Sony has new headphones, MDR-1R - Page 26

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Originally Posted by gelocks 

 

You know, the only thing I "fear" is that I'll like a lot of them and then have "Craigster's Syndrome"... difficulty in picking which one I should go out with on certain days! LOL

LOL- I just posted on the Sig Pro thread that I am jealous of you headphone budget!

Heard it here first....

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Originally Posted by astroid 

 

Heard it here first....

I'm willing to entertain your premise.  Can you be more specific?

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Originally Posted by Rasmutte 

Great review.

 

And now a classic question: (dunno if you can answer it, tho)

How is it compared to the ATH-M50?

The other thing to think of is: The ATHM50 is a tank. The Sony is more of a suburban sprawler; it's strong, but it is certainly built to consumer, not the professional standards that the M50 is. 

The M50 may in some ways be a brighter phone, but they both share a somewhat closed sound. Preferentially, I'm in the M50 camp, but that is just me. Anak may choose a different path. He's the Aragorn of this forum as far as I'm concerned.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shigzeo 

The other thing to think of is: The ATHM50 is a tank. The Sony is more of a suburban sprawler; it's strong, but it is certainly built to consumer, not the professional standards that the M50 is. 

 

The M50 may in some ways be a brighter phone, but they both share a somewhat closed sound. Preferentially, I'm in the M50 camp, but that is just me. Anak may choose a different path. He's the Aragorn of this forum as far as I'm concerned.

Yes, a tank indeed.

So the sound signature of the 1R and M50 reminds of eachother?

oh my... i smell squeaking problems... and i haven't fixed my friend's z1000 and its squeaking problems as well =(

anyways if the 1R is like a cd900st with bass, im all in!

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Originally Posted by AnakChan 

OK, I have an "almost complete" impressions of the MDR-1R. If you guys are ok with something that's almost, but not completely done, here you go. Naturally I'll be padding this post and updating it as I complete it and will inform readers of the update :-

 

 

Thanks for the impressions Anak! I'm glad that initial reports aren't completely at odds with the earlier impressions I posted. I do think these will be a steady pair of hands, but man those  matte black M100's look gorgeous.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgray91 

Thanks AnakChan. This is the three-way-battle -comparison that I'm waiting for. Something that I find weird though. You said that form Sony's slideshow, they developed this with modern music, i.e. bass-abundant music, in mind. I find that somewhat perplexing since that's what their new XB series is supposed to be, in my mind. It (the XB series) is more portable than the previous XB series (foldable, less cushion-like earpads).
And while I'm all up for almost flat, midrange focused headphones, for portable use, IMO some bass and treble emphasis is needed to counteract stray noise coming in (on top of decent isolation). This doesn't bode too well in my mind, and if the use case is more at home, I would be sad to drop this from consideration since I already have more-than-decent "home-phones".

If you think of Z1000 as having underdeveloped bass, and the XB series as having a definite emphasis, you can see that the MDR-1R is more on the side of trying to fix the Z1000's deficiencies rather than emulating the XB's exaggeration. If you actually look at the Z1000's frequency response, bass drops off a cliff at some point in the lower frequencies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shigzeo 

The other thing to think of is: The ATHM50 is a tank. The Sony is more of a suburban sprawler; it's strong, but it is certainly built to consumer, not the professional standards that the M50 is. 

The M50 is definitely built more reassuringly, though I'm not exactly sure why I got that impression. The M50 has more chunky joints and less intricate parts I guess. I'm not sure the 1R is built badly, but it certainly doesn't exude 'premium construction'. (The MA900's problems in this regard are much worse.)

im curious if this will be like beyer 770/80 but with vocal like all sony line up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by a_recording 

If you think of Z1000 as having underdeveloped bass, and the XB series as having a definite emphasis, you can see that the MDR-1R is more on the side of trying to fix the Z1000's deficiencies rather than emulating the XB's exaggeration. If you actually look at the Z1000's frequency response, bass drops off a cliff at some point in the lower frequencies.

 

... But is compensated by ridiculous amounts of distortion (Z1000), so it actually will seem to extend lower. Looking at them closer it would actually be possible they had a slight mid-bass hump due to the extension of that bass-resonance. Haven't heard these headphones, but looks like they'd be an excellent candidate in realizing bass-distortion. 

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Originally Posted by electropop 

... But is compensated by ridiculous amounts of distortion (Z1000), so it actually will seem to extend lower. Looking at them closer it would actually be possible they had a slight mid-bass hump due to the extension of that bass-resonance. Haven't heard these headphones, but looks like they'd be an excellent candidate in realizing bass-distortion. 

I have a pair, and they pretty much exhibit the behaviour that you speculate. They don't sound amazingly bass deficient, but the bass just sounds flabby and off. They have a beautiful timbre for slow or acoustic music, but to me they are very underwhelming when fed any sort of synthesised bass tone. The MDR-1R seemed more visceral and controlled to me, but the overall tone wasn't that much darker.

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Originally Posted by jgray91 

So is it safe to say that this is like a more bassy z1000, based so far on your demo?

Oh, no. I wouldn't say thats safe to say at all. I thought it did sound darker, just not a swampy bass monster like people had feared. My demo was only short, so I can't really give a detailed comparison. I would not consider the 1R a logical progression from the Z1000 sound though.