I had about the same impression of this headphone.

It's a funny thing these graphs. Just like most single balanced armature is measuring basically totally flat from lowest bass to 1 kHz like a LCD-2/3 it's sound is still anemic and bass shy. If the headphone is too fast and note thickness isn't done right it will sound poor to me in most cases.

At this price I prefer a Grado PS500 or for a little more a HE-500 by a mile.

Great review and read as always, Mal!

Nice review and take it easy on your lungs

Pipe smoking is not a direct inhalation process, it's an aroma thing. The last study that was credible showed that pipe smokers live on average 2 years longer than the non-smoker. Had nothing to do with smoking. Was the personality type factor (Type B). Go figure.
There's a lot of bad headphones out there. A lot of people simply try to butter up something that isn't that good and say it has "niches" to fill when really a good headphone should cover all areas possible, just like a speaker setup should be able to cover all bases. A headphone that cannot do that is a bad headphone. There are far cheaper headphones that can be used to simply do the critical work this type of headphone would be ok with. For music listening, this thing is just not a good headphone and should be treated as such. Beyer made a mistake. I'm sure it's costing them which is why the cost was driven down by over $200 in most areas that can sell at discount. And really no one should buy this headphone outside of collection purposes. For the cost, the headphone should do what a $50 headphone that is more competent in all areas can do, but with greater resolution and realism.

Nice Review I might actually to one of my First Serious ones today after reading yours! And The pipe is pure magic! It adds credibility to everything you say lol, so Pipe+Glasses= this guy knows what he's talking about [so the streotypes are helping u here lol]
GOod read, said to hear the T70 didn't do to well

Heya, it's not that they didn't do well, they simply are not a typical " all around " headphone. They're quite a niche headphone to my ears, for people who want mostly mids/treble and very shy bass, akin to the SRH940 and other monitoring headphones. This can be great for certain genres. But I would not label it an all around headphone that can do everything well, as it has some short comings that really do make it not appropriate for certain genres of music sadly.

My experience with the T70 tells me the stock pads give terrible bass reponse. Having tried them with a few different pads (beyer gel pads, and partially just because i could, hifiman pleather pads) they both improve the bass markedly. I also found them anemic at first, but changing the pads really opened up the bass quite a bit. They also like power, despite that high sensitivity. On some of the higher powered SS amps I've managed to hear them on, they also improve markedly. The Beyer A1 amp in particular seems to be an amazing match. A/Bing a T1 and T70 on an A1 clone, a few people at the meet thought the T70 managed to get remarkably close to the T1 given it's roughly half the retail price.

Interesting; I swapped some DT770 pads onto the T70 and really didn't notice much if any difference that was significant. I have a new pair of T70 pads on the way to test with my DT770's to see if they make the DT770 sound more anemic or not since if this is true, then it should affect the inverse.

Maybe... the DT770 pads are velour also?
It may also be that both pads I liked a bit more also a little thicker than the velour pads. Hard to test that as trying to hold them further out just wrecks the seal (which also completely wrecks the bass on these).