car-audio-the-history

The problem is you. As somebody once said, "the best sauce is hunger". To put it another way, you've got to be in the mood. That applies to drinking wine, listening to music and pretty much any similar non-essential to life experience.

Having said that there are some situations (rigs?) that conspire against a good experience, so by all means follow the expert advice already given, but in the end you need to rejuvenate your taste buds. Unfortunately pot-soaked listening tends to mitigate against this. Try some (very) different music.

What’s your point, BTW?

That not everyone has the time, inclination or opportunity to do so.

Fortunately, it worked out fine.

How do you know if you have compared it side by side with other options?

Having said that there are some situations (rigs?)

Oh, rig. Definitely.

How do you know if you have compared it side by side with other options?

By ‘fine’ in this case, I mean that the improvement over the previous version of the rig was exactly what I was hoping for.

Don’t waste money on fancy cables and stuff.

Unless of course, having heard the difference, you don’t consider an improved SQ from better quality equipment to be a waste of money. And stuff.

Is this the difference to the signal passed that cannot be measured by any electrical engineers?

It’s certainly the difference that may or may not be heard by the human ear, to varying degrees or even not at all, from person to person.

Much as you would like to draw me into that tired old argument with your disingenuous query, I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.

I’d rather try and be helpful to the OP.

Have a nice day.

I think only one person has picked on the EQ questions so far.

So, anyone care to enlighten me on how to properly set one?

Try turning the noise cancelling off on the headphones see if they sound better.

Turn your Google play to use the highest quality. There is a difference when you turn up Google play to the highest setting.(you'll probably need to redownload any offline music.)

As for the equaliser settings, use you ears basically. If it sounds harsh on the highs adjust the highs, my experice if mobile eqs on Android are rotten though.

I listen to music on some Sony mdr 7605, great for monitoring but they are flat, as intended, and make the highs a bit too crisp. So a slight adjustment makes them sound awesome for listening. I find a slight boost on the lows 20 to around 600hz and a slight drop around the 1khz to 4kz is just what they need. How I figured that out. Well close your eyes and adjust each sliider till it's perfect. Go to the extremes then bring it right back to where you want it too be. That's just on desktop though with a decent equalier mind and listening through a decent audio interface interface. Eq will only do so much if the equipment is deficient. But if the equipment is good you should be able to tune to your preference.

Every piece of audio equipment is coloured differently in some way though so there isn't a one size fits all solution there.

If you want to understand eq have a listen to this dude rambling about it. Should educate you on what frequencies do what.

Trailwaggwr, do you want an EQ function so that you can adjust each piece of music that you listen to, to meet your tonal preference?

However you listen to it I'll bet it's better than me for the next month - secondhand from a pop-up ice rink in the car park, playing 5 year old plus pop songs at the volume where the speakers have started to distort. And they've not got enough music to cover 12-5 every day so there's a lot of repeating. Going to be a long month!

So playing around then basically.

I guess what I was asking in a different way was how do I get to listen to the music the way the original producer intended? ie. if an EQ is off, is that the closest you will get or does the equipment your playing it through always make such a difference to the sound that you will never reproduce what the original producer heard

Trailwaggwr, do you want an EQ function so that you can adjust each piece of music that you listen to, to meet your tonal preference?

No, I`m asking what is the best way to use one. Should it never be touched? Should it be adjusted and played with to your own preference? Is there a standard default setting that works for most music?

watch the video I posted, that will answer lots of your EQ questions. Generally it is a case of just messing with it, but you can mess with it with a more educated understanding of what's actually happening.

Is there a standard default setting that works for most music?

No, but, you'll be able to find a setting that works for your equipment. but it's variable to the equipment and person listening(everyone has different hearing abilities, and every bit of equipment is coloured in it's own way). That's all assuming equipment can replicate a decent sound(you don't need to spend fortunes for this.)

As I said though, turning off the noise cancelling is your first port of call imo. (I googled your headphones, apparently the noise cancelling is rubbish.)

Well, from a ‘hifi’ point of view, EQ as an ‘in-system’ adjustment is an irrelevance.

The object of the exercise is deliver to your ears as close a copy of the original recording, however that has been encoded (streamed, CD, vinyl).

The downside to this is of course, if it’s a poor quality recording, it’ll sound poor quality (garbage in, garbage out, as was mentioned elsewhere).

I suppose it depends on how much you love a particular piece of music for it’s own sake, matching more than your baseline sonic acceptability requirement.

