Sharp MD-DR7 and Sony MZ-E900

[me]

I fired up my E900 a couple of minutes ago, and it was nothing like I remembered. I had set the machine to 16/30, my prefered listening volume back then. It blasted my ears out. I was listening to 'Yuki - Nemuri Hime', a fairly quiet track. Using MDR-EX70, modified with some silicon glue to kill the extra bass, and some foam to squash that treble.

Impressions: (in order of discovery):

E900
Damn, it's so loud! /turns volume down to about 7 or 8
Yuki's voice is most definately there. Damn, very very nice!
Noise: Very hissy. Whoa, is it hissy..
Stereo seperation: Not as good as the DR7. Not as detailed, either..

Now, back to the DR7

Damn, it's quiet! /turns volume up to 12, roughly equal to 7 or 8 on the E900. Has mine got amp problems, too?! Or is the E900 just noisy?
Noise: No hiss, just music, ahhh
Stereo seperation: Very nice, verrry nice.
Yuki's voice isn't there as much,


The E900 is loud. Is this due to, a) my hearing becoming more sensitive, or b) DR7 gone funny?!

The E900 is hissy. Am I just listening too quiet so it's noticeable?
The DR7 is 'warm' sounding. Is this the digital amp?

The E900s 8 step EQ sucks. The bass sounds fake, like it's detached from the rest of the spectrum, and the highs sound stretched. The DR7 just sounds right.

There's something going on on the bass end of the E900 which isn't quite right, it was on 'neutral' (out of neutral, sound 1, etc).
Almost as if there's like.. a midbass hump? I don't know. It sounded good [my inner basshead?], but didn't appear to go as low, compared to the DR7. I can't say either goes particularly low yet, modified EX70s are the problem. Perhaps i'll try again in another post with my D66s when they arrive. (An un-modified EX70 has lots of bass, not to be confused with deep bass).

My new computer has spyware in it. Freakin' pop up, piss off.

Continuing, I just got lost in the sound of Hikaru's 'never let go'. For those in the know, that bass line, the lowest note is the kind to bring smiles to bassheads. It's a lovely deep ear massage. It's incredibly clean on the DR7. I can just imagine the hissy E900 ruining it . Therefore i'm not going to listen to E900. Bye-bye.
/puts E900 away.

I think I'll conclude this post:

The E900 has some bits to it which I can't describe (or really like that much). Perhaps the word to use here is 'thinner' sounding. The DR7 seems smoother and fatter, as if it's feeling lazy, however everything is there and nice. The E900 seems somewhat harsher, and is very loud. Odd, I was told that Sharp should have a louder product. I don't really care if my Sharp has gone mental, it still sounds better than the E900. Things to note: The E900 is much louder than these following portables: MZ-N1, MZ-N707, MZ-R900, MZ-R37.

Overall, I am pleased. Why?

It means I've been listening at quiet levels, which my ears will thank me for.

My DR7 was a good purchase.

I may not bother repair my E900, therefore saving cash.

My ears have become more sensitive, which is good if I ever want to become a recording engineer type person.


Anyone care to comment?

[D-EJ915]

use ad-aware to get rid of the spyware, but there is another that is better...(forgot)

[Punslayer]

Speaking of finding new things from old. Recently i've been listening to a lot of CDs old and new through my Meta42 and MDR-F1's (certainly not the pinnacle of high end headphone equipment) and some of my old CDs have realy surprised me. There's stuff going on with some of these discs that i never had any clue was there and some of it's really amazing. Stuff that i never really dug that much has suddenly become much more interesting and some stuff that i liked already is even better. Sometimes i think that it's silly to spend all this time and money buying new equipment rather than buying and listening to new music, but the new life that's been breathed into some of my old music is very much worth the effort

As far as the volume difference between the E900 and DR7, that is curious. From what i've read the sharp should be the louder of the two certainly, but it's possible that the E900 has a lower maximum volume than the Sharp and if you were to crank them both all the way up, you'd get different results. Just don't do that with the EX70s in your ears that's painful, i know.

[Leon]

Comment on the volume thing:
Imagine Sharp and Sony spacing out the volume scale differently. One's 15/30 doesn't necessarily equal the other one's 15/30. I've heard that the upper part of Sharp's volume scale increases rather, erm, sharply...

The hiss:
I don't know why, but I recall hearing a lot of hiss reports on portables with really extended battery life (e.g. many recent Panasonic models). Otherwise it comes from internal components interfering with each other (e.g. some Sony CDPs reportedly have power lines crossing the amp circuitry).

yes, I sorta know the bass line to "never let go"

[FuzzyBallz]

Originally posted by D-EJ915
use ad-aware to get rid of the spyware, but there is another that is better...(forgot)

Spybot - Search & Destroy.

[D-EJ915]

ahh, thanks! go and GRAB SOME BAWLS!!, lol

[me]

Ah, here was I thinking that the volume setting was directly proportional to the volume.. Guess not. But the sharp one better increase (heh ) sharply, as 16 of 30 on the E900 is very loud. Verrry louder than I remembered it, for sure. (and to think that was quiet.. ). Perhaps the DR7 is quiet?

So, next thing. I have a computer with a line in. I have two portables. Any software to tell me the decibels? I kind of want to find out what a safe level is. It's all well and good telling me 'when it feels loud enough', however, lots of things feel too loud, like car horns, and small children screaming.. Too loud at any volume. And with an EX70, how loud is too loud? Heh.

[D-EJ915]

maybe vegasaudio or cool edit pro have something like that, a simple VU meter made to read the line-in would do that just fine

[me]

They tend to have 0dB -3dB, -6dB, -12dB.. How do I understand that and get something like 60dB out of it? This decibel stuff is strange and scary

[Punslayer]

you'd only be able to get a reading relative to 0dbv from the sound card, which doesn't actualy bear any relation to sound pressure levels at all. To measure the acutal spl output you'd have to use an spl meter with a mic held up to the headphone drivers and it probably woudn't work that well.

the problem with decibels is that the term is used to mean several different things and it can be really confusing. Books on sound reinforcement are a good pace to look to learn about Db levels and what they mean.