Review: Denon AH-D1100 vs Sony MDR-XB500 - Page 3

Do you know how you want it to sound like? That's the question, for you D1100 might be a lot better sounding, I tried explaining the differences. The biggest difference is the more laid-back sound which creates a lot easier recognisable instrument separation for the D1100 which to many people would be a big advantage for example. I'm personally a fan of warm/forward sound and XB500 is very extreme in that direction and sounds even unamped like it was being amped by a strong and colored amp that adds warmth.

Did you EQ it? I agree it lacks clarity unEQ'd due to excessive upper bass especially at 125 - 250Hz range and tiny bit too veiled highs when you're looking for an optimal balance. Once I took care of that it sounds like a whole new level. The quality of the lows, mids and highs are fine for the price it's the unbalanced frequency response balance that is the reason for the slightly "muffled" sound unEQ'd. Burn-in will also help a bit but EQing will help the most. I don't care if I have to EQ in case the end result is good, not all headphones respond equally well to EQing because the quality is different, while I thought D1100 offered a more balanced tonal character that was a bit more clear sounding unEQ'd I thought the quality was worse especially in mids and the upper highs. EQing only changes the balance of the frequencies, not the sound quality which is why XB500 benefits a lot by EQing compared to D1100. Headphones with that forward/up-front mids as on XB500 is quite uncommon in this price category especially.

Let's not get too carried away about discussing which is better sounding though as people will have different opinions of how it should sound like so it's pretty pointless in the end, if you like D1100 and concider a lot better, that's perfectly fine with me, I've told you I don't talk about technically XB500 would sound any better, only on a personal subjective level and to me with my kX Audio config the XB500 sound like $200 worth of equipment (I had paid that much for it if it had been the price after having tried it) which is why I like these so much, seems like I've found the sound signature that is to my liking now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by astroid 

I am going to buy them again, i may have missed something. Should have them in a few days , do they benefit from burn in?

Why buy them again if you didn't like them? :p Same headphones won't please every1. However if you never tried EQ them that would be a good start. They did benefit from burn in, mostly changed the high frequencies.

It may also be much thanks to kX Audio drivers they work so great for me, with kX Audio drivers for my Audigy 2 ZS soundcard I'm able to get surround sound experience that sorta make the soundstage seem bigger and wider and I also applied very slight reverb effect to make it sound like I was in a slightly bigger room or something but it's just to the point you notice the fading effect as you hit the pause button on foobar2000. But ofc I was using the same thing with D1100 too.

I recommend following EQ curve for XB500 (not burnt-in XB500 might need more drastic EQing to sound optimal). Some EQs you may ofc have better results by lowering all the values except for the ones you wish to get a boost for as taking away rather than adding works often better but on the EQ I use that's not the case. Ofc +1 on this EQ might be entirely different to +1 on another EQ as it probably depends how the volume is handled etc and with kX Audio drivers I have so many different volume sliders to play around with that probably affects how much one step on the EQ boosts the volume but at least you can see the relevance of the frequencies which should be higher or lower to each other.

If going by the reducing-teqhnique (if EQ lacks preamp slider especially), this should provide similar sound but probably cleaner output on some EQs:

Updated the sound signature part and description a bit as I realized I had mixed up the warm/laid-back terms a little and divided it into cold/warm and laid-back/forward instead which should give a much better picture. Also added a glossary to the beginning of the review for a description of some of the terms.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xander90 

Hi, can u suggest a decent eq setting for Denon D1001? with screenshot like u did above pls? From my understanding they do sound identical to the D1100.

 

I already posted in my review but here's some setting within the EQ itself 

I don't think D1001 and D1100 sounds the same though.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by randomkid 

i'm getting the 518 DJ soon, and did you try them without the foam in the middle? Also do they sound better with an amp? Thanks.

No I haven't removed it as I don't like bright sound and concider it near optimal the way it is with the foam, the highs aren't the prob with this headphone in particular. Don't know about amping as I never tried amping them as I concider them very easily driven.