For instance, Jimmy Pages’ disastrous digital remixes of Led Zeppelins’ back catalogue have now rendered them unlistenable for me, but I’m not prepared to degrade my systems’ sonic veracity just to make them listenable at the expense of a lesser performance level for the rest of my collection generally...

I still recommend selecting the best performing non-Bluetooth non-NC headphones you can find, ‘Spotifying’ your mobile and buying a good quality cable.

I guess what I was asking in a different way was how do I get to listen to the music the way the original producer intended? ie. if an EQ is off, is that the closest you will get or does the equipment your playing it through always make such a difference to the sound that you will never reproduce what the original producer heard

Yes you are right. The only way would really know if you were listening to what the producer intended would be to use the equipment and room he monitored it on/in.

In a domestic situation the best chance you will have is good quality equipment (especially IMO power amps and speakers) and no EQ.

The object of the exercise is deliver to your ears as close a copy of the original recording,

The only way they could possibly do that is if a system was somehow able to replicate the sound of the the monitors and equipment used to mix the record, in every individual of recording. That info ain't encoded in the file you are listening to, and your equipment isn't looking for it.

Things are usually mixed on the basis of sounding good on a wide range of systems, that's why people monitor with flat response speakers and will test on a wide variety of systems. flat response speakers ain't the best things to listen to music on.

flat response speakers ain’t the best things to listen to music on.

That depends on the producer/type of music.

Yes you are right. The only way would really know if you were listening to what the producer intended would be to use the equipment and room he monitored it on/in.
In a domestic situation the best chance you will have is good quality equipment (especially IMO power amps and speakers) and no EQ.

Jeez, it must be so frustrating for producers to know that all the time and effort they put in, and no-one else will ever hear it as they intended it to sound ! What is the suicide rate amongst producers?

If you are saying no EQ, what happens if a person has a bad 2k - 4k dip in their hearing? Do they just ignore that? or should they adjust their eq to boost the EQ in those frequencies? They aren't hearing these frequencies unless they turn it up. So they definitely aren't hearing the music as intended.

EQ has it's uses.

That depends on the producer/type of music.

yes absolutely, some music sounds awesome on flat response stuff. I've no argument there. Some doesn't though.

That depends on the producer/type of music.

It ALL does! 😀

That info ain’t encoded in the file you are listening to, and your equipment isn’t looking for it.

There's a thing. Surely in the digital age of music this could actually be encoded into the file and modern equipment have the ability to read it and reproduce the original sound?

copy of the original recording,

Or if you prefer, the encoded results released at the end of the process.

I agree with the comments re: flat response. Hence my previous about putting up with the likes of Jimmy “ Cloth Ears” Page...

My best advice is still the “Hifi” one within whatever is your affordable budget. Shop, ‘phones, Spotify, cable...

Good luck.

There’s a thing. Surely in the digital age of music this could actually be encoded into the file and modern equipment have the ability to read it and reproduce the original sound?

There's more variables though, like room treatment(what you hear isn't just what comes out your speakers, sound interacts with the environment) and as mentioned peoples actual ability to hear, plus there's a billion different systems things are mixed on and intended to be played on etc. It's a fairly futile exercise. And generally the idea isn't just to give the person that spends 20k on their system a unique experience, it's to give everyone a good experience, so the mixing/mastering process is, by it's nature, a compromise.

That said, you will generally get a better experience if you spend more. How much more is up to you. Ultimately it's about getting it to sound good to you. If it does, happy days.

When you’ve bought and used your choice, come back and tell us all about it. I’d love to know. 😁

All this talk about cables has prompted me to change mine, after realizing that I was using the wrong ones.

😆

Wow. I recommended one of the best low impedance/easily driven/no amp needed, no nonsense, industry proven headphones you can buy and people ignore it and go on about snake oil cables and expensive audio gear as an answer! Now I'm not saying they're the best headphones by a long shot, but they are unbeatable on price, easy to live with and put some much higher priced pretenders to shame!

You might be able to EQ them JBL's to sound a bit more like you want, depends how flawed the response is and whether they need an amp to drive them properly. JBL like many of the big names, Bose etc, use their pro brand image (dirty rip off merchants) to sell overpriced average performance consumer ranges with the odd decent product here and there.

There' so much bullshit in the audio world it's worse than politics!

Here you go, Dave Rat (5 part video) will help you out, if you have got a bit more brass to splash about!

Now I’m not saying they’re the best headphones by a long shot

Oh. Nice collection of dials and switches in that ‘tower’...

