Metal Reviews

Subs are the shit! Nothing like getting hit by a wall of bass , you can't help but go mental!

Speakers completely destroy headphones. With headphones you just hear the music, speakers let you feel it! And to get half decent headphones you have to spend over £100, and then they break a year later (really pissed off when that happended to me coz the warrenty had just ran out! From then on i put duck tape round the part that connects the headphone jack to the wire, and the parts that connect the wires to the headphones, makes em last a lot longer).

I'm a big fan of surround sound to, if you get em set up right they completely immerse you in the music unlike when you just have all the speakers in one place. But this isn't to some peoples liking tho, god knows why lol!

I bought a pair of Sony Headphones for $190, so they're suited for metal as everything is vivid. But speakers are something else just because the sound has a wider space to spread and echo.

I also bought a Sony MP3 (Noise-cancelling) headphones which are without a doubt the best quality headphones around. They cancel any ambient sound coming from the surrounding so all you hear is the music with tremendous quality. I highly recommended it to anyone who likes their music crystal and the way it should be actually heard.



http://www.sonystyle.ca/commerce/servle ... Id=1003381

Ehhh, I'm a little indifferent. With speakers, you can listen to music while doing more, as well as listen to it with friends. And the way music naturally "fills the room" through them is always nice. With headphones, however, you can often pick up subtle little nuances in music that you can't really hear with conventional speakers. It's also easier to "take in" the music note-by-note with headphones than with speakers.

So I'm not voting.

Well the problem with Sony is that I find their products pretty sensitive, and needs extra care. Quality is no doubt the best, but the hassle of maintaining it is crap. Plus they cost more. The fucked up part about Sony products (any Sony products), is that they only use Sony peripherals, other brands wont fit. Just like the Sony digicam, works only with a Sony memory stick which costs quite a bomb. I always stay away from Sony.....although my phone is a SOny Ericsson. Damn.

Me too, mostly because of the mp3 player I got being horrible

"You ain't metal enough if you listen your metal through headphones or plastic computer speakers!!"

It's already been said, but with proper speakers you can really also feel the music. And it's much cooler when you can hear it on the whole room, not just directly through one's ear canal

I have a surround system and it's the only way to go! Strapping Young Lad sounds exceptionally manic through it. I don't see how anyone could not like being immersed in a room of sound.

stuartn15ted and Eternal Idol,







I think it's pretty standard that if you're going to have a surround setup, you're also going to have a sub. You can make exceptions but most speaker packages or "all-in-one" packages opt for smaller satellite speakers and a subwoofer. I've got a friend who, last I knew, had a pretty nice setup that worked rather well. He spent a lot of money to get it, however...

I like home theater type systems for movies; they're very effective both in terms of sound and "realism" and in terms of cost. You can get a decent home theater package for not a lot of money these days.

The problem I have is that using a subwoofer and surround creates, to me, a very unnatural sound. When I listen to music, I want my system to be as (theoretically) transparent as possible. I do not even EQ. Unfortunately, what works well for movies doesn't always work well for music. High frequencies in particular, are not often reproduced very accurately by many speakers. Subwoofers, I think, are designed more for presence than anything, and on a system-wide level, that seems to come at the expense of producing tight, accurate bass (particularly if your satellite speakers are really small/how your receiver manages and distributes frequencies, etc.). Then again, part of the advantage of a powered subwoofer is that it circumvents one of the problems that's plagued receivers for years: that they are not capable of producing their rated power across their entire range of frequencies. Maybe the rating system and the manufacturers are doing better these days, but for a long time it was not uncommon for that 100 watt x 5 receiver to not be putting out anything close to that at the lower frequencies. Hence, less accuracy, more distortion, etc. ... But no matter what you do, and what you buy, and how much improvement equipment might have shown in the last few years, in the end, it's always a trade-off...

If you're wiling to spend the time and money, you can largely overcome most of these kinds of obstacles. Right now I have neither, and to be honest, I really prefer to stick with a 2 speaker setup for music anyway, simply because I think it's more transparent and less gimmicky. And I have no problem being immersed in the sound already.

Additionally, very few cd's, afaik, are even made with 5.1 sound strictly in mind. Even if the day comes when virtually all music is made for 5.1 sound (which I don't think will happen), it doesn't change anything for the ones I already have now...

I know I'm probably not saying anything you aren't already aware of, and maybe things have changed quite a bit since I last really looked into this stuff (about 4-5 years ago now), I'm just uhh ... *looks at all his ramblings* ... making conversation or something.

-Tyrion

I dunno about the rated power specifically on the lower frequences, but it's true that the OVERALL wattage of any given receiver is most of the time not as much as stated. It might be, and in some cases it might be even more, but usually it's much less. But the joke here is: there's no way of knowing the true output wattage if you haven't seen a test of the product!
Just 2 or so years ago I read a review of receivers, and for example Sony had stated something like 80W to each channel and when tested it was more like 20W!!

Yes, I should have said, "especially at lower frequencies" or something such. It might be true across the whole range of frequencies, as you pointed out, but it has more impact on the lower frequencies, I think. This is because it takes much more power to drive a woofer at low frequencies than midrange or tweeters, and that is the biggest drain on the receiver's power. If a receiver can't adequately power the woofer at a given volume, you will have distortion and poor response. Not only does this diminish the quality/accuracy of the sound, it can actually damage your speakers.

This may also be true with powered subwoofers. I do not know if those are typically overrated or poorly built, though I suspect at least some of them are.

People should really check the ratings and any available tests of these kinds of products before they buy them. The shit is just too expensive, and you should actually be getting the product you're led to think you are.

-Tyrion