Hardware Review: Audio Technica ATH M50 vs. Shure SRH 840

This is the first hardware review on this blog and I write it because of popular request. I wrote the allmost same text yesterday as a status message on Facebook, and some thought it would be a good idea to write the whole thing in this, recently completely neglected, blog.

Occasion of this review is the failure of my Audio Technica ATH M50 Studio Headphones. After less than 2 years of use of the right stereo channel was gone, which I attribute to a cable damage. Some time ago, the spring, which normally protects the cable from breakinge slipped out of the connector and could not be reattached. But first things first:

Not even 2 years ago I bought a pair of Audio Technica ATH M50. These are some kind of the standard studio headphones these days. Since my Sennheiser DT770 (with permanently attached ear pads) due to dirt, after 5 years of use constituted an epidemic threat, a replacement was urgently needed. Of course, it should be closed headphones, at work I like to be shielded from all "outside noise". I already knew that the Audio Technica ATH M50 constitute the de facto standard in the area of ​​studio headphones and so I didn't listen to the few warnings from some colleagues. The most commonly used argument was the attachment of the cable and the weak way it was done. Yes, allready when buying the headphones I sceptically looked at this spring, which is attached to the plug to prevent excessive tensile load and cable damage. This spring cried out "I am the first thing to break" ... what finally happened after all. The next downside, I was warned about, did not become apparent until, when I had worn the headphones worn for about 1 1/2 hours: The ear cups of the ATH M50 are of so small that I seriously wonder, whose ears had served here as a reference measure. For sure not those of an an adult man. The ears are squashed into the ear cups. The material of the ear pads is also quite stiff, so the ears hurt after a while. I had described to the guy at the musical instrument shop really in detail, what kind of music I produce. BASS is important, and actually the ATH M50 provided a bass that impressed me very much. These headphones delivered the bass frequencies extremely good. I did, frankly, not really recognize back then, that the other frequencies were far less well presented. But to set things clear: No, the efect is not so serious that one therefore should refrain from buying the ATH M50. It's just, in my opinion, not a correct representation of the overall frequency range.

Well yesterday I was forced, due to the faillure the ATH M50, to acquire some new studio headphones. And I almost bought the Audio Technica ATH M50 again. Generally, I was in fact happy with the product itself. It really did a great job. But fortunately, I tried then one or the other model, and the one that immediately impressed me was a pair of Shure SRH 840. The sound was powerful and dynamic. While the bass was not quite as brilliant as delivered by the ATH M50, the entire frequency range appeared complete and balanced. The second plus point I came across immediately was the wearing comfort. I had never a tool, giving me a feeling of "you can use that forever." The ear pads should accommodate even the largest ears. The soft material of the ear pads provides extra comfort. The same applies to the headband of the Shure SRH 840, which is padded with cloth on the lower side. This also minimizes the sweating under the headband. Last night I wore the Shure SRH 840 for 4 hours and the wearing comfort was top notch. The biggest plus point compared to the ATH M50 represents for me that the cable of the SRH 840 is removable. This protects the cable from damage during transport and makes it easily replaceable if damaged, rather than throw away the entire headphones or in case of warranty to send it to the manufacturer. The experts will agree with me when I say that damage to connectors and cables are the main cause of failure for headphones in continuous use. Conveniently you find a spare cable and a pair of spare ear pads in the delivery package of the Shure SRH 840. Thus, one is well supplied with spare parts for a good time and prepared for some surprises. The cable with a flexible plastic protection at the jack looks much more durable than the weak spring on the ATH M50. What, however, gives me a little headache at the SRH 840, is the plug connection between the cable and headphones. It is a small jack, which is fixed by a screw cap to prevent slipping. This attachment seems to be predestined for defects caused by material fatigue. The thin cable connections that significantly protrude between the headband and ear cups could be easily damaged. Otherwise, the Shure SRH 840 makes a solid impression.

In conclusion I can only say that the Shure SRH 840 for me is the clear favorite among the studio headphones in the price range of 150 euros. Comfort and sound quality are top notch, the whole product looks overall solid and durable. The delivery package includes all spare parts you need for a period of time.

"Asian DreamZ" - A small but useful Ethno VST!

Of cause, this absolutely free VST can not compete with the big ethno sample libraries, but it is free ;). The sound is more than ok, but the number of samples is rather small. Available are: Pipa (single shot and tremolo), Luan, Guzhen, Erhu and a complete set of asian percussion. You never heared about some or all of the instruments mentioned? Exactly this is the reason why this VST should not be missing in the VST collection of artists who use ethno sounds from time to time. There really is no abundance of free ethno VSTs, and if you are looking for sounds of rare and/or not very well known instrument, you find them, if at all, only in high priced commercial products.

The GUI of "Asian DreamZ" is, as expected quite spartanic. But you don't need more:

• At the left you see a picture of the currently selected instrument. IMPORTANT: Many users do not know first, how to change the current instrument. You do this by clicking on the picture. It then switches to the next instrument.
• In the middle you find the settings for a typical ADSR envelope. You can achieve some pretty interesting effects by using it, because the original instruments of cause have no envelope generator ;).
• Also made for experimental fun is the filter section on the right. You can choose between a highpass and a lowpass filter and there are sliders for setting the cutoff and resonance values.

Quality: The samples are, in my opinion, high quality, but they sound rather flat without using external effects. I personally prefer such dry samples, because they bring less or no own reverb and cause less problems when putting own effects on them. On the other hand I heared about people who were scared away from "Asian DreamZ" because of the rather flat sound it presents to novice users. The builtin filter section is... well... usable. For simple experiments or LoFi oriented projects it is just right.

