Kevin's Watch

Has anyone else noticed that thrue a good set of headphones sometimes you can hear things that you have missed befor?Is this on purpose,or do I just have poor hearing.Example:if you own The Beatles Abbey Road listen to the last track "Her Majesty"over the speakers,then thrue headphones.

i had a mini boom box years ago. got a copy of the White Album and played it much. but it seems that one speaker had...problems. years later I discovered that Savoy Truffle had lyrics. imagine my surprise. and may I add that Savoy Truffle is better without lyrics?

I think Savoy Truffle is a parody.But yes it is darn silly.

I've always preferred to listen to music with earphones. You can hear more with $15 sony earphones than you can with a $500 system. The only thing you really lose out on is true bass and the feeling of immersion you can get from a good system.

I do most of my music listening through headphones as well. Syl, do you mean those in-ear canal phones? I have a pair from Panasonic that sound amazing for a mere $18 (CAN). They sound better than some proper headphones I've had that cost 3 times as much!

Having said that, I do have a pair of big, comfy and serious Denon AH-950 headphones that I use for critical listening, if I want to hear as much detail as possible, especially in classical music. I paid $300 for these Denon phones, so that's pushing into the realm of audiophile geek territory, but I think they're worth every dollar I paid. I've had them for 7 or 8 years now, and I'm sure I'll be enjoying them for many more years yet.

Actually, I think $300 is a very reasonable price for the awesome audio performance I'm getting from the Denons: they're a bargain, compared to some of the real crazy high end audio headgear out there.

Now, if I had the budget, you bet I'd check out that stuff...like those exotic electrostatic headphones that come with their own amp to power them! I think they start at $800.

Heh. Yeah, the earphones I have now are the in-ear type. Never cared for the cheap, foamy on-top of your ear style. I used to have a $60 pair of Koss headphones, but that was also because I needed them for work at the time (spending ten hours a night with the things on, you want something comfy) You can get good sound out of those, but, to me, the neck strain wasn't worth it for home use.

Y'know, Dolby was developing and probably should've already released Dolby Headphone (tm). It's like Dolby Surround, but for headphones. Some of the testers' reviews said it was pretty impressive.

When I'm at home and feeling casual, I play my music on the computer speakers, or, if I'm in the mood for something glorious, on the surround sound system. When jogging or at the college studying, I opt for headphones.

My favorite listening experience, though, is when I'm in my friend Seth's car. When I bought my first King Crimson album, "In the Court of the Crimson King", I listened to it in that car, and it's still, to this day, the loudest thing I've ever heard. Can't wait to play the entire 9th symphony in his car on a long trip, because he's never heard it all!

Sylvanus wrote: Y'know, Dolby was developing and probably should've already released Dolby Headphone (tm). It's like Dolby Surround, but for headphones. Some of the testers' reviews said it was pretty impressive.

I've heard about Dolby Headphone and would love to try it out, but I need to buy a decoder unit for that, correct? I sometimes enjoy my DVDs through my headphones, and they already sound fabulous in plain stereo.

Yeah, you need a compatible receiver (just like Dolby Surround 5.1, DTS, etc).

Hey, Syl, I discovered you don't need a decoder for Dolby Headphone after all. You just plug in your favorite phones and Dolby takes care of the rest. The "T2 Extreme DVD" Edition happened to feature Dolby Headphone, so I enabled it, and the movie sounded spectacular through my Denon phones. I switched back and forth between Dolby Headphone and regular stereo a few times to compare, and there was no contest: DH's seamless and spacious surround sound mix made T2 come alive around me. Plain stereo sounds downright claustrophobic afterwards.

I'm spoiled now. I wish all my favorite DVDs had Dolby Headphone! The T2 Extreme DVD is so far the only one I know of that has incorporated the Dolby Headphone spec.

Ahhh, very cool.