Music finally touched my soul, this is how we should listen to music
I love music, I used to listen to music a lot. Over the past few years, I lost interest in listening to music. I play music once in a while. Can you guess why this happened? Back in 00’s I upgraded from cassette player to Aiwa CD player, then to iPod Nano, to Cowon D2 for lossless music, to iPod Touch. I also added Altec Lansing MX5021 speakers to my desktop. All these upgrades gave me better listening experience. Did I do justice to these upgrades? Did I do justice to the music lover inside me? I thought I did. I really thought I did. I was wrong.
All the portable music players I had need headphone or earphone, right? One thing I never did is to use the headset that came with player/phone. I started with over the ear headphones and Sony earphones that I purchased at a store in my town. I did use Philips semi-open full size headphones for sometime and I thought they were extremely good. I really thought they were. I was wrong.
My biggest mistake
Then the in-ear headset revolution started. After I got Creative EP630, I ditched full size headphones and continued with in-ear headset for more than a decade. Given how much I loved music, getting used to and continuing with in-ear headset was my biggest mistake. Yes, they are portable but I ditched full size headphones completed after I started using in-ear headset. I switched from EP630 to Sennheiser CX series to Sony and finally to Klipsch IEMs. I thought these in-ear headsets were extremely good. I really thought they were. I was wrong.
Living in darkness
For more than a decade, I was using these IEMs. When Klipsch IEMs started having problem, I did not buy IEMs or headset for a while. I used Sony in-ear headsetthat I had as backup. When Bluetooth headsets started becoming popular, I purchased Oppo Enco M31. I was surprised at how good the audio quality was with these. But were they really good? As I was living in audio darkness, the audio quality felt really really good. I thought I had purchased the perfect pair of headset and that I may not even think of another pair for a while. I had no idea how wrong I was.
Ray of light
One fine day, I was checking a tech forum and there was this thread about audiophile setup. Something flipped in my head and I thought of giving a good pair of headphones a try. I started searching for a headset that does not burn a hole in pocket. I had set budget of <10k INR. After some search, I went ahead and purchased Sennheiser HD599 SE and as Fiio E10K was out of stock, I purchased Apple USB-C to 3.5mm dongle so that I can connect my headphones to iPad or OnePlus 8.
Out of darkness
When I started listening to my favorite tracks, for the first time ever in my life, music reached my soul. This is an experience that I just cannot describe in words. When I listen to music, I focus mostly on music and probably this is the reason why I love listening to music from artists like Hans Zimmer, Ramin Djawadi. I also prefer neutral audio, I hate overpowering bass or treble. I could not believe how my favorite songs sounded. Music was so much better, but more important thing is that the music was cleaner. The sound stage was at a different level though. The sound stage is wider, a lot wider. What does this mean? It feels like sound is coming from farther away and it is so much cleaner. Also, there is just the right amount of bass and it is not overpowering other instruments creating that neutral playback.
I will give you one simple example. I watched Baahubali 2 in a theatre that is equipped with Dolby Atmos. The title track was amazing to hear in theater. The drums (believe that was dhol), the violins and the vocals were impressive. When I came back home, I listened to that song on my Bose Companion 50 speakers, on my in-ear headsets and none of them could come close to the audio experience I had in the theater. When I tried the same song with Apple Music Lossless, on HD599, it came so close to what I heard in theater. I can imagine how a proper audiophile headphone setup would sound like. Sennheiser HD599 is famously known as ‘Audiophile Gateway Drug’. To me, it was something else, something that made me freeze many times in past few days when I hear one of my favourite songs for the first time on these.
Finally, nearly 25 years after I became a music lover, I moved in right direction. Do you know what makes these open back full size headphones sound so much better? Go through these FAQs.
Common FAQs answered
What is the difference between high quality headphones and mainstream headphones?
The difference comes mainly with sound stage and instrument separation. These are crucial for truly enjoying music. One song that you can try is ‘Wilderness’ song by ‘Explosions in the Sky’. This is one of the best songs to test if your headphone can generate balanced audio. There are these cymbals that sound somewhere distant and gradually moves forward. There is guitar, there is percussive pulse-like stream that continues for major part of song, there is keyboard, there are few other instruments that I cannot name. A good headphone will reproduce the sound in such a way that each instrument has its own area in sound stage and one instrument or tune does not overpower another. The audio should feel as if the sound is coming from various directions and it should feel wide. A bad headphone with bassy or overpowering high treble will drown many instruments and you end up missing lot of detail in the music.