The only way they could possibly do that is if a system was somehow able to replicate the sound of the the monitors and equipment used to mix the record, in every individual of recording. That info ain’t encoded in the file you are listening to, and your equipment isn’t looking for it.

What about 'auto configuration' AV amps that use a room microphone and some wizzery to supposedly tune both the delays, volumes and tone output of the speakers?  My old Sony amp has a few settings which supposedly tweak the frequency response to match a few different specific 'viewing theatres'  (rather than Yamahas 'concert hall', 'stadium', 'jazz club')

I guess what I was asking in a different way was how do I get to listen to the music the way the original producer intended? ie. if an EQ is off, is that the closest you will get or does the equipment your playing it through always make such a difference to the sound that you will never reproduce what the original producer heard

This is assuming that the producer was looking for total audio fidelity, but that’s not always the case; I read somewhere that one artist/producer listened to mixes through a cheap transistor radio, on the basis that that would be how the music would likely be reproduced. The fact is that recording quality can vary enormously, depending on who the producer and recording engineers were, and what the finished result was intended to sound like. Look up ‘Loudness Wars’ for an example of just how bad recording quality can get when the desire to make songs stand out when played on shitty phone speakers, etc. I suggest you track down a couple of very good books on music and read them, it’ll teach you so much more than you can get on here, and will also, with luck, teach you that you don’t need fancy equipment to really appreciate music, in fact the better the equipment, the more it can reveal flaws in the original recordings, or at least in how they were mastered. Listening to 320Kb AAC tracks played on my phone, and my old iPod Classic, through my UE TripleFi 10’s, or my Pinnacle P1’s, I can clearly hear differences in mastering quality on tracks as they play; music mastered by Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk has amazing subtlety and detail, and is very open, Paul Simon’s ‘Hearts And Bones’ is one of the best recordings I’ve ever heard, whereas the Jimmy Page Zeppelin re-masters of a few years ago are dire.

’How Music Works’, by David Byrne of Talking Heads is a great read, the ebook has actual samples of recordings he talks about, and ‘Perfecting Sound Forever’ by Greg Milner goes through recorded music history and the way technology has changed the way music is recorded and listened to

https://www.amazon.com/Perfecting-Sound-Forever-History-Recorded/dp/0865479380

https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Music-Works-David-Byrne/dp/0857862529

The thing is, a really good song can set your skin tingling when heard over a cheap radio, you don’t need a £1000 pair of fancy in-ear monitors plugged into a £1500 Sony Walkman to get that emotional response, I can get it from a pair of Apple EarPods plugged into an iPod Nano or my iPhone 6+, if the song itself strikes the right emotional chord, pun intended.

I'm not an audiophile by any stretch of the speaker cable but I know when something sounds good.

MP3s etc are compressed to save memory and this means much less quality. The source, the processor and the output device are all of equal importance.

CDs, although a forty year old media, are one of the fineses sources.

I listen to stuff on Spotify and if I like it, I order a CD.

My system is entry level but sounds very good.

Onkyo C7030 CD player (£200)

Yamaha R-S202D amp with tuner (including DAB) and bluetooth (£200)

DALI Spektor 1 speakers (£150)

and a pair of AKG K550 Mk iii (£150 although currently £100 on Amzn.)

Wow. I recommended one of the best low impedance/easily driven/no amp needed, no nonsense, industry proven headphones you can buy and people ignore it and go on about snake oil cables and expensive audio gear as an answer!

But I wasn't looking for headphone recommendations. I was asking how to make the heaphones I already have sound better.

I’m not an audiophile by any stretch of the speaker cable but I know when something sounds good.

Snap!  Or so I thought.   Until last night after the other hi-fi thread when someone gave me age-related performance anxiety in the cochlea-dept, so I took this fun test to see if I could detect audio quality

4 out of 6 says I come up short 😤

I'd encourage anyone vaguely interested to try out equipment there when you have a quiet moment

The thing is, a really good song can set your skin tingling when heard over a cheap radio, you don’t need a £1000 pair of fancy in-ear monitors plugged into a £1500 Sony Walkman to get that emotional response, I can get it from a pair of Apple EarPods plugged into an iPod Nano or my iPhone 6+, if the song itself strikes the right emotional chord, pun intended.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻+1

I often jump around in the kitchen first hearing something on the £30 Bush DAB echoing flatly and muddily around the room.  Then I check it out @ 320kbps on good headphones later on in the bedroom and it definitely looked better when the lights were off