Conclusion:

• rare and (to most) unknown instruments
• high sample quality
• flexibility because of the dry samples
• absolutely low CPU and RAM load
• easy and well structured GUI
• stable and multi instance capable (FL Studio)

DOWNLOAD ASIANDREAMZ FOR FREE (CLICK HERE)

On my own behalf, March 23rd 2013

Dear readers of the Audio Arsenal, I am excited about all the public interest in that blog. first I thought, that I could abandon this blog quite quickly, because there are so many blogs out there on the topic and I am also not one of the most busiest bloggers in the blogosphere. The success told me a different story. Out of all blogs, including those of my music projects, the statistics of the Audio Arsenal are the best ones.

To reflect that success and to reward your loyality, I decided to enhance, extend and generally improve this blog. Of great help in this task is your feedback and the many inspiring mails I received. One of the most stated wishes is, that I should incorporate even more personal tips for VSTs, such as prefered parameter settings etc. This will take place in the future wherever possible. You will understand, that this will be allmost mission impossible with a VST with x-thousand parameters. But wherever possible, I will tell you my prefered settings from now on. The same goes for the detailed description of the components of the graphical user interface of a particular VST. In the case of a small plugin with a handfull of parameters, I will with pleasure describe to you what all of the knobs do. This can, as demanded by not just a few of you, lead to a complete handbook/manual for a particular VST. But if a VST has more than, let's say, 100 parameters, it is not very probably, that I want to describe them all. I know that most free VSTs come with no manual at all, which makes them close to unusable for novice VST users. I want to help you there wherever possible, but please understand that it can be just too much to cover.

Another request is for tutorials, especially video tutorials. Know what? This is allready on my agenda. Because most of the readers of this blog are FL Studio users at all, I do not have to think about people not being able to follow my tutorials because of a different DAW. The planned tutorials will be dealing with different core aspects of digital music production, partly FL Studio specific and partly not. Using these tutorials, I will give you a even deeper glimpse into my everyday studio work and also share one or the other "secret tip".

You see: It goes on. Thanks for your confidence and interest. I will not disapoint you :)

Phenome Soundfont Player - Everything you need and more!

Yes, this Blog has been abandonned for quite a time, but now it goes on with a real goodie. In the ole times, when the Internet was still steam powered and VST Plugins (with sufficient quality) were either rare or not existant at all, there was a file format for audio samples, which went out of fashion these days: The Soundfonts. You can imagine a soundfont pretty much like a script font, just for audio samples. Sounds of real instruments were sampled on different notes and then packed into a soundfont. The format allows it also to store more than one instrument in a soundfont file, thus you can create sound libraries with soundfonts.

Now the musician of the year 2013, who is spoiled by often quite sophisticated simulation VSTs, asks himself, why one should use that "dinosaur format" still today. I found out, that most of the loving handcrafted soundfonts, which are by the way mostly free these days, sound a lot better than some of the quite expensive VST simulators. And you can find real gems out there, and sometimes instruments of which no other digital representation is available.

So, a while ago, I stumbled again across my huge collection of soundfonts and thought I was up for some nostalgy. In the end that proved to be a good idea, because I urgently needed some "ethno sounds" for some songs I was working at for my project Cimelium. And I found exactly those sounds amongs my soundfonts.

The problem now was, that the VST plugin I needed to use soundfonts in my DAW (FL Studio), a Soundfont Player, was only available as a demo version in my FL Studio. So I couldn't save and load projectfiles using it. I needed a good free soundfontplayer VST. I used the SFZ Soundfontplayer by rgc::audio in the past from time to time, but the problem with SFZ was, that if you put more than one instance of it into a project (at least with FL Studio) it creates a hell of a noise. This tells me, that it is not threadsafe coded  and one instance interferes with the other. Because the songs for the Cimelium project required the use of more than one soundfont, I needed a replacement. I browsed thru some forums and only got one answer: "SFZ, what else?".

By surprise I found a link to the Phenome Soundfontplayer and I was instantly excited and puzzled at the same time. I just wanted a simple soundfont player and not that... complicated... looking... THING! Well, I understood right from the start, what the knobs were doing, but still it was more than I expected. After a short while I understood the basic handling of soundfonts with this VST and it worked really well. By and by I learned also about the little addons, which revealed their secrets by and by to me.

The first thing I really liked was the fact, that it would be a really rare occasion to have to use more than one instance of the plugin in a DAW. Phenome offers the possibility to load up to 8 soundfonts and trigger them via MIDI channels. This in combination with multiinstrument soundfonts should do the job. I still tested the use of multiple instances in FL Studio and came across no problems.

Part of the basic feature set of a usable soundfontplayer is the envelope, which of cause isn't missing in Phenome. Phenome is also not the only soundfontplayer which comes with an effects section featuring Reverb, Delay and Chorus, but Phenome delivers, not just for a free plugin, a great ammount of quality here. Additionally there is a distortion effect and a knob labeled "LOFI", which I identified during tests as some kind of a ringmodulator. Those two knobs are in the filter section, which, in a spartanic style, offers everything a filter section needs.

A nice extra is the, also spartanically/classically designed arpeggiator section, which surprises with a nice and usefull chordfunction. The arpeggiator runs solid and does no gaps and glitches. A nice other feature, especially in combination with the arpeggiator, is the pitch envelope section, which allows a variety of interesting sound experiments.

You see: The Phenome Soundfontplayer is not just a spartanic sampleplayer, but a full featured playground for sophisticated soundfiddlers. Many dusted soundfont oldtimers get a second life and the gems from the collection also sound in a brandnew way. Conclusion: A must have!

DOWNLOAD THE PHENOME SOUNDFONTPLAYER FOR FREE!