tomekk

Maybe start enjoying listening to music more? ;).

1 hour ago, HockeyFan12 said:

What AKG model do you recommend starting with? I'm dissatisfied with my current headphones, would love to sell them all and get something that does it all well.

I haven't used AKG much but I'm dissatisfied with headphones from the ranges I'm most familiar with so anything that good I'll welcome. I find Stax far too etched in the treble region, sounds like a Grado on crack, very good for a demo but too fatiguing for me. Grado is the same but without the technical proficiency. Sennheiser too veiled. Beyerdynamic has a bumpy frequency response, even the Tesla models a bit less than coherent overall even if they're very impressive generally. I do like the sound okay from them in terms of signature. Never used a Sony I liked at all for listening. Currently using the Koss ESP-950 electrostatic headphones through a high end DAC and tube amp and while I find them preferable to any Stax (I haven't tried the 007 or 009 yet, to be fair) the bass is severely rolled off below 100 hz and electrostatic headphones in general lack the slam I want. But I find the detail and separation to be very good, and so they are still my preference over dynamics. (If you have not tried the Koss and you like electrostatic detail without the "hi fi" treble-heavy sound signature, you should, I would vouch for it over the Stax. However it lacks the bass slam I prefer, as do lambdas.)

I'm looking for something with bass and sub bass resembling a planar or dynamic with just enough thickness and distortion and slam, but with the detail and transparency of an electrostatic minus any tizz or etched treble. Would the K240 be a good starting point or am I looking at something higher end? I am at wits end I spent thousands on headphones but have never been satisfied but you and a coworker have both recommended the AKG so I think perhaps my search is over and I can sell all this nonsense once and for all.

I think planars could be the way to go, though, not as revealing as electrostatics but could be just enough for you...physics I guess. Magnets in planars + how they're attached block air and cause problems which electrostatics don't have.

27 minutes ago, jcs said:

@tomekk If someone is into audio enough to do a comprehensive review, I think it's important to at least include the high end devices just so people know 'far you can go' and also to see where one's current (or future) headphones rank in what's possible. The first time I heard Stax was in my early 20's; had never heard any high end gear in my life. The Stax were driven through a Carver Magnetic Field Amplifier. We're so used to hype these days we don't really listen anymore. However Stax/electrostatics/planar magnetic along with a great amp are truly on another level compared to dynamic headphones (including the HD800 my pro-audio mixer buddy just recommended (he mixes for games (e.g. Gears of War) and movies- very high end work)).

This thread got me to dust off the old HD580s and compare them to the ATH M50 (which as mentioned a reviewer preferred over $2K Stax (probably didn't have a good amp  )). The ATH M50 blew away the HD580s, which are very similar to the HD600 (same drivers).

Next I tried the 7506 then put the ATH M50's back on- same thing- ATH M50 is in another class, way more detail, open space, detailed, reactive, real, whatever superlative you want, much better headphones. This test was done with a somewhat high-end audio device, a Sound Devices USBPre 2 (not sure how it stacks up to a high-end dedicated headphone amp). The ATH M50 was a bit more comfortable on the ears vs. the newly purchased 7506 (old pair disappeared on a shoot). The 7506 is fine for location monitoring (and not a big deal if someone runs off with them). From personal experience and reviews, the ATH M50 is the best bang for buck for in-studio mixing and music listening. There are also mod options to change the earpads etc.

There is a reason why Audio Technica ATH-M50x (newer version but similar) is on the wall of fame @ innerfidelity . 

24 minutes ago, jcs said:

 

@Andrew Reid - hopefully your review will include electrostatic and planar magnetic headphones- they are in a class by themselves above dynamic headphones. If you're into audio, these kinds of headphones are so much better they are literally mind blowing! Beg, borrow, do what you can to get some for review, they are amazing.

 

This review will be very subjective, though. If you're into audio you know it's not only headphones but also amp+dac+cables change the sound along the way ;). On the budget, it's probably impossible to get all these components "flat"/neutral enough or whatever you want to call it so we'll have a review of different headphones connected and coloured by one particular setup and then re-coloured by Andrew's ears and head ;). Quite an explosive mix if you ask me ;). I agree with electrostatic headphones, though. My pair of older Stax ear speakers still puts smile on my face and is just on a different level that even modern high end dynamic headphones can't touch in most frequencies. 

13 hours ago, HockeyFan12 said:

There's a lot of misinformation on this topic. Flat frequency response vs Harman curve etc.

 

I meant "flat"/neutral headphones not flat frequency response, that's why I said, they shouldn't change sounds from input to output, but yeah, my bad. Won't "flat" headphones have flat frequency in an anechoic chamber measured at the microphone, anyway ? Then you add a person and it's not flat anymore, gets complicated and confusing because people are different with different ears and bodies. The goal was to point Dan to where he can read more about it without much pain. It's not clear for audio engineers how to properly measure this stuff anyway. Innerfidelity has quite a bit information on how to read their graphs if he wants to know what they mean.

