Where love of music ends and audiophilia begins

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

We live in a world of people indifferent to music. If tomorrow you buy a German S-class or a designer coat, then they will look at you with envy and respect, but if suddenly someone finds out that you have spent money on good headphones that stand like an ultrabook, then in his eyes, of course, you are you will forever be an audiophile and an idiot.

An audiophile in the understanding of the masses is a person who loves expensive musical equipment. But this concept is more applicable to fanatics. In fact, sane people buy expensive equipment not for the sake of owning expensive equipment. They just want to hear the music for real.

What do you mean "for real"? It's simple. Don't you buy non-branded copies of the iPhone? But why? After all, they are very similar. You probably want a genuine product, real, the way Apple saw it and created it, right? It's the same with music. The connoisseur wants to enjoy not the similitude, not the combination of the compression results and the limitations of dynamic headphones, but the real sound - the way it was in the studio. The way the composer heard his creation.

Actually, this is where the problem of consumer technologies comes up. In the same way that MP3 inevitably distorts the original composition due to data loss, mass dynamic headphones are unable to accurately reproduce the sound due to technical limitations.

Dynamic are any headphones in stores. Having gone from simple Philips to average Sennheisers and great Audio-Technica, you begin to understand why their prices are so different. But one day, by chance, you manage to listen to planar-magnetic (also known as isodynamic) headphones, and not the most expensive ones, but rather modest in cost for such a segment of the Oppo PM-1. And at this very moment, your life is divided into before and after.

To unleash the potential of such headphones, you will have to forget about lossy-formats of music once and for all. No MP3s. Only lossless, only FLAC, WAV, DSD and other noble representatives of digitized lossless music. And suddenly miracles begin. Even your favorite compositions are not immediately recognized. The songs, listened to a hundred times, sound as if they were purified, added many subtle details, thanks to which you are transported from the plane of a mediocre sound to a new world. Voluminous, juicy, filled with colors. This amazing effect of presence, as if your favorite band is located right in front of you. Here you can feel the deep soft part of the bassist. The drummer makes a nice transition. You close your eyes, and the brain itself complements the sound sensations with a picture. You are no longer in your room. You're there at the live show. More precisely, you are not there, but they are here. The musicians nestled comfortably around you to perform the best compositions, and you are the only listener.

Where does such a difference in sound come from? The answer lies in technology. Conventional dynamic headphones are essentially regular speakers that were designed to be large and located at a distance from the listener. Miniaturization in this case is an attempt to cram something that is not crammed with all that it implies.

Isodynamic planar magnetic headphones are a fundamentally different technology. There is no usual speaker, and the sound is generated by the thinnest ultra-light diaphragm, the surface of which is set in motion with the help of a magnetic system, without distorting the sound. Miniaturization in this case does not interfere, but, on the contrary, contributes to obtaining the ideal sound. The technology is not new, similar headphones were produced in the Soviet Union. True, from a certain moment they were forgotten, and the market was flooded with exclusively dynamic solutions.

Now the opposite trend is observed, because even the most sophisticated "ordinary" headphones hit the ceiling - the limit of the possibilities of a dynamic design. At the same time, they have not approached the quality by a millimeter at which one could speak of the plausibility of reproduction in comparison with how the composition actually sounds. A comparison with black-and-white cinema is suitable here: you can increase the clarity of the picture to infinity, but without color, you will never convey the beauty of the world around you.

The second wave of popularity of isodynamics has overtaken us now, when technology has gone far ahead, and technical processes allow us to create even the smallest structures with amazing accuracy. The result was the entry into the segment of more affordable isodynamic headphones from the American manufacturer. The Oppo PM-1 is one of the most interesting examples of such a premium speaker.

You get the highest quality product at the best price, which is very good, if not for one big BUT!

Those same audiophile fanatics who refuse to reckon with objective measurement data and sincerely believe that if a brand is not too promoted and not the most expensive, then by definition it is not worth buying. Too low a price, in their opinion, is a weighty argument. You will most likely hear something like:

Are your magniplanars only worth a piece of dollars? Look how much normal headphones cost!

This is where the love of music ends. If a person puts the brand and the price above objective quality indicators, then we can talk about a clinic.

This is especially true in the hi-end category. There are no cheap and low-quality samples, because even an option close to the lower end of the price range is several times more expensive than consumer goods, and the quality bar is at a height unattainable for mass products. It is important to remember that high-quality equipment does not tolerate savings on individual elements of the system. Listening to MP3s in isodynamics from a cheap player is insanity. Oppo's portfolio includes the HA-1 discrete balanced amplifier, designed specifically for isodynamic headphones to unleash its full potential.

A special feature of the Oppo HA-1 is the ability to play music directly from a smartphone or tablet, as well as any other mobile device with Bluetooth. If you decide to move to the next level of listening to music, then you will already have a lot of expenses. Don't overpay for a brand, it doesn't mean anything in the hi-end segment.