For The Love of God...Do Not Buy Souls

Happened to be in Best Buy today, and of course they have Souls front and center, flanking the Bose display with the Beats on the other side.  Talk about a trainwreck.  Anyway, I figured I'd give them a chance, how bad can they be? (that was a dumb question).  I barely made it 30 seconds into the Touch The Sky remix with the XX (gorgeous song btw and great for demos) before I had to take them off, I couldn't take it.  Hell, I had to use a pair of HD429s buried in the corner just to clean my palette, so to speak.  Just to remind myself what a REAL pair of $200 headphones sound like, I had to put on a set of HD558s just for the laughs.  It was almost embarrassing.  I can't believe they let those past the R&D phase.  My stock Apple buds have better range, clarity, and soundstage than those $200 jokes.  I wanted them to be better than Beats, but they might actually be worse.  Don't do it.  And don't let anybody else if you can help it.  Friends don't let friends listen to garbage headphones.

Really?  I honestly don't know what was wrong with these.  They were muddy, quite the opposite of high definition.  The soundstage...well I don't remember it so it couldn't have been anything out of the ordinary.  I tried every eq setting, it all sounded muddy and lifeless.  The $99 Sennheisers were...infinitely better.  The Souls were built beautifully, but that's really all I can say.  Maybe they were shot from life on the demo stand?  Who knows.  All I can say is that I've heard similar sound from $50 over-the-ears.

Sorry about that, it was the SL150s.  Could be that they were too "new" as well, that's always a possibility.  Unlike some I do believe in burn-in, so that could be a factor.  Not sure how long these units were on display.  I grew up with extremely high-end audio, and have heard all kinds of equipment, so maybe I have been biased slightly, but I can firmly say that there's no way anyone should  buy these as opposed to say, HD558s, which can be had for less still and sound amazing.  That particular song has some bass, it's Kanye over XX instrumentals, and the vocals were extremely cloudy I thought.  I'd say they were even with the Beats Studios I demoed, a few times at that.  Bass response could have been better with a song like Rack City or something, but honestly I didn't stick around to find out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DxBecks 

I also tried out all the models of the Souls in Best Buy and the were horrible, worse than the Beats that is for sure. The Soul version of the Solo HD were the worst sounding pair of headphones I've had the misfortune of hearing; my HA-RX700's sound miles better.

Yeah I can imagine...I didn't even bother to try the smaller ones, I couldn't bring myself to do it.  I really don't understand how anyone buys either brand and thinks they sound good.  I think the Beats Tours sound ok...I'd pay $85 for them...that's about it.  I was really hoping the Souls would have something to offer but it doesn't sound like it at all...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magick Man 

But... but... I'm a crossroads demon, what else am I supposed to buy?
SL150s are crap, but still better than Beats Studios. Now, gotta go, time to foreclose on Lindsay Lohan, her soul is waaaay past due.

They might be, I mean on a scale of 1 to 10, they're both pretty close to 3 on either side, so they're so bad already that I really couldn't be bothered to bleed my eardrums more to find the difference.