CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS
Lobby => Headphone Measurements => Topic started by: Marvey on September 15, 2013, 07:44:43 PM
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Thanks to Thujone who sent these over to me. These are the DT880 2003 version with the flat surface on the outside of the cups.
Haha. These may be the best sounding headphones Beyer has ever made. They are slightly sizzly which I guess would be at 8-9khz with some glare and hardness, but hardly on the level of the horrible new Tesla stuff and slightly better than the current production 880s. I suspect a slight elevation from 7-10kHz, but the overall transition sounds smooth. In other words, less peaky, more broad.
Bass seems to gradually drop off below 40Hz.
They still have "Beyer treble", which I know some find metallic. Listening out of the PWD2/Coax -> Schiit Vahalla. Pretty darn good sounding. Even better with PEQ -3.5db @ 8000Hz Q=3.
Measurements soon after I eat lunch.
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Measurements calibrated @90db/A white noise (1kHz ~87db)
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Awesome! Thank you for doing the measurements. Up through 10kHz within a pretty tight 11dB range... very smooth. I have been enjoying them through my Maverick A1 which compliments them well. Downright frigid coming out of the Magni though.
Question: On the new measurements, is the THD with respect to the FR plot or can this Y-Axis be compared against the HD600/HE500/T50RP/etc.?
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Yeah Magni probably not a good match.
Steely treble of magni + metallic treble of DT880 = NOT GOOD.
There's a reason why Schiit always lines up their Beyer headphones with the Vahalla.
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CSDs. Very clean.
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Question: On the new measurements, is the THD with respect to the FR plot or can this Y-Axis be compared against the HD600/HE500/T50RP/etc.?
Yes, all the new plots should be directly comparable with each other.
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I wouldn't call a 4ms rippling midrange decay on CSD "very clean". Add some dampening and it might become that, though.
Highs look very nice though.
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The < ~1k stuff is usually pad / cup interactions which sound much more benign than driver ringing.
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Why is this set of CSDs so different from the measured FR?
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Because I punched in the wrong numbers for something. Will redo. LOL
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Those look way better! First set looked like a set of Denon monstrosities.
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wow, why did beyer change these for the worst? LOL Do people really like a bright sound over a more neutral one?
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Nice, this little nugget of gold was first introduced to me by a friend. He said the old 880's are way better than the new ones, which I passed it off as pure bullshit at the time (as I have now learned, the "old = better" mantra in the audio world is quite true for many things) but then I actually heard an old demo pair in his headphone shop and : p:0.
He still uses that old pair as his demo unit while he sells new ones ;).
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Question: On the new measurements, is the THD with respect to the FR plot or can this Y-Axis be compared against the HD600/HE500/T50RP/etc.?
Yes, all the new plots should be directly comparable with each other.
What I meant was, do we read the values on the y-axis and compare them across the board or are the values arbitrary and the THD should be referenced with respect to the position of frequency response on the axis? I'm guessing that it's the latter. Otherwise, these bad boys have very low distortion compared to the other V2 headphone measurements. I apologize for the silly question, I'm just now getting familiar with distortion measurements in general :)p14
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The question isn't silly at all.
The 0dB near the top of the plot is a bit misleading as it isn't a reference in this case.
Would have been handier if 0dB crossed at 1kHz.
To determine the distortion at a certain frequency you have to look at the distance (in dB) between the FR plot and the THD line.
So at 1kHz the D2 is -50dB = 0.3%.
If the 0dB were indeed 0dB for the THD we would be looking at -65dB = 0.05%
The DT880 is a nice headphone but found it lacking in bass extension and a bit boring on some music.
Sold it after a while, only the DT990 stayed as it is more fun.
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0.05% at 1 kHz, and about 1% at 20-30 Hz would actually make more sense at 90 dB SPL @ 1 kHz. At least it would be more consistent with the InnerFidelity/HeadRoom measurements of the current version. It is also about what I measured with a DT880 Pro 250 Ω at -10 dBV. Using the FR graph as the reference, 10% THD at 20 Hz would be bad, and 0.3% at 1 kHz is not great either, but maybe the older version was worse in that particular aspect.
I guess the recessed upper midrange is the main reason why it sounds "boring".
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To determine the distortion at a certain frequency you have to look at the distance (in dB) between the FR plot and the THD line.
So at 1kHz the D2 is -50dB = 0.3%.
If the 0dB were indeed 0dB for the THD we would be looking at -65dB = 0.05%
The DT880 is a nice headphone but found it lacking in bass extension and a bit boring on some music.
Sold it after a while, only the DT990 stayed as it is more fun.
Ok, sweet! Thank you for the reply, it seems I was on track after all.
I'm a fan of dark headphone signatures and I agree, these do not have a big fun factor. The only reason I have to keep them at this point is because of the rarity and because they respond well to EQ. Plus, I'm sure that purrin can attest to this, they are in phenomenal condition. The pads need to be replaced, but the headphones themselves are in great condition. The 2003 version also comes with an aluminum case which I haven't seen on the newer Beyers. All that said, these are a perfect candidate for selling. The HD580's will likely hold my vote overall anyway.
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0.05% at 1 kHz, and about 1% at 20-30 Hz would actually make more sense at 90 dB SPL @ 1 kHz. At least it would be more consistent with the InnerFidelity/HeadRoom measurements of the current version. It is also about what I measured with a DT880 Pro 250 Ω at -10 dBV. Using the FR graph as the reference, 10% THD at 20 Hz would be bad, and 0.3% at 1 kHz is not great either, but maybe the older version was worse in that particular aspect.
The plots indicate D2 reaches -21.32 dB and this is the exact distance around 19Hz opposite the FR graph.
D3 reaches -24.79 and D4 -31.94 which is the distance at 10Hz to the FR plot
As these numbers correspond and are by far the highest values I think the harmonics are in relation to the FR trace and not 0dB
Tyll's plots of the newer DT880 indicate around 0.2% at 1kHz which will consist of D2 mainly and makes the measured 0.3% plausible.
I remember the DT880 sounded great on well recorded jazz and classical
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Yes, the harmonics are relative to the FR trace. They are not relative to 0db nor are they percentage values.
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0.05% at 1 kHz, and about 1% at 20-30 Hz would actually make more sense at 90 dB SPL @ 1 kHz. At least it would be more consistent with the InnerFidelity/HeadRoom measurements of the current version.
You sure about that? 0.05% is very very low and more typical of non-chip amps.
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New scale for the CSD. Why did you set the floor to -30db instead of the usual -36db?