Should we say bright headphones with faster bass decay are good at micro details/plankton.

I'll write down what I wrote in IRC first before copy-pasta from shoutbox.

OJ asked me which headphone I thought was more resolving, HD800 or SR-009, and my answer was essentially this:

I think SR-009 is more resolving than HD800. SR-009 to me sounds like the diaphragm "stops faster" (whatever that means), so I tend to hear more of those "quiet" or "silent" parts of a recording. Even certain old recordings when going through SR-009 or some other Stax headphones would sound like that. So I tend to be able to "hear" things like someone coughing from 10 rows away, or the woman sitting in front of the camera adjusting her dress, the cameraman breathing, etc.... The same things can be heard with the HD800, but at times, I noticed, in recordings that I'm familiar with that the HD800, instead of just presenting the "silent" parts, also seems to pick up something like "ruffles" (?) during those parts, so it could at times sound "weird". This is consistent with the HD800 no matter how many times I rewind back to that part, and it doesn't sound like constant pink/white noise that mucks up the recording like some lesser dynamic transducers. And yet I really can't quite tell if that's supposed to be a good thing. To me, it isn't, because sometimes, these "ruffles" mask a little bit of information that I would otherwise hear just fine with the SR-009.

Is this confirmation that the HD800 is in fact more resolving, and is able to pick up those small details even when the SR-009 isn't able to? Maybe... but to me, the 009 still gives a better look at whatever detail it does present, and so I really can't quite say the 009 is less resolving.

Basically, it's like talking about computer monitors. I think the HD800 is a monitor that's able to show all of the gradations in the transition from black to white, and yet its black is not very black. It's kinda gray-ish. In contrast, the 009 isn't able to show all of the gradations (maybe its contrast is boosted?) but yet its black is very close to true black, so anything that's on top of that black stands out, as opposed to the HD800's gray-ish kind of black.

Please don't take this as me saying the HD800 sounds "gray". It doesn't. But next to the SR-009, I think the 009 tends to sound less "gray"... or that it presents more of a contrast between the silent and "something" parts of a recording.