Oh man, that's a hard one. Get familiar with reviews from this site for starters http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/innerfidelitys-wall-fame#PXUwGrDFcEBe6CG2.97. In the "wall of fame" section there is plenty of reviews at all price levels. In every review they've got a section describing SQ of all frequencies and they do proper measurements at the end. I'll give you an example of good ones with emphasis on clear/natural low end. You have to familariaze yourself with a few different ones and listen to them in store afterwards before buying. http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/hifiman-he-560-planar-magnetic-headphone-page-2#k3YPGt8IulKGtUbS.97

Keep in mind, you want Canon's L-glass in headphones. Clinical and accurate reproduction, not necessarily "beautiful" by your standards. 

33 minutes ago, Dan Wake said:

thanks a lot to you all. do you know if there is an headphone model that have a flat frequency response starting from very low frequencies of 20hz? I need it because as sound designer I play very often scuilpting ultra low frequency. I feel "blind" if I cant see those frequency very clear and be sure it will be not too loud when playng in real theaters. I'm often really scared and unsure of what I have done because I have not true control over the monitoring of ultra low bass, it's my true problem.

It could be impossible to find something like that on the cheap. Usually, only higher end headphones offer better quality. Then again, you'd need a proper amp and dac to go with it as well. 

What you need are headphones with as flat frequency response as possible which basically means they don't change given input sounds on the output. Audio-Technica ATH-M50x that JCS recommended are actually pretty ok. They're fairly flat between 50 and 2khz. Beyond 2khz they get pretty messy so most sounds coming from beyond 2khz won't be accurate. http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/AudioTechnicaATHM50.pdf

Here is a nice chart showing what instruments use what frequencies which you can refer to  http://www.independentrecording.net/irn/resources/freqchart/main_display.htm

Avoid any headphones you can't find frequency response chart for. They're most likely really bad if you can't find it. 

How is FHD form ML looking upscaled to a 4k? I'm still sitting on a FHD Panasonic plasma since nothing beats it yet at reasonable prices (colour/contrast wise). I'm just wondering if FHD content will be watchable on 4K TVs in the future.  

1 hour ago, Nikkor said:

I Will Never ever touch anything from amd/ati again.

6 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I have used a good amount of AMD processors, but None of them ever was close to what they say speed wise, they can do, unless you damn near overclock them till the tits fall off, and then you would probably be safer if you had a fire extinguisher near by. Intel processors are always pretty much dead on what they say they will do out of the box.

You gets what you pay for, and hell I can't pay the big bucks often either. So it is, what it is, as they say. 

Lol. Guys, you do realise you sound like diehard Canon fanboys but in IT world?  

12 hours ago, jcs said:

I created a Clog emulation in May 2016, right after purchasing the 1DX II. Along with Highlight Tone Priority (HTP) it appeared to be useful at first. However it became clear in production that skintones became challenging so I stopped using it (still use HTP). Actual Clog which isn't just a picture profile could be useful (highlights and preserving skintones), especially for matching other Canon cameras quickly. I was able to quickly grade GH5 log footage so a convergence on log formats that can be graded similarly is very helpful in production.

 

 

That would be an advantage to using a clog profile and difference would be much greater to what Andrew is saying. 

Yeah, it never will be true log but it seems 8bit footage + log is hardly advantage to Andrew's flat profile. I believe him on this one because he had both 1DC and 1DX II and compared them properly. I think, more bits is needed to take full advantage of a log file. 

Calm down, just asking ;). Sony is doing what it's doing because they have to in order to compete, not because they're nice to us. Even then it's worse quality for better features so they're not ahead in all aspects of the game, yet.

On 02/03/2017 at 4:49 PM, webrunner5 said:

Hard to believe a full sized DSLR body overheats. Pretty crazy. Other than that, looks nice.

Maybe it just shows Sony isn't at all superior to much hated Canon and there is logic behind what Canon does? With current technology you get either reliability or features it seems. Small CPU intensive codec = overheating, beefy old one, crop = reliability. 

Haha, good point :D  Let's change it to "close to extinction" ;).

Do you guys think there is a future in manual lenses, though? Won't they become obsolete once DPAF is good enough? Similar to manual still lenses extinction after AF got good enough for pro use. 

I do big prints of my photos. High end ink printer + fine art archival paper and they will last if you keep them at home in normal conditions. UV light is cut out by windows at home. Having gigabytes of photos is a big no-no for me, though. Quality over quantity.

On the other hand, even with a medium format 8k 1000fps for 100$ most people will never produce anything decent  

On 1/12/2017 at 1:53 AM, Andrew Reid said:

The Arri Alexa for example has dual gain architecture to boost dynamic range by reading two signals per pixel out on a low and high gain. Does this count as RAW sensor performance or image processing? 

