Definition of a 'Basshead'?

All Things Music
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searched, didn’t find anything on this site.

So, what are your definition(s) of what is a… ?

  1. ‘basshead’ listener/preference in music.

  2. ‘basshead’ preference w/respect to different headphones/earphones specifically.

I’ve seen it said in countless internet discussions…it’s pervasive, but there doesn’t seem to be a universally accepted/definition.

Let me know, because it seems like I read this so much, but I don’t agree with most of the contentions…judging by what people are saying/writing.

It’s usually referenced with musical genre like hip-hop & rap, with alt/subgenre ‘dubstep’ & EDM. But those genre’s comprise of such wide/varying music production…well dubstep/SPL competition bass seems to be mostly very similar in type of bass reproduction.

I laugh when I see gen Z/Millenials say they listen to old-school hip-hop like Tupac, + a few others, because those are ‘before my time’/birth. So many other artists, ‘hip-hop’ like West Coast Rap never existed in their minds? It’s like saying I listened to old-school ‘rock’ and these can’s do the Stones/Who/Beatles/Led Zep really well, as if there were no other rock songs/LP’s in the '60s, '70s, 80s?

Gets worse for me when I see these cans do ‘hip-hop’ or EDM well…that’s not very helpful/virtually useless as is reference to tonality/timbre w/o specific time points in a particular song, name a particular song, specifically what instruments/musical passages you are referring to!

After I get some replies, I’ll post up my list of songs I use on/off for checking how a hp/ep sounds on those songs I particularly want to emphasize a passage/instruments, with specific time points in the song, reference to that specific area. & while I surely do like to read other’s opinions and listen to tracks they mention; I have my own favorites, if hp/ep doesn’t do well on that short list, couldn’t care less how well they do on other songs.

I should note, I also don’t care for ubiqitous simplistic generalizations(which I’m probably guilty of from time to time also)…what are you listening to now>Twitter? Hey man, you gotta listen to the new Tool album, just killer>well I did listen to those specific tracks & can’t see for the life of me why Tool is so highly regarded, other than they are ‘newer’

I’ll take The Cure ‘she sells sanctuary’,Bad Religion ‘infected’; maybe some older metal songs, in a heartbeat over Tool anything. Hope I’m not offending the crowds of Taylor Swift/Mylie Cyrus fans, and I hate Børk’s irritating high pitched singing voice, if I wanted high pitched female voice, I can think of many other that are far more satisfying- yet every1 & their mother seems to think Børk is along with Miriah Carey, the best singing voices you could possibly listen to. @vlad @the verge, headphone testing play list.

Want to see all of your far more experienced opinions, before I comment on what I don’t like about this ‘basshead’ description(s)/defintion?

Subtopic, how do you define ‘rumble’ or ‘slam’ …cause I have in mind the best musical, wonderfully deep rumble recording(no canon blasts), which is very old school 1960s, you could possibly hear + it’s almost impossible to find other than this specific low-defintion version on youtube…no, it’s not Link Wray, wrong decade :wink:

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I’ll keep my response as simple as possible.

I interpret the term “Basshead” in one of three ways:

  • Those that have a predilection towards higher (quantitive) levels of bass in their listening.

  • Those that have a focus on better (qualitative) bass reproduction.

  • People that blend the two above concerns.

This can be a preference in the type of music they listen to (if you just want high-quality, high-volume bass, then big church-organ pieces are more interesting and demonstrative than anything I’ve head in hip-hop, EDM, or other electronic genres). It can be a preference in the tonal bias of their headphones/system. Or a combination of the two.

And how that bass-emphasis is achieved can, again, simply be down to the style of music someone prefers, the way their system reproduces bass, or both. EQ can also be employed to elevate bass levels where desired (either due the bass profile of equipment or musical content).

The bass texture, articulation and resolution of something like the Abyss AB-1266 Phi CC or HiFi-MAN HE6, Susvara, SR1a or properly sorted HD800, can’t be matched by any level of EQ in an ear-bud or smaller-driver headphone. Quantity/level might be … within the realms of physics (bass is about moving air, after all).

