Sony XB500 vs Philips The Stretch vs Philips SHP8000

I've listened to the Stretch, XB500, and CrossfadeLP. The Crossfade is the best all around with plenty of bass, but if you want it really thick and heavy, the XB500 does that quite well. The Stretch sounds thin compared to the other two, and has little bass or midrange warmth. Personally, I like the sound of the Crossfade the best, because it satisfies me with the amount of bass without making everything sound extra bassy like the XB500. The XB500 is probably the way to go though if you are incredibly into bass, and it's also very comfortable with the ear cushions.

the stretch has pretty bad reviews from some tech reviewer.. too much bass, when a person that are not in the audio hobby said such thing then it is bad alright..

 

cheers,

Don't pick M5X, the highs are VERY recessed (I had to boost it around 5 ~ 6.5 dB to get it where I wanted it), XB500 has similar bass but is better balanced in the mids and highs. If you want a better quality but slightly less bass but still fits under warm & bassy category then look at Panasonic HTF600, definitely better quality sound than XB500 but XB500 beats it in comfort and build quality though.

 

Edited by RPGWiZaRD - 12/16/11 at 10:58am

I would go ahead and jump toward the XB700s. I've owned and used the XB500's every day for a very long time, and I've gotten to the point where I can't stand them. The mids are just plain awful IMO. Incredibly recessed, even after EQing. Also, in my experience, there is a sharp spike around 4.5 kHz, which will drive you insane if the music you listen to involves clap sounds of any sort.

If all that matters is cheap bass, then they're the best for the price to my knowledge, but bass is the -only- thing they do right.

Well, that and the super-soft pads.
Edited by Tus-Chan - 12/16/11 at 2:41pm

XB700 has a little more recessed mids compared to XB500 but mids on XB700 are a bit clearer sounding (no EQing taken into account). The XB700 also has a lot less bass impact but puts out an ocean of soft slowly fading subbass though.

Edited by RPGWiZaRD - 12/16/11 at 2:49pm

I haven't heard them, but the square wave response of those two headphones would seem to suggest that the XB500 is tighter, and thus cleaner sounding, as it steps up and down with a deep note more evenly than the XB700

Yea definitely, you can hear it with the ears and Tyll commented the same thing in his XB300, XB500 vs XB700 review as well where he preferred XB500, but it's not like XB500 is free from problem either as it extends in a 15dB boost all the way to 300Hz which is quite big reason of the somewhat "muddy" sounding midrange without EQing. Simply lowering 250Hz on a 10-band EQ will already help a whole lot if not doing any other adjustment already. From my testing with different headphones and EQing the bass should start rolling-off at least around 200Hz or so to avoid midrange bleed, XB700 already starts at like 100Hz or so where most headphones have their bass centered around so it's heavily focusing on <100Hz range, but for deep bass lowers or midbass haters this is a nice thing tho. So optimally Sony should create a XB series headphone that has like evenly boosted bass response from say 20Hz - 200Hz, maybe even a bit less than XB500 (it doesn't really need 15dB but say 12dB or so could be cool, definitely no more) and even up the midrange and highs somewhat more and it should have been XB1000, unfortunately it's not quite like that.

 

Edited by RPGWiZaRD - 12/16/11 at 4:10pm