Best earphones for low whistle?

[franco]

I listen to low whistle and flute too. I have spent quite a bit of time listening to headphones and earphones in the last few days where the stores have them on display, but for anything under £30 / $45 I wasn't very impressed. My requirements for low whistle and flute are that a certain amount of reverb comes through as it was probably intended when the album was recorded. This doesn't seem to happen with a lot of headphones. You get a fairly dull sound on the high notes like the instrument is being played in a carpeted room. Or as if it is being played at a distance from you as the listener.

Also, on the higher notes many of the high notes break up or make a crackling sounds. So my question is whether there is a brand of earphones that are not too expensive but give a good deal of reverb to the higher range of sound?

Also, if anyone knows the terminology for the different sound levels when it comes to audio speak then let me know. It would probably help in my search.

[Feadoggie]

If you are listening to your music on a portable device the headphones may be to blame but there are many other reasons that the material may sound dull.

You might want this. http://www.cnet.com.au/neil-young-to-re ... 342654.htm

I find most of today's consumer oriented headphones are crap, particularly at the price point you are interested in. We had better in the mid-1970's IMHO. But then my ears were much better back in those days as well. See if you can find an audio shop that sells headphones for studio music monitoring. You may find some of those to be more satisfying.

Feadoggie

[chas]

I agree regarding inexpensive ear buds.

You might also want to try your same MP3 player but with the files uncompressed. I find that on a lot of albums the reverb gets messed up when the music is ripped to MP3. For some reason on mine, the reverb comes out mostly in the left channel when it's heavy.

[franco]

These are good points. Strangely enough I only started to think of bit-rates after I posted this last night. I played the MP3s from my cellphone in the stores where I listened to different ones. I can't rmember what software I used to get the MP3s on my phone. I tried some headphones I bought on my hi-fi which was a bit better although not brilliant. I kind of want that echo / reverb sound like the whistle / flute is close up or coming through a big pair of speakers or something.

Yeah, I worry about my hearing too. I tend to use Sony earphones that come with the walkman phones which are good and fairly loud, but fit deep into the ear.

The only really good pair I was impressed with were around £180. A bit above my budget, but stunning sound.

[eskin]

Crave did an article recently on what they considered the best headphones under $100:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-574 ... nder-$100/

[retired]

Grado SR-60

[FascinatedWanderer]

If you're looking for earbuds, I can recommend Sennheisers. They start from around $150 and go on up, so the lower end ones aren't too expensive.

[bradley]

I really like my Grado iGi earbuds. Not top of the line, but many times better than the others I've tried. For headphones I think the Grado SR-60's are very hard to beat for the price.

However, the biggest difference was when I got rid of my ipod and replaced it with a Cowon player. Incredible difference. Wish I would have done so years ago. I also purchased the software dBpoweramp, which gives the options to rip my CD's in a high quality FLAC format, and then convert to a good quality .mp3

I don't know for certain, but I doubt a cellphone puts out good quality sound.

[david_h]

So are recordings these days mixed for listening through headphones ? Do they sound wrong if I use loudspeakers in my living room ?

[Feadoggie]

I recall that John Lennon used to audition the Beatle's recordings through a car stereo at Abbey Road (may be folk lore too) so that the final mix would sit right where he thought it may be listened to most frequently.

Nowadays it depends on the artist, their producer/mixer and the intended distribution of the music. My guess is that commercial pop music and much the music produced by better know Irish/Scots artists is listened to and mixed on equipment costing beaucoup bucks that most of us cannot afford. Many studio mixing/mastering engineers start with near field monitors or a preferred set of headphones but generally they have some number of other speakers that they will listen through. And then a lot of houses may just depend on a package of mastering software with a preset software setting they like to finalize the finished mix. Practices vary. There is some marketing assertion that phones like Beats are intended to get the studio sound back into your listening. I don't know.

Most music is recorded at high bit depth and high sample rates of 96kkHz to 352kHz (as Mr. Young should know), then reduced to CD fidelity of 44.1kHz for burning to CD. Then the various compression algorithms reduce the content in various ways for distribution purposes. Lossless algorithms aren't lossless to many musicians. My old ears should not be used as a guideline but I sure don't like Apple's compression methods. YMMV.

Feadoggie

[david_h]

It was the 'target listening environment', as in the John Lennon anecdote, that I was thinking of.

In a domestic room with speakers, especially one that might be nice to play a whistle in, we hear the effects of multiple pathways to our ears that we don't get with headphones. A whistle recorded with a close microphone picking up little reverb from the room may sound fine from speakers but unreal on headphones. No matter how good a whistler I find it off-putting if they sound as if they are playing two inches from my head.