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As a burgeoning basshead… Oh wait Torq already beat me to responding, haha. Pretty much what he said.

Addressing your subtopic: the TH900 and TH-X00, for example, both have great rumble by virtue of an accented sub-bass region. You know how there’s that “oppressive”, dirty tone loads of horror films employ when building tension in certain scenes, or music striving for the same? That’s basically it. I’d argue that it’s as much a matter of tonal balance as quality though— as in anything else audio spectrum-wise having good texture helps convey any individual instance of sound, which in turn aids perception and appreciation thereof.

Besides that though, seeing as most music is made for consumption over speakers, listening over headphones won’t necessarily be able to give you that same visceral thrill listening to a bass-heavy line listening over speakers would. That’s part of why I personally appreciate elevated bass even if rather off from neutral— it’s just that much more fun.

Of course, large quantities of bass is worthless if it’s all thuddy-muddy. I’m very much quality > quantity as far as this goes, but much prefer both, haha. Not too much though, the Klipsch HP-3 with a mild bass vent is about as much as I care for.

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More and more often, I am left with the thought that we overthink things WAY too much in this hobby.

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Can’t argue with that.

When it comes to my own listening-time … I just go with what I enjoy … the “why” and “terms” or “definitions” doesn’t really enter into it unless attempting to convey it to others (which is often a fruitless endeavor … everyone likes different things for different reasons … and something I have progressively less enthusiasm/will to pursue … as, at the end of the day, I don’t honestly care what others like nor why they like it … as long as they’re happy it’s all good).

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Supa busy rt now, brb in a couple of days.

To tide u over :slight_smile: https://www.last.fm/tag/brutal+dubstep/tracks

Black Sabbath’s iconic ‘Ironman’ is rather timid in comparison to this violent assault on your eardrums. This is not on my hp playlist!

What do you call some1 who likes this, surely not a ‘basshead’, just plain foolish/stoopid/crazy???

Laid Blak - Red (Chasing Shadows Remix)

1st part or so, I was thinking ‘nice, sounds like that old analog radio station in the 2000s that did primarily trance music, good stuff, I like it so far, kind of like a middle eastern guy singing about his burning red eyes…might be a good test track for bass centric lovers (note: detail on this YT track says good to smoke to>no way you should be intoxicated on any substance while listening to this unless you have a 100% fail safe volume limiter set for <90db)

…nice until the sneaky assault @1:23s hits you like a ton of bricks… probably works well for FPG or maybe GTA video game soundtrack, sci-fi movie ST?

@1:49 that ‘sound’ is soooh, gritty/grainy teeth-grinding garbage; don’t blame me if it blows out your eardrums, destroys the drivers in your hp/ep, and makes your poor whimpy $10k+ speaker grade amps/dac catch on fire.

Btw, Apple’s $30 earbuds that come w/iphones, do fine on this one, hit harder still in the bass using True-fi on default correction…but bc I’m a ‘basshead’? I bumped the bass up another 8db, lol before I got to 1;23 AND very quickly reduced the volume down.

Yeah, I’m an old-fart reliving my childhood, just like the 70+yr old juvenile politicians in DC. Kool kids would prolly say this track is ‘dope’ Da Shitz. You can be sure Tyll never listened to this kind of * cough * ‘music’, not exactly jazzy Diana Krall, huh?

This one, or Bjork, tough call.

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So true!

And… Good bass over everything!! :smiley:

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Trout over bass.

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I like rants. But you can write in many word processors, then copy paste, get good formatting. Seems to understand RTF, mostly. @Torq uses Ulysses, I think. You like bass? Try some 17th century organ music - Pachelbel up to Bach - when they open up the 64 foot pipes you get bass.

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Sorry to butt in but to me “slam” is the kind of deep but well controlled bass extention at both ends. Rumble is when the bass invades the low mids and/or go below a given frequency, which varies depending on brand of model. But everyone would agree that bass response at 10Hz is guaranteed to produce rumble provided the drivers won’t burst first.

