potustheplant

Yeah, it sucks. This video goes over why this might be happening.

It's also pretty slow

No my dude, tonality characteristics are about how each driver responds to each frequency signal. There's tons of research that goes into the materials and construction of headphone drivers, they're not all the same. Soundstage is also not subjective. Although I do not know how you can measure it, I've played audio through my open headphones to people and they genuinely cannot tell if the sound of an opening door for example is coming from the headphones or if it's real. That's the type of efect soundstage gives you.

So you've only tried a very siblant headphone (dt880) which isn't necessarily bad and a JBL wireless headset? Instead of reading so many forum posts, go to an audio shop and try the actual headphones before trying to lecture other people in things you have never experienced yourself. I'm sorry if it sounds harsh but you're trying to give advice on something you've never tried and have only read random forum posts about.

As I said there are plenty of audiophiles whose “lived experience” is that $2000 golden cables are necessary and that they can tell the difference between any $200 and $1000 DAC (even though a decent DAC in that price range already has a dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio of 100-120dB which should be totally indistinguishable from perfectly clear audio for all humans

I am not one of those people. Even though there is snake oil in the industry, that does not mean that everything is snake oil. If a cable passes the continuity test then that's good enough. And regarding dacs, a lot of the advice I've read also says that going beyond $100 you won't find a big difference in sound.

Usability is kind of secondary

Usability, my friend, is king. When you get older and have to do tons of stuff, adding more things to the list ends up getting very annoying. Not just that, if you were to migrate to iOS for whatever reason, you'd lose the ability to eq your headphones. So an app existing and being maintained today and for 1 mobile os does not guarantee that the problem has been solved forever. You're depending on a random third party.

My man, do you have ears? Have you personally confirmed your theory? Because I (sort of) did. I've used earpods, earbuds (cheap sennheiser models like mx365 and mx200 and akg k312p), various headphones (AKG k44, k361, k712 pro, ath-m40x, sennheiser hd518 and hifiman edition xs). I've also always used eq when I can. Usually the ones from Oratory1990.

There are tangible and considerable differences between all of those headphones/iems. For example, no amount of eq is going to make a 5mm driver sound like a 50mm one. On top of that, the tonality characteristics of the driver can't be perfectly equalized to make all headphones sound the same. Soundstage is also not something you can eq for. No amount of EQ would make an Audio Technica ATH-M20X sound like a Sony MDR Z1R.

Additionally, have you considered usability? Not all platforms have a way to eq your headphones easily. Even if you can do it, it's not something integrated to the OS, most people don't even know what a low-pass filter and they do not know how to set it up. In other cases, such as android, you can use eq in your music player (I use poweramp for this) but it's not a system-wide eq. If one headphone is significantly better than another one out of the box then yeah, that has value.

So again, I ask, do you have any real-world examples for this theory of yours?

I've yet to meet a person that isn't blown away by how much better my headphones or iems sound compared to their earbuds/laptop speakers. However, I do have to admit that several just don't really care that much. And some of the ones that do care, can't afford it or justify the cost.

Your comparison doesn't make much sense and I honestly don't even know where to begin explaining exactly how different they are. From design to production process, to shipping differences and market size. Lifespan is wildly different as well. Headphones can last you 20+ years whereas a smartphone will need to be replaced after 3 or 4.

That's quite a stretch. You can use an equalizer to improve the sound of a headphone but there are literal physical limitations to it. Not all drivers are equal in size or speed. Not to mention that there's a difference in the size of their enclosures as well as the technology they use (electrostatic, planar or dynamic for example). There are lots of sound characteristics that will never change regardless of how much eq you use.

So no, a $50 dynamic headphone will not sound as good as a planar magnetic $500 one. If you think otherwise, please provide a source or at least an example.

That's if you buy the marketing. You can find very good headphones in the 200-500 range. Hell, for portable audio you can get an akg k361 and a Qudelix 5k for $230 and that'd be a pretty good setup.

I personally use either that akg headphone or the Moondrop Aria hooked up to my phone and I think it's decent enough.

For a home setup I have a Topping DX3 Pro+ and the Hifiman Edition XS. In total that would cost around 550 I think and the quality (to my ears) is phenomenal.

Doesn't matter. Even if it's your code, you might revisit something you made months or a year after doing it and having comments will speed up your work. It's a very basic good practice.

This guy gets it.

You must be fun to work with.

Hard disagree. It's a lot easier and faster to understand a function that is prefaced with a small line of text explaining what it does rather than trying to figure it out yourself.

It's not about whether you can understand the code or not, it's about efficiency and clarity.

Aeropress brings out a lot more flavor imo. The process of making it is also kinda fun.