psweeting
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2011
- Posts
- 23
- Likes
- 10
Hi All,
I'd just like to post my initial thoughts on a new pair of HD 555's I luckily found for a bargain price of £33 in Curry's in the UK. I wasn't looking to buy a set of full size headphones as I'm perfectly happy with the PFE's and cMoy but at that price and after lurking on here for a while I couldn't resist.
I did toy with the idea of just eBaying them to try and make a quick profit but had to open them as soon as I got home. I used my unamped iPhone first off and was immediately underwhelmed; little to no bass with the only good point to them being the soundstage, much larger than any in ear I've listened to but I expect that should be true on any full size set? To be fair I didn't try too many different tracks or types of music with this setup, a couple of tracks off of Cerulean by Baths, Kaili from Swim by Caribou and a few St. Vincent songs. None of them sounded a patch on what they do on my PFE's.
After this I decided to try them through ITunes on my desktop. This was unamped and through the onboard Realtek audio outs, not a good setup I know but all I have. I tried the same songs, I think they actually sounded worse and just to confirm that the bass was almost unhearable, I fired up a few Photek tracks. They came out absoutely lifeless.
I gave it a rest after this and wondered if I could still get my money back somehow (I expect I probably could still get more money back via eBay or the forum here). I left them running for a couple of hours though to start burning them in (I've never really tried burning any headphones in and didn't even know of this until a few months ago).
Eventually I returned to them and decided to try hooking them through the cMoy to my iPad to give it another go. I turned the bass boost on (which I don't do when I use my Phonak's as I find the black filters give enough without it) and listened to the same tracks as before. What a difference!!
Not only was the bass present but the entire range was overhauled by a magnificent amount. The bass seemed fairly tight and not overpowering, which I wasn't expecting anyway but was glad of. I really don't have enough experience to go into details about mid and high end details as I wouldn't really know what I was talking about. My next step is to listen to both sets I have through the cMoy and compare individual tracks to see what easily noticable differences I can hear.
If anyone can recommend any tracks that are widely used then I'll use them too. I mainly have mp3's (256 to 320) but do have a few FLAC's (mainly live bootlegs) and I am starting to dual rip to mp3/FLAC when I can.
One last point about the 555's though is the comfort. I wear glasses and although I haven't had them on for longer than a couple of hours I can honestly say I have had no discomfort at all. I think I've fell pretty lucky with both sets of 'phones I have as I'm pretty sure they must both be near the top of comfort charts for in-ear and full size categories.
Anyhow, I'll leave it at that for now and update this when I can.
I'd just like to post my initial thoughts on a new pair of HD 555's I luckily found for a bargain price of £33 in Curry's in the UK. I wasn't looking to buy a set of full size headphones as I'm perfectly happy with the PFE's and cMoy but at that price and after lurking on here for a while I couldn't resist.
I did toy with the idea of just eBaying them to try and make a quick profit but had to open them as soon as I got home. I used my unamped iPhone first off and was immediately underwhelmed; little to no bass with the only good point to them being the soundstage, much larger than any in ear I've listened to but I expect that should be true on any full size set? To be fair I didn't try too many different tracks or types of music with this setup, a couple of tracks off of Cerulean by Baths, Kaili from Swim by Caribou and a few St. Vincent songs. None of them sounded a patch on what they do on my PFE's.
After this I decided to try them through ITunes on my desktop. This was unamped and through the onboard Realtek audio outs, not a good setup I know but all I have. I tried the same songs, I think they actually sounded worse and just to confirm that the bass was almost unhearable, I fired up a few Photek tracks. They came out absoutely lifeless.
I gave it a rest after this and wondered if I could still get my money back somehow (I expect I probably could still get more money back via eBay or the forum here). I left them running for a couple of hours though to start burning them in (I've never really tried burning any headphones in and didn't even know of this until a few months ago).
Eventually I returned to them and decided to try hooking them through the cMoy to my iPad to give it another go. I turned the bass boost on (which I don't do when I use my Phonak's as I find the black filters give enough without it) and listened to the same tracks as before. What a difference!!
Not only was the bass present but the entire range was overhauled by a magnificent amount. The bass seemed fairly tight and not overpowering, which I wasn't expecting anyway but was glad of. I really don't have enough experience to go into details about mid and high end details as I wouldn't really know what I was talking about. My next step is to listen to both sets I have through the cMoy and compare individual tracks to see what easily noticable differences I can hear.
If anyone can recommend any tracks that are widely used then I'll use them too. I mainly have mp3's (256 to 320) but do have a few FLAC's (mainly live bootlegs) and I am starting to dual rip to mp3/FLAC when I can.
One last point about the 555's though is the comfort. I wear glasses and although I haven't had them on for longer than a couple of hours I can honestly say I have had no discomfort at all. I think I've fell pretty lucky with both sets of 'phones I have as I'm pretty sure they must both be near the top of comfort charts for in-ear and full size categories.
Anyhow, I'll leave it at that for now and update this when I can.
