Sunday, June 26, 2016

Another Look at Headphones for Audio vs Gaming or Skype

The top dog is the ATH-M50X from Audio Technica as these rate generally the best for consumer-affordable professional-quality audio headphones.  For musical applications as in really high-fidelity, these seem the best pick for $149 at Amazon.



The Audio Technica headphones have been in my cart at Amazon for some while because of this tiny problem:


These are Sennheiser headphones and don't think badly of them since they have traveled for well over ten thousand kilometers with me and have put up with a ferocious load of abuse.  The quality is exceptional and they're obviously long-wearing but they can get feeling a bit heavy after long use.

For a letter grade, I'm going with A- for perfection and long wear but a bit heavy.


For gaming, we have the GW Sades SA902 and these ones are right out of a starship.  They go for about $27 at Amazon and the reviews rate them highly.  My current headphones are Logitech and they're cheap and nasty but they have one quality of lasting forever.  There would not be a strong reason to spend any money if not for the sorry state of the primary audio headphones.  Then the question comes, can one headset solve both problems.

Note:  I absolutely will not use ear buds which I regard in much the same way as the bugs Geraldo Rivera put in Chekhov's ear in "The Wrath of Khan."  They're oppressive horrors and I won't try those creepy things again.

Whoops, that was Ricardo Montalban who was such an outrageously cool ham he made Shatner look like an amateur.  A thing of beauty, it was.  He got all Latin Shakespearean and he must have been crying laughing inside himself.



Unknown what purpose the LEDs are serving but I noticed in the reviews they can't be disabled.  Most unusual as I don't know about you but my ears are not sensitive to light and I have quite large ears so if it were possible they should be able to do it.  In fact, my ears are so large they have been called into service for particularly bad hurricanes to help reduce the winds.  Regrettably, that effort typically blows me to California so then we have to start all over again.

 As to whether these 'phones can replace both sets of my existing headphones, that's a negatory.  In some reviews I read of poor audio fidelity and that's not permissible.  For true high fidelity, the quality not only has to be high in reproduction but it also has to be dead flat so it doesn't sound more bassy or more shrill than the original signal.

When I'm mixing down a song, if I can't hear the sound or as close as possible to what YOU will hear then it's just shooting wildly in the dark and that's nothing but a hopeless exercise.


Still, tho, the LEDs are cool even if I have no idea what possible use they could be.

No comments: