A few days ago I embarked on a quest to upgrade my headphones. I've been using ATH-AD700 for the past 3+ years and was very happy with them. A while back I've upgraded my receiver + speakers and I though, why not upgrade my headphones since I use them a lot more than the speakers.
I use headphones with the PC, connected to the front output of HT Omega Claro+ sound card.
Initially I got the AD900X and M50x to compare. Everyone knows the pros and cons of the two - I quickly chose to stay with the open air phones that I had all this time. I looked at the AudioTechnica website for the best open air headphones they carried and two weeks ago the highest model they showed was AD900X, so I bought that. Recently they've added the other two, the AD1000x and AD2000x (which is strange as these have existed since 2012), and I proceeded to purchase those for comparison purposes. Yesterday I was comparing all three, 900/1000/2000, models.
I'm no audiophile and can't review the headphones as well as many others did here, but I will say this. In my opinion, which matches what I've read here, AD900x is a step up from my old AD700, AD1000x is a step up from AD900x and differences between AD1000x and AD2000x are minor. I would easily recommend AD1000x over AD900x, but with AD1000x vs AD2000x, one would need to look very closely at the two, though from price difference perspective, the AD2000x should be better
Like others said, the overall sound of 900 vs 1/2k is different and noticeable. 1/2k have noticeably better bass. 2k might have slightly better bass than 1k. For an open air headphones, that I knew can't match the bass of M50x, when I bought 900x I was hoping for a more substantial bass improvement over the 700, which didn't quite happen. I was still yearning for more bass and thankfully the 1/2k deliver enough bass for my taste in an open headphone.
The pads of 900x are by far the most comfortable of the three. For some weird reason, the 1k is less comfortable and 2k is even less so. Since I want to keep the 2kx, I'm thinking about purchasing "Genuine" 1kx pads on ebay and then maybe selling the stock 2kx pads to hopefully come out even.
For those that have seen both 1kx and 2kx phones. Don't the pads look the same. They do to me. The reason 2k is less comfortable to me is that I have long ears and observing closely both pads, the 1k inner opening seems to be elongated on the vertical line and 2k on the horizontal. Here's a link to pictures I've taken: http://i.imgur.com/uONFRZC.jpg
Is it possible, that the pads when made differ sometimes (each is not the same to the milliliter) and that my 2k pad should really, or maybe more often then not, look more like the 1k pad in which case it would be good enough? Owners of AD2000X, do your pads look like mine in the picture in regards to shape of the inner circle?
I'm a little tempted to just swap the pads of the 1k and 2k that I have now
, but that would not be the right thing to do.
If I buy a 1k pad and swap it, would there be any sound difference? I don't think so. How about going with a 900x pad?
Another question, the HT Omega Claro+ sound card is more than capable of powering the headphone, right? It can take different opamps, do you feel a different one from the stock opamp would work better with the 2kx phones?
Here's a link: http://www.htomega.com/claroplus.html
Thanks.