Final Audio Design Muramasa VIII - Page 23

I've been quiet about these because of FAD's wishes, since production was canceled and they were never actually "officially" released. FAD didn't want to sell any to the general public apparently, so of the handful that were produced, most of them were allocated for retailers to display as a promotional artifact (obviously not to promote the headphones themselves, but as a museum piece of FAD's history to promote the company).

Not sure how many other individual consumers ended up with one, but you could probably count it on one hand. EIther way, as silly as such a proposal may sound, in my view scrutinizing these headphones as headphones is close to pointless. For instance, there were some measurements posted on a Russian site. Giving them the benefit of the doubt as to whether they were legit, the difference in how I hear them is pretty significant, so there may very well be quite a bit of variation from one unit to the next. FAD spent a lot of time tuning each individual set, and it could be that those currently in the wild are closer to prototypes, points along a continuum of development. 

The fit of these headphones is by and large the worst of any I've ever worn. By a huge margin. This isn't simply something one can shrug off in my opinion, as not only does it cause a good deal of physical pain (not just mild discomfort... pain), it can make getting a proper fit difficult and thus further contribute to variances in impressions and measurements. Given the incredibly small sample size and the above issues, we'll probably never know how the Muramasa "should" sound. Which doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things I suppose, since it's not going to be marketed to folks and as such is something of a moot point. Still, I think there's some value in discussing it just as a work of art.

It also serves as an experiment, being Final's first foray into full-sized headphones. They've learned from it and seem to be responding accordingly with the upcoming Pandora.

Originally Posted by kiertijai 

Instead of that, we're planning to release a new headphone series "Pandora" in spring 2013. 

We'll provide updates on it via our websites.

Thank you.

Best regards,
final audio design