I've ordered the Ultrasone PROline 750 S-Logic Headphones, but.....

Buying sight (or sound) unseen is always a crapshoot. There are so many gazillions of phones around, finding your one true love is difficult at best unless there's some magical shop nearby with every phone in it. We all do it, sometimes it works out wonderfully, sometimes they end up on the for sale forums within days. All you can do is keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best.

Thankfully, most decent phones are going to sound good in many respects so there's a very good liklihood you'll enjoy them. Until you hear many more phones you won't know what type of sound you really like best. I'm doing the same thing with an expensive set of cans myself, I just hope they are as good as everyone says too.

Welcome to the madhouse.

captian73
HI: I just bought the open version the proline 2500 today and just can't seem to be able to get them off my head. I am listening to all my music and movies all over again. I find the sound to be very amazing. I think you will like the 750 very much. They have the same drivers as the 2500. I got my 2500 at a store in PHILA and they out of the box have replaced my Senn. 580

Handling the Worry During Burn-In of Ultrasone Proline 750s

Captian73,

I did the same thing - took the plunge to buy Proline 750s from the many very favorable reviews and discussions at this thread:
There’s Something About Ultrasones…

I was not ready for the fact that the Proline 750s would require 8 days of solid burn-in to finally round out to be as good as they are now, but having passed through that ring of fire, I'm very happy with having made the decision. They sound kinda cool right out of the box, but (especially after laying down that chunk of change!) the weak spots start to worry you, what can I say. And new weaknesses appear during the burn-in period, with strange upper mid peakiness showing up as the bass and high-freq peaks smooth out. (at least that was how the physics worked on my pair.) Finally, the peaks all disappeared, but it had me wondering a couple times.

I also fell victim to the "hyper-listening" effect - where you listen to some program material that is badly recorded with your brand new headphones, but hear that fact for the first time on your new headphones, and think it's the headphones, until you really listen with other headphones to the same bad material, and it becomes obvious what's going on!

Anyway, this is the best audio purchase I've ever made, and if you check my fine-print sig below, you'll see I've made some pretty nice audio purchases to qualify that statement as pretty high praise indeed. Enjoy!

Terry

I did the same thing as well. I have the 2500s on their way to my house right now. Im really looking foward listening to them all weekend

I am by no means a basshead, so don't take this question as such.. I was reading the specs on the 2500/750 and they have 40mm drivers compared to their less expensive siblings the 550 which have 50mm drivers. The 40mm are titanium and the 50mm are Mylar. Now just based on the limited experience I have had with cans (mainly in the 90s), I always found headphones with 50mm drivers to have much deeper bass. 40mm sometimes may have more impactful bass, but the extension isn't always great (in my experience). The Sony CD1K/3K and if I'm not mistake the R10 and 010 all have 50mm diaphragms. While having not heard the R10 or 010, I can say that I prefer the bass frequencies on the CD3K to many other brands like Beyer, Grado, Sennheiser, and AT. But one review here made mention that it feels like with the Proline 2500 you are left looking around for the subwoofer in the room. So, I'm just a little curious as to any insight any of you have on this.

I guess this could be compared to a 12" and 10" subwoofer. The 12" will extend deeper but won't be as impactful or as accurate as the 10". Perhaps this holds true for 40mm vs. 50mm drivers as well?? (I believe it is B&W that claims 11" is the perfect sub/woofer size.)

Thanks!

While I hate to be a killjoy, ch, I wouldn't invest too much excitement in that first weekend of listening. The titanium-plated drivers of the PROline 2500 really do need a proper 150 to 200 hour burn-in to become supple enough to begin sounding their very best. It's a long and tortuous process, but your patience well be well-rewarded.

Welcome aboard and I look forward to seein' you over on the BIG THREAD!

Cheers, Dex

Excellent question, IPPJ. Certainly, logic would seem to dictate that larger driver = greater bass extension, but there are many other factors involved in the overall design that determine the final result.

In a subwoofer, we would be also considering driver-composition, impedance, sensitivity, throw profile, motor (magnet) properties, enclosure volume, porting, and so on. There are plenty of poor-performing 12" subwoofers out there that pale in comparison to properly designed and constructed 10" models.

Same thing with headphones. The PROline 750 & 2500 have titanium-plated mylar drivers set into respective enclosures specifically tuned for their frequency response. Consequently, they not only have more controlled and authoritative bass extension than the larger-drivered 550s, but also far deeper bass extension as well, measuring all the way down to 8 Hz. The 50mm driver on the 550s affords them greater sensitivity and SPL potential than the 750 & 2500, but the sound quality simply cannot compare.

Cheers, Dex

yes, people do this with headphones as well.

Sorry to hear about the delay, captian.

When I burn-in my Ultrasones I did just that, but at normal listening volumes. Anything lower won't be nearly as effective.