I don't see why this wouldn't count as sensor's performance? From what I understand it's done at the sensor level and it doesn't degrade data (quite opposite) so it's logically sensor's performance, right? I think, there has to be a distinction between a hardware denoising and software denoising done on an already processed and compressed/converted output which degrades data (which is what they suspect in their article I believe). By already processed I mean after conversion from ADC to a target colour space and therefore already compressed from sensor's output (if I get the science right). Even though people call it raw data, it's not a raw output from the sensor and denoising can be done in post in this case (which is cheating in my dictionary). It's basically like denoising a raw file in lightroom. You've got details extinction but it looks cleaner. Quite a few DSLRs do it getting better reviews in noise performance even though they shouldn't. The trend is worrying so I think it's important to always single them out if possible, at least in semi-pro and pro gear. Consumers are a lost case. They've got no clue and don't want/don't have time to find out. All marketing BS buzz word gets them to buy things as we can see by TVs' menus ;). 

49 minutes ago, BlueBomberTurbo said:

I do agree that DXO's rankings are a bit questionable, but not too far off.  There are generally valid explanations of the issues you cited:

• NX500 over 5DS and NX1:  I've personally handled 5DSR files, and can say that the IQ is terrible. Even Canon stated not to expect much more than their old APS-C cameras in the IQ department.  I've read a few times that the NX500 is considered to have higher IQ than the NX1.  By how much, I don't know.  But viewing test RAWs of the NX1, I'd say DR and high ISO are around 1/2 stop behind the Nikon D7200.
   
• DXO One:  Its Super RAW literally is super.  It takes 4 RAW files, stacks them, and averages out the noise.  The difference is dramatic.  While the detail level isn't the best at high ISO, the lack of noise is well beyond FF capability.  This is similar to Olympus' high res RAW mode, but instead of increasing resolution, it reduces noise and increases detail at the same output size.
   
• D3X over D5:  The D5 is a bomb below ISO 1600, nearly matching the 5D III.  Even crop sensors beat it.  The sensor is tuned for mid/high ISO performance, though current technology only goes so far.  The gains, while there (+1/2 stop vs 1DX II), really aren't worth the trade off for the flexibility in low ISO RAW.  Worthy of note is that the D3X has a Sony sensor, while the D5 is Nikon's own creation.
   
• D600 over 1DX II and P40+:  It's true.  The D600 kills the 1DX II in DR at base ISO, and at worst, ties it the rest of the way up.  the 1DX II literally has years-old crop sensor performance in that area, despite Canon's massive gain in their new generation of sensors.  High ISO is also neck and neck.
  
  Vs the P40+, the sensor in the MF camera is quite old.  Despite having the resolution advantage, it loses out in DR and high ISO by quite a big margin.  By ISO 1600, colors turn to mush, which doesn't really happen on the D600 at any ISO.
   
• D3s and D700:  I've also worked with files from a D700 multiple times, and can say that yes, its sensor is outdated at this point.  It's competitive with today's crop sensor cameras (minus Canon's) at best.  The A7S/II sensor has been compared to current medium format in its DR and ability to reproduce color. 
  
  Once again, the D3s/D700's sensor is Nikon's own.  Nikon isn't very competitive when it comes to sensors, and probably had its best attempt at competing with Sony in the D4/s/f.  All of the rest of their sensors just don't stand out, though aren't as bad as Canon's.

I have a feeling that resolution plays a big part in DXO's rankings.  If you downscale the A7R II's files to A7S II size, they will certainly have an advantage in their "Sports" rating. It might also be why the A7R II beats the D810, when the D810 clearly has about 1/3 stop advantage at high ISO.  My friend tested 2x A7R IIs before returning them and keeping his D810.  #IQsnob.

For DR and high ISO, they test noise up to a certain amount.  How they get to that amount, who knows, but it's a cutoff point they chose that represents the transition from "OK" noise to offensive noise.  So while sensors may have DR response up to a certain amount of stops, after a point, it becomes wiser to turn things back a bit in software.  Where that happens is up to the user, as it's a more subjective choice.

And "Color" is more about correctly reproducing color in RAW than how the final JPG is rendered.  Color in the Canon sense is highly subjective.  Color against a known testing scene/chart isn't.

I think, overall score is pretty much meaningless and comparisons between some models are pointless. It's like arguing about cars:
Me: My sports car has V12 5L engine, rear wheel drive, 700BHPs, 2 seats.
You: ok, but my family car has 7 seats, 4x more space, better audio system,more safety features, all wheel drive, mpg is 5x better, emissions are 10x lower, it's 20x cheaper, 50x cheaper to maintain... and it's much quieter because it's a hybrid. Therefore, you clearly overpaid for a worse car because you scored less overall ! You can't even take family out for a picnic, hellooooo!!! 

