If i would keep HD650 over X2's, i would need to upgrade over time. What would be the next step for DAC and AMP? And what should i expect in terms of sound improvement?
The soundstage and speakers in a room tuning of the 580/600/650 series makes them better for studio music than the HD 800 and HE1000, technically better drivers be damned. There is no artificial width that can put the plucking of the guitar string and distortion in different places or break up the drum kit like an AKG or HD800: different drums panned to different places is seriously messed up on these. I also don't feel the 650 is overdampened for rock and metal; I found long term listening (hours a day, almost every day) of those genres' forwardly miced and mixed drum kits to be slightly grating on the slightly bright 580/600 but perfect on the current slightly dark 650. It lets you disappear into the music without fearing some animal high hat basher is going to ruin your hearing. The veiled black driver one sucked though so thanks for starting this thread which led me to give the current version a try. If you only listen to an occasional rock album you might prefer the HD 600 as it will make the kit sparkle a tiny bit more than on the mix. For orchestral music? Yeah you might something wider and brighter too but I preferred intimate material like the Kronos Quartet on my "metal cans."The scaling is huge with recordings too. Mixes and masters start to mean a lot more. I've even found the HD 580/600/650 drivers to scale the tone better guitar amps used for tracking in a more lifelike way than lesser midprice headphones. They really make it clear how much better just plugging into a JCM 800 head sounds than a crappy Valvestate is and expose studio tricks like digital reamping.
The real questions you need to answer first are what sound is your sound and what are you listening for? What sort of music quality does most of your preferred music have? Can you stand to hear flaws in recordings or do you want to just listen to everything without worry?
Doesn't help that the AAL album doesn't sound particularly good from a recording/mastering standpoint
This was my first experience with anything tubey, and convinced me to get the $350 Valhalla 2. The improvement with this amp was much larger than with the Vali, and easily noticeable. Highly recommended around here, and I can vouch.
Again, YMMV depending on what gear you feed the HD650. Much pickier than X2 and much more technically capable in nearly all regards the better your setup. The DAC/amp combo you're using is certainly a great budget setup, but it's not going to get the best out of the HD650
What realistically could i expect if i'd get Valhalla2, and would keep modi2 (or upgrade to Bifrost)? Gungnir would be out of the question for now. Would i get better imaging and bass depth?
Mm... I'd just like to say that if you think the HD600/650 cannot represent low frequency positional information, then I think you may want to try more source gears.I used to be of the same opinions, until I heard really good HD600/650 rigs that did just that, and... my jaw dropped. When driven from certain rigs, the HD600/650 sound really sticky and muddy on the bottom, just like you described.
Actually it's very situational:Metal (Slipknot, Animal As Leaders) - X2Rock (Pure Reason Revolution, Bad Suns) - X2Pop (Lana Del Rey, Florence + The Machine) - X2Electronic (Daft Punk, Röyksopp) - tieSoul (The Internet, Jamie Woon) - HD650Trip Hop (Bonobo, Massive Attack) - HD650 Hip Hop (Onra, Flying Lotus) - HD650Most of the songs could go either way, it's not like one or the other sounds so much better or worse. I feel like electronic music with a lot of bass goes better with HD650, because then i can counteract the low end, and vice versa with instrumental music and X2. I don't know if it's right but that's what i take from this list. But the biggest difference i feel when listening to Animals As Leaders. It's right there, the thing why i prefer X2. It looks like HD650 doesn't know how to behave when playing AAL. It sounds just wrong, i cannot understand the music. It sounds cleaner, but with that everything sounds "at the same time" with nothing being accentuated, nothing to grab onto. I now know how complete chaos sounds like.Could someone give a listen with HD650?
So in essence X2's "coloring" of the sound fixes the music somewhat and helps bad recordings to sound better while HD650 needs to be feeded only good source files to shine? I'd guess the better staging helps as well. Makes sense.
Misquote/misreading? I never said they couldn't. I just said they had a more intimate soundstage compaged to AKGs and flagships which is a positive for studio music. I think they sound perfectly fine on my O2
The HD600/650 are capable of soundstage that's probably second only to HD800 and a few more headphones.
