A Sound Decision

Little did I know that I’d end up with some quality headphones within a few days after my last post. Research had led me to AKG’s K 240 being the best performer for my auditory tastes while not spending hundreds of dollars. However, I kept digging due to a feeling I hadn’t considered every option. Wandering about the audiophile side of the Net I ran into something that was too good to be true: under $50 headphones that rivaled $150-1500 cans. But the more I dug into the phones it became clear this wasn’t a come on or mass delusion. UPDATED 8-29, see below the fold.

Enter the Superlux HD681’s which I purchased for just under $32 U.S. from Amazon.

These are full size circumaural (enclose the entire ear) headphones with a phenomenal range of 10-30,000 Hz. Nobody wears these to impress anyone for they are the cheapest looking plastic affairs I’ve ever seen. Muted red plastic trim adds to the dullness of appearance.

Fortunately, they are anything but dull in sound. Absolutely amazing range with deep yet controlled, bass, sparkling mid-tones, and extreme highs. The latter can be too much depending on the kind of music played and many will probably want to use an equalizer to tone down the high frequencies.

UPDATE 1: Time is really required to evaluate an audio product, so I’ll be updating this occasionally for awhile.

After many more hours of listening to music I’ve come to the conclusion that the filter mod is mandatory for me. I’m too sensitive too highs and the more music I heard the more obvious that these are overdriven at the high end at the cost of the middle frequencies. After finally getting the Xonar equalizer closer to the proposed Frans filter, something close to perfection was found.

Next was gaming testing with and without the equalizer active. Oddly enough, games brought out the brightness problem with a vengeance. Part of it is that it seems like every FPS out there has arcing electricity, broken power cables, or shorted consoles in their levels. The highs hit by those sound effects are genuinely painful in stock configuration.

Thankfully implementing the treble reduction in the equalizer made things much better. An amazing amount of detail can be heard in games and a pleasant surprise was found in how much easier it was to pinpoint the direction sounds came from. In first person shooters this makes a significant difference in survival.

That’s a win and shows that audiophile headphones are something gamers should consider over expensive dedicated cans that maul music.

Back to the original post:

Being semi-open, they leak a lot of noise and while letting in a lot, yet this is a good thing because the more open a headphone is the better it replicates audio (generally speaking, it’s more complicated than that). For me it eliminates hearing my heartbeat, breathing, and joints popping when using completely closed headphones or in-ear canal plugs.

After 36 hours of burn in, I have been listening to a wide variety of music to see if any of the many modifications to HD 681’s done by others are needed. It’s a good sign that I’m waffling about doing any. By the way, the burn in was desperately needed because the highs were very harsh out of the box.

So far they have sounded superb, but there are some issues with vocals here and there. The sibilant problem with female vocalists cited by some does show up, but there is a thinness to some male voices to my surprise. The ever mellifluent Dean Martin sounds a little reedy, for example. Some remixed electronic music of recent vintage also sounded thin due to the overemphasis on highs, but oddly enough Tangerine Dream’s work sounds fine.

Old recordings will have their hiss exposed with the default balance, which I consider the correct way to listen to them. Other people won’t like that since listening is a very subjective experience. The 681’s will bring out all the details in the mixing, so be warned that flaws in recordings will be highly noticeable.

Currently, I’m futzing about with the equalizer on my Xonar DSX with the Brown Burr OPA2111K installed to try to replicate the hardware filter being used by some to reduce the decibel levels of the high end. Either I’m messing up, or there is detail sacrificed by doing so. It made Dino and Shirley Bassey sound better, but has muddied Pink Floyd and Bob Seger live performances.

Muffled is a better word for it, I’m listening to the Bruckner performance of Mars by Holst in 24bit 96,000 Hz FLAC and that’s what the equalizer changes are making it. Running into the same thing with some HD Rimsky-Korsakov as well. The triangles simply don’t sound right unless the phones are left to their own signature. Classical benefits the most from the extra punch for the lows and highs from my testing, really bringing out the strings.

Maybe a little more time on the phones will tamp down the highs a little, I wouldn’t want to suppress them much as it is. Just enough to get rid of the sibilance.

Huh, I was only going to listen to a half hours worth of music and that was three hours ago! Did I mention they are comfortable, if a little sweat inducing?

I don’t like headphones that much, so this is a little surprising. While not quite up to the quality levels of my speaker setup, the Superlux’s are amazing. They certainly blow my Sennheiser PX200’s away which I spent more than twice the money on. Pity the 681’s are too big to be portable like those.

Could the bass be a little tighter? Maybe, but no real complaint is to be had and at the moment the adding weight to the caps is the only mod I’d jump at doing. More weight dampens the resonance so that the plastic won’t rattle is the idea behind that mod. If I do build a filter, it will be an external one.

These cans are great out of the blister pack. Yes, they are that cheaply packaged. They come with a screw on 6.3mm (1/4”) jack over the 3.5mm (1/8”) and a cheap drawstring bag to carry them around in. In my opinion, that bag offers no protection to speak of and a padded or hard case is needed for transportation.

Oh, I almost forgot. These are 32 ohm impedance headphones, which means iPods, MP3 players, smart phones, and normal PC soundcards will all drive the 681’s well. Testing with my media center PC, Rockbox’d Sanza Fuze, and Xonar DSX produced excellent results and you can get the volume to unbearable levels.

The Xonar DSX is a special case, since swapping in the TI OPA2111K op-amp lowered the decibel output of the stereo jack of the soundcard. The front panel jack on my PC runs through a different op-amp and is very loud by comparison while lacking the beautiful detail I love so much. Fortunately for me, the speakers have a pass through jack though I have to take the volume knob to the 12 o’clock position for music to get decent volume.

I haven’t done much gaming with these on, so I can’t say a lot about that other than everything is crystal clear. My soundcard isn’t optimized to virtualize 3D in a headset, so it is up to DirectSound and the individual games to implement that. So far they are a huge improvement over the cheap TekNMotion Yapsters I’ve been using. I’ll add more to the post when I’ve had some time in.

From the relatively small amount of reviews at Amazon, I’d say these headphones have to be the best kept secret bargain in the industry. If you are an audiophile on a tight budget, these deserve a hard look. At this price, as the saying goes, you can’t afford not to.