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I consider myself a basshead. When I am listening to music, with headphones or any kind of gear, the first thing I listen for is the bass. My preference is for an elevated, deep hard hitting and well textured bass response. This is the foundation of the overall sound, and I like it thick and slightly bloomier, than most. I always found that live music has this sound, at least the stuff I listen to, and without a good bass foundation music sounds lifeless to me. I listen for pure enjoyment, and a big part of that enjoyment is being able to feel the impact, and create that sense of sounding live. When I think of music that needs that killer bass response to get the full effect, I think of none other than, James Blake. My number one test track for bass is, Limit to Your Love - James Blake, followed by, To the Last - James Blake.

The best bass headphone I have ever heard, as in quality and impact, is my ZMF Ori.

Hi my name is Wes, and I am a basshead.

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To me, rumble and slam are best illustrated by comparing a tube or tube hybrid amp to a clean solid state amp.

Rumble: Tubes have a degree of random background variation that makes itself present as smooth ‘humps’ in the low range. This is akin to the sound and feel of a train rumbling past. It’s partly random but tends to repeat in a regular fashion.

Slam: Tubes generate slam through their lack of dynamic precision. Their output can quickly rise from soft to loud – the volume changes more rapidly than through a precise solid state amp. Furthermore, the slam also results in a compressed and gentle (easy on the ears) high end.

All of this is doubly confusing because many master recordings are created with tubes, so they already add in rumble and slam and tube richness before you ever selected equipment for the reproduction stage. Running some recordings through a tube amp can unpleasantly exaggerate the tube character that was already there.

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Hey @generic to me, rumble comes from analog turntables, especially those with some drive system that transmits motor noise,

Is there a 12 step program for that? :smiley:

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Agree!

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Yes, they rumble too. Tubes are more bassy, turntables more cross-spectrum rumble to hissy.

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Kick drum and clean bass with bloom but without boom. Must be clearly heard but tight and controlled, confined to their respective frequency response, which they should be in full control of (master of their domain lol). Separation between kick drum and bass should be clearly defined with a tick of silence in-between. But the sin of all sins, the bleeding of bass into low mids, is the ultimate show stopper. Bad audio systems do this, bad mixes do did, and bad sound engineers do this, as if they had a hearing impairment of some sort and can’t hear anything between 80Hz and 400Hz, the “danger zone” I like to call it. Parametric EQ’s don’t exist solely for purists who own the only 17 flawless albums ever recorded so that they can complain about EQ’s making bad recordings sound better, a mortal sin apparently. I always wondered bout this… do these purists enjoy evil EQ’d recordings or do they merely endure them? Or perhaps they stick to the 17 good ones? A’rent they aware that those 17 engineers more than liklely used EQ?. Read on another forum a fellow complain that the old country songs he enjoyed sounded “like a kazoo” if not eq’d, to which a self-appointed purist replied “better a kazoo than EQ”. I don’t know what a kazoo sounds like but I doubt I’d like it. Oh well…

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It is almost impossible to make the distinction based on “the music” or “the rendition of the music” but the basshead will be more demanding if the listening takes place in a more controlled environment. Poorly designed acoustics of a venue is difficult to control but poorly designed phones are a lot more frustrating to deal with.

Those are but a few aspects. I notice that among young people a “basshead” tends to be the guy whose closed back phones leaks thunderous bass wherever he goes (they’re almost exclusively male) and those phones are seemingly tuned to draw attention to the wearer, the SQ is likely not a consideration and must be godawful atrocious regardless of style, heck even gospel must sound worse than garage metal played on dollar store instruments. Basshead covers a wide array of tastes and expectations ranging from sophisticated audiophile to garbage.I don’t think there’s a strict definition yet.

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I think weird sometimes
image
It’s not a BASShead, but it is a TROUThead

Actually, I don’t think it looks like trout. Some type of carp.

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Yeah, I’m positive that is a carp! Bass have bigger mouths :wink:

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Yep! Bass dont have whiskers. :wink: That is a carp, and more specifically a Koi.

I love Captain Beefheart, and that deep voice!

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