For Indian music, try listening to audio from renowned artists who have state of art recording studio. Taal is my all time favourite album and these songs are pure joy to hear. “Ramta Jogi” has so many different instruments and HD599 (even though it is entry level audiophile headset) kept everything clean. “Taal se taal mila” made me freeze till the song finished playing. The sound of drums gave that perfect thump and the vocals were pure bliss. You will notice how the drums were heavy when there are no vocals and become faint where there are vocals, then there is mix of drums and vocals with neither overpowering the other. You can hear that faint drum sound when the vocals are dominating. Then there is this song “Rowdy Baby” by Yuvan. There is so much energy in this peppy song, there are so many instruments. Every instrument is very well separated, felt as if I am sitting in a studio listening to them live. “Dhivara” from Baahubali is one track where vocals can surprise you when you use high quality headphones. “Oka Praanam” from Baahubali 2 is another powerful song that punishes weak headphones.
Hindi/Tamil: Rahman, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Justin Prabhakaran, Anirudh Ravichander .
Telugu : Mani Sharma, Devi Sri Prasad.
What is a Full size headphone?
Full size headphone, also known as over the ear headphones look like this one below. They come with large drivers (usually 40mm-50mm driver) and cover your ear. These are available in wired and wireless (Bluetooth). They further come in open-back, closed-back, noise cancelling variants. This is the usually the default choice of audiophiles and artists. High quality wired full size headphones come with excellent padding and are very comfortable to use for long period of time.
Wired or wireless headphones?
The amount of customization that you can do for a wired is unmatched. A budget portable amplifier like Fiio E10K makes headphones get better audio signal and you can purchase amps that costs thousands of dollars. The reason is simple. Analogue audio signal can carry lot more data than a digital audio signal. The better the equipment, the better the audio quality. Because of this, the amount of options that you get with wired headphones is massive. You can get headphones that costs under 5k to headphones that costs lakhs of rupees. The one that you see below is one of the most expensive headphone, costs almost $120000 and it is a wired headphone. The kind of audio that such headphones can produce is a wet dream for wireless headphones.
The Sennheiser HE-1 that you see below costs $50,000. Wired headphone. Brands will not even think of wireless when they make headphones for audiophiles.
A HD599 SE that costs around 9k INR reproduces music better than Sony WH-1000XM3 that costs almost double. I am reiterating here that when I say music reproduction, I mean neutral sound music that does not shake your core with bass. Yes, the XM3 has other features like ANC but when it comes to the most important action that a headphone is meant to do, lower priced audiophile headphones perform better than feature rich premium headphones like XM3s. As I said earlier, invest in good wired headset and carry a decent in-ear headset when you go around.
Note: To really experience high bit rate audio that surpasses what Bluetooth can manage, you either create your own FLAC audio files from CDs or you subscribe to lossless service like Tidal. You can even use Apple Music Hi-Res Lossless playback quality. You will be surprised to know that ‘Master’ subscription on Tidal has 2304-9216kbps bit rate, while HiFi plan has up to 1411kbps bit rate.
What is open back headphone?
Have you noticed anything strange on Focal Utopia headphone image above? Did you see how the outside of the headphone looks like a mesh and you are able to see the driver (speaker) inside? This is what open back design is. The one below is a typical closed back headphones that you see and these come with closed back (outer case).
Open back design allow air and sound to pass freely through the earcups. When speaker pumps audio, an open back design allows that audio wave to move freely. This makes the sound more natural, the sound stage is wider and there is no pressure build up near your ear. As air is passing through to your ear and with less pressure on ears, ear fatigue is far lower when compared to any other headphone or earphone. As there is less material covering the headphone, these are lighter than closed back headphones.
There are some downsides with open back headphones. Anyone near you can hear the music that you are playing on your headphones. This can cause discomfort if you are in closed spaces like office workspace or on an airplane. So, forget about listening to music on these anywhere other than your private space. There was this one instance where wife was playing music on HD599 in living room at high volume and I am able to hear the sound (though it was feeble) in adjacent room. Noise isolation from outside side is zero in open back. You will hear everything in the room. This can be a good thing or bad based on your preference. For me, I would rather be in a position when someone in house calls my name.
Open back vs closed back?
I would any day prefer open back over closed back as it is lighter, more comfortable and produced much better music. If you want to wear headphones everywhere, go for closed back headphones. As I said couple of times earlier, buy a high quality open back for your mancave or she-shed and use decent noise isolating in-ear headset if you want to listen to music outside your house.
What is a DAC, is it necessary?
Most of the phones now come without a 3.5mm jack. Also, the built in digital-to-analogue signal converter is not powerful enough to drive these headphones. As a result, the volume on headphones will be low and the audio quality will not be up to the mark. What you see below is Fiio E10K USB portable DAC that costs around 7k-8k. It is very hard to find this one in stock these days. A device like this improves power of audio signal and enhances the quality of audio signal. You connect one end of this to phone or PC and the other to your headphone (using 3.5mm audio jack). You can head over to headphone zone to find DACs.
If your phone is able to drive your headphones and if you get very good audio quality, you can buy a DAC later. I purchased Apple USB Type-C to 3.5mm dongle which has basic but very good DAC built-in. The iPad has excellent audio output and this combination works out very well for me. If I connect the same dongle to OnePlus 8, the audio output is very very low and I definitely need a good DAC.
