Thank you for the welcome and happy to be here. Glad you enjoyed my introductory post. I do like to write about things I have interest in and music and gear are certainly at the top of my list! I do like the cozy feel of this community more than some of these other massive forums I’ve seen. I’ve learned a lot here and hope to contribute myself.
I was guitar tone connoisseur for many years and still am since I run a guitar company. I used to own a small boutique guitar gear store selling custom guitars ranging anywhere from $2K to $8K and tube amplifiers ranging from $1K to over $5K as well as all kinds of effects pedals, rack mount digital processors, pickups, cables and other accessories so my ears are certainly tuned to appreciate good sound.
That being said, guitar players have a totally different mindset from audiophile listeners since they are about creating certain sounds they hear in their heads and feel in their hearts. Very often, they are really not interested in high fidelity. The true tone connoisseurs consider that to be sterile and lifeless and have almost a phobic aversion to solid state amplifiers or anything digital. They intentionally go after an organic, woody, tube-y and decidedly lo-fi sound. After all, guitar players love the output tubes in an amp being overdriven or outright distorted. Preamp tube distortion is sneered at. In some ways, it’s almost an antithesis of what hi-fi listeners are pursuing.
Still, the ultimate goal is the same - produce a pleasing sound that is great to listen to and I’m sure all you rocker fans can relate with all this great hifi gear. You want to hear great sounds and the electric guitar sounds ranging from the likes of Clapton, Hendrix, Beck, Gilmour and Page to Van Halen, Angus Young, Metallica, Tom Morello and Allan Holdsworth are all as distinctive as the voices of great singers.
I have to admit that I’m still in the search for the “perfect” cans for rock music and guitar tones in particular. As mentioned earlier, I don’t think the SR1a does it for overdriven or distorted guitar sounds. It literally feels like you have your ears right against the guitar amp’s speakers and that can be rather painful! But, it should be noted that guitar sounds are recorded typically with the Shure SM-57 dynamic mic placed inches away from the cone of the guitar amp speaker at a certain angle so the SR1a is simply producing exactly how the sounds were recorded with the utmost detail.
So, to me, the SR1a perhaps provides a little too much detail for that kind of sound. I should experiment with the EQ a bit more but doing so would probably end up being somewhat of a compromise for acoustic instruments and/or vocals. With the LCD-4, I find that I have to “draw” an EQ curve that’s inverse of what I’d have for the SR1a when it comes to rock guitar sounds. With the EQ flat, I find that the guitars sound a little too smooth and a bit tubby in the mids when there should be more bite and cut.
When you think about it, blues from the 20’s and 30’s, early 50’s rock-and-roll or even 60’s rock weren’t recorded with today’s ultra high fidelity in mind. Today’s music is recorded in super controlled environments with all sorts of outboard processing gear and million-dollar mixing consoles and in digital, of course. So I’m starting to think that modern hi-fi equipment from streamers, DACs and pre/power amps to speakers and headphones maybe are a little too much for what were decidedly lo-fi music productions. Modern gear exposes all the lo-fi artifacts that no one back then really cared about or even knew existed.
I guess that’s why there’s a fairly large hi-fi contingent that swears by vinyl, analog and tube gear. I totally get it. Ultimate high resolution and insane amounts of analytical detail are probably not what you’d hear at a live performance or even in the studio rooms. Sometimes, as I listen to certain things through my setup and the SR1a, I think, “Geez, this sounds better than real.” It’s like you are hearing the entire production which would include all the studio enhancements and all the details of mic placement (source as well as room), mixing, EQ, dynamics control like compression and limiting, time delay effects like reverb and echo/delay/chorus/flange, pitch correction, etc. There are tons of things going on in a modern recording with even a simple performance of a singer and one acoustic guitar.
Anyway, I’m veering off slightly here and I’ll get back to why I’m looking for something different for rock (especially for vintage 60’s to 70’s kinds of stuff), blues, old jazz, and whatever else I consider to have “lo-fi production” origins. I guess these kinds of genres and musical styles need some earthiness, grit and “dirt” that complement the resolution, detail and clarity we now have in spades in today’s hi-fi equipment. Guitar players would call those things “soul”, “feel”, “character”, “vibe” and other intangibles that cannot be measured with tools or machines. Really, what is it that makes a single vibrato note from B.B. King send shivers down your spine?
I will see how the 1266 TC does but I already expect that, like the SR1a, it will also provide too much detail for certain kinds of music and recordings. I think it’s why I’m already considering the ZMF Vérité. This strikes me as a “rock” headphone while retaining all the desirable hi-fi attributes like resolution, clarity, imaging, and soundstage. There’s a part of me that loves electronic, trip hop and modern pop from the likes of Orbital, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Portishead and Squarepusher to Armin van Buuren, Massive Attack, St. Vincent, Grimes, Lady Gaga, etc. and I am absolutely certain the 1266 TC will be perfect for this kind of stuff. It will be interesting to hear how TC fares with rock, metal and roots-oriented music. I do have a pretty good idea on how I want the guitars to sound.
Getting back to the point, I think all these different headphones and gear exist because there are so many musical styles and tastes as well as the fact that people hear things differently. What I learned over the years from guitar players and musicians, in general, is whatever works for you. I read an article in a recording trades magazine about Peter Gabriel’s $10 million home studio and in midst of all the megabucks high-tech recording gear, he had an old BOSS analog chorus pedal that would cost around $80 and he had it in the signal chain before all the fancy synths. He said it just had “something” that added to his overall sound. It’s an inexplicable thing but that’s what musicians do and I’ve come to think that applies to audiophile gear as well. The highest priced gear isn’t the “best” and there will always be tradeoffs. It’s about weighing the tradeoffs to find what works the best for you.
I used to think that the audiophile world would be different from the music creation and production world but now I see that’s not the case at all. It’s kind of the same in that listeners hear things as differently as musicians do. Well, that’s what makes this hobby interesting and even fascinating. It also means there is no such thing as “endgame” as our tastes and even how we hear things will change and evolve over time. Again, the journey itself is the destination. It’s more about choosing the road one chooses to travel and I expect to enjoy the sights!