[DenverW]

I love my Grado's, but that cable...

Audio! I read this thread thinking how great the hd800 were on the bhc. We all have our loves and hates .

 

[arielext]

I think I never sent back a headphone as fast as I did with the Audio Technica ath-a990z
Underwhelmed by every aspect of the headphone.

 

[TWerk]

If its personal then it would be the HD600. While I can see why people like it the way peaks in the upper mids then just drops in the lower treble before going back up will never feel natural to me.

Otherwise it has got to be the RAD-0. Great headphone but designed as a torture device. I have no idea how people can wear it for 5+hours without the top of the skull hurting.

Man, the