DigitalFreak
镇老鹰
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2011
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Early IMPRESSIONS are up ladies and gentlemen. Needless to say I'm for the most part impressed.
Quote:VAHT? are they sitting and collecting dust? ): poor things. They must be constantly played on to enrich the goodness.
): I didn't mean it. Has violins at parents' place.... played the trombone...
Oh, they come out of their cases every once in a while to be tuned and inspected. They'll never be sold though. And no, I won't tell you where they live. And I played trombone, guitar, and piano mostly, though I was passable with any brass instrument and electric bass. Beyond horrible at violin and double bass.
The problem here is that the headphone can only be sold after the audition and return as an open box sale which attracts a discount and hence less profit on the sale.
I ten sets were sent and returned it means ten sets that can't be sold as NIB which is 3k$ out of pocket.
lol you really hate them don't you Mups .
Edit: well I may have spoken too soon regarding the demo. Still only 1 demo unit? I'm also curious if it will go to people who will give unbiased opinions opposed to just selling gear for gain.
Just to be clear:
The demo unit I mentioned before was a headphone The Cable Co. purchased specifically to be part of their lending program. I don't think they are officially affiliated.
I was told by JPS they did not offer any demos themselves. JPS has however given several public demos of the Abyss, which is a step in the right direction.
If it sounds really good, then I'll definitely end up buying one. I like flagship orthos.
It did sound really good. Just not $5,500 good. It's more like $2,000-$2,500 good (and that's if you think a good pair of LCD-3's is worth near its asking price). If I had tons of funds, I'd probably buy one and replace the entire headband with something other than a giant Vice-Grip.
If it sounds really good, then I'll definitely end up buying one. I like flagship orthos.
Yeah, I've heard from most people who heard it that it sounds good but to their mind doesn't justify its price. Your assessment is actually one of the more generous ones: others have compared it to the HE-500, which is below $1000.
That being said, most of these impressions have been under very poor conditions (meets or crowded malls) and with decent but not fantastic gear. Also factor in the short audition time (minutes) and poor fit most people seem to be getting... and yeah. Interestingly enough, someone I trust who has spent more time with it than most people and on a very good amp says it's actually extremely good. So I'm genuinely curious: just how good can it sound under better conditions? Can it even come close to the SR-009?
This raises another interesting point, one I've touched on a lot before but haven't brought up recently: whether headphones are "worth" it. To be perfectly honest, I think most headphones out there are probably overpriced (especially when you consider dealer cuts and distribution). Yet I've never really been one to assign exact monetary value to the way things sound. It just strikes me as odd. Not to get all Zeno here, but consider these two cases:
Say one attributes a price of $2000 to something. Or even a range of $2000-2500. Fair enough, but what about $2000.01? Or $2000-2500.01? Does adding a single cent suddenly invalidate the assessment? Most would probably balk and so of course not. But then what about a dollar? Two dollars? You can see where I'm going with this. At what point do you assign a cut off, at what point is it absolutely no longer worth it?
The other approach is comparative. One can say "well X headphone sounds good, so if Y headphone sounds as good as X, it should be worth the cost of X." Yet one runs into the same problem, only now with X headphone instead of Y.
I'm not trying to be contentious, just sort of thinking out loud. More and more I've come to realize that a lot of the stuff that goes on in this hobby---from the reasons behind peoples' posts to the actual purchasing of gear---has very little to do with sound. I'm not saying it's mutually exclusive: people still use this stuff to enjoy audio. However the drive behind consumption, the "journey" people go on about so much, is seldom about that. It's the little object 'a.' And that's fine, so long as people can sort of see the patterns going on with it. Really it just makes trying to determine value all the more nebulous tho.
Anybody here listen to any of Hayato Imanishi's music?
I've recently stumbled upon his bands, Withyouathome and Cyclamen. Cyclamen is a technical metal group that plays ambient tracks in between some really heavy, intense metal. Withyouathome is like Cyclamen minus the metal; they only do the ambient stuff, but they expand on it and do a lot more with the ambient sounds and the different vocal styles that go along with them. I found both of these bands on Bandcamp and bought some EPs for $2 each.
WOT, no drummers. OOPS, sorry, I forgot...... drummers are not musicians...................