40 minutes ago, Don Kotlos said:

No, but that would be the optimal way of doing it. 

Doesn't RAW data have to be converted to a correct colour space before doing anything else? How would denoising work on RAW data it it hasn't be converted to the target colour space. I thought it would look something like this: raw data>reference colour space>target colour space(sRGB/RGB)>denoising.

1 hour ago, Don Kotlos said:

The implementation of noise reduction (or any other type of image processing for that matter) can unfortunately be very poor. 

I am not suggesting to always use internal noise reduction, but that if implemented properly it can actually give good results.  

If 5dmk3 has poor implementation, then 99% of the cameras have poor implementation  

2 hours ago, wolf33d said:

I do not care that RED applies what ever correction and magic to their file and cook them for 10h before delivering it to my memory card. 

 

The point is, that sometimes magic is just magic and not what's really happening. Like current HDR TVs or 1080p on a Canon 5dMK3

50 minutes ago, Don Kotlos said:

For a compressed output data stream, in principle yes. Not only because noise estimation (and thus reduction) will be better with more data, but also because the compression algorithms handle noise very badly. For example: use an original file to export one H264 without any noise and one with noise applied at the same bitrate. Second file will look far worse.

Now that is not always the case. Denoising algorithms do depend on processing power and improve over time. So with RAW files or files with little compression, in post you can get much better results that in camera. In that case internal reduction of sensor specific noise (such as hot pixels/ hue casts/ QE inhomogeneity/ non-bayer sensor design, etc) is a matter of convenience. 

Are you sure software noise reduction (the one you can turn on/off in camera options) happens on the RAW data and not on a compressed file? Playing with a JPEG file I'm pretty sure I can denoise it much better in Photoshsop than through in camera option... I'll check with H264 footage to confirm when I have some free time.

1 hour ago, Don Kotlos said:

There are plenty of engineering articles but this answer at stackexchange provides a nice summary:

http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/27318/how-does-in-camera-noise-reduction-compare-to-software-one

This is different to what I meant. All this time I meant only software noise reduction (my fault if I wasn't clear about it but I was relating to the article all this time and their findings). If it's hardware based then it's fine because it's something entirely different and cannot be replicated in software. 

1 hour ago, Don Kotlos said:

That would be true if you had access to the same digital data but especially in consumer cameras you get a heavily processed version of the original.

I'm not sure what you mean. Even in consumer cameras there is usually an option to adjust settings. Do you mean a consumer camera (or any camera really) would do a better denoising if I left in camera denoising option on (even if it's a JPEG) than I would do in Photoshop if I left it off?

1 hour ago, Don Kotlos said:

Every RAW output has some kind of preprocessing. The same way that hot pixels are specific to the sensor and are remapped in camera, noise can have a pattern that is sensor-specific and then is preferable to have it done in camera than having to do it every single time in post. Moreover if the camera doesn't record high bit depth RAW video, then you will get much better results doing in camera than in post. Now, of course if overdone then it will look like shit and if you don't have the RAW output you can't do anything about it in post  

I would use "mislead" instead but I get the point. For example Fuji's claims about having FF noise levels with Xtrans rely on 1.Noise reduction even in RAW files 2.Having different ISO standards than anyone else, so ISO 6400 is more like 3200 and 3.More green photodetectors. Great colors though! 

 

I used "cheating" because I'm tired of a political correct vocabulary. If we let companies off the hook in these kind of situations we'll get exploited until we die and it's just going to get worse, IMHO. I don't have anything against noise reduction or anything they do anywhere in the processing pipeline as long as they don't lie/cover it up so that objective tests can be done against those products. Generally, everything that's done digitally can be done with better results in post due to high processing power that's available and with much more precise control. Could you link me to an article about sensor-specific noise that needs to be dealt with in camera? Simple logic tells me that if there is a sensor-specific noise on top of a regular noise then it's a crappy sensor, but I'm probably missing something.  

53 minutes ago, wolf33d said:

From comments in the link above someone says it is because of the treatment to RAW they bring, sort of temporal noise reduction combining multiple exposure in a pixel to reduce noise improving DR and high ISO, all in a 16bit package. But then again, why not do that in our DSLRs.....

If they do it digitally, then it could as well be done in post leaving the choice to user I believe. Why would you want noise reduction applied on your DSLR without having any control on how it was applied? There are problems with noise reduction algos that could sometimes degrade an image. If it's applied without user's knowledge, it's cheating too. It's not a RAW sensor output anymore it's RAW + an algo output which makes the whole test skewed. Now, if you would want to compare other sensors to this one, you would have to denoise their outputs first and then compare. 
I'm not saying that's the case here, obviously.