james6333
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2015
- Posts
- 408
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- 91
Thanks I appreciate your willingness to help.
At the end of the day, I decided to return the Utopias to the retailer I purchased them from. I spent hours comparing the Utopia's to my SR-009's on my own equipment on music that I was familiar with. Yes, the treble detail was amazing, and when I initially listened to them, I thought they really were the headphones "to rule them all." However, when I then did back-to-back comparisons with my SR-009's driven by a Woo WES, I realized that I far preferred the tonal balance of the SR-009's. Comparatively, the Utopias were bright and sometimes fatiguing. And for some types of music (i.e. EDM and pop), the Utopia's were so bright that I would even call them harsh and unpleasant. Based on all the online reviews, and the Utopia "name," I was expecting a lot more. Now, could this have been from the Benchmark DAC2? Well maybe, but it was also the source DAC for my SR-009's and HE1000's, neither of which I thought was particularly bright (especially not the HE1000's).
Don't let people tell you the Benchmark is bad. I let people talk me out of mine and it was a mistake. It was the best DAC I have owned.
I have the Elears (now given to the wife) and I think they suck. The Mids are colored (upper hole) and when combined with the ripe bass with soft rough treble they end up being super dull and unnatural sounding.
Last week I compared the Elear to the LCD-X, LCD-3, HD800S, GS1000e, PS500e (Also mine), GH-1, and a few others all on the same sources. The Elear was my LEAST favorite. The Elears have no stand out good point and is all around average.. The other headphones also had issues but they also had a stong point of some kind.
I dislike the Elear enough that I have lost interest in the Utopia.