Quote:
Originally Posted by
Beagle 
...To my ears, it is a headphone where you don't hear or think in terms of bass, treble, midrange. You just feel like the music is right. It is the opposite of laid-back but it is not harsh. Full of energy but well-controlled.
Beagle, I agree with you, man. I've been a fan of the Diamond Tears since I first heard one of their master prototypes at CES. It was funny because the spokesmodels were walking around Monster's CES exhibit with them, but that early on almost all of the units at the exhibit were for show only--they sounded horrible. I went behind the exhibit to meet with a few of the guys on the development team, and they had a bunch of them on a table...

...and just one of them on the table was what I believe they called the golden sound sample (or golden sound master, or something like that), and that one sounded very good. I handed that one to Joe, and he tried it on, and he liked it a lot too.
I asked if I could take it with me, and they said no, as there were only a very small number of those tuned ones at the time. They did let me take a for-show-only-definitely-not-for-listening unit with me, though, just for photos. It only took one look to know the Diamond Tears style would be polarizing, but there was no denying it was entirely unique in its appearance, so I decided to wear it around Las Vegas, just to see what the response would be. To this day, I don't remember a headphone that I've ever been stopped more for questioning about than the Diamond Tears.
One guy working at a sales kiosk at the Caesars Forum shopping mall literally abandoned his kiosk to chase me down (but kept looking back at his kiosk nervously), to ask what the headphone around my neck was.
I really appreciate the uniqueness of the style, and I really like the way the Diamond Tears looks (especially the black one, and also a very limited edition gold one they made). A lot of people I know love the way they look, and many do not. Regardless of which side of the fence you fall on with respect to its styling, there's no denying that Monster didn't just ape Beats' styling for all their headphones to begin their post-Beats era. Kudos to them for that.
Here is that don't-listen-to-it prototype with me at the restaurant Sushi Roku at Caesar's Forum last January:

I'm only commenting because I just finished writing about the Diamond Tears for the upcoming holiday update of the Buying Guide, and was wondering if these were out in the Head-Fi wild yet, and found this thread in my search.
The Diamond Tears is easily Monster's best-sounding over-ear headphone yet; and its fun, out-there styling makes me smile.

Anyway, again, guys, I'm glad some of you are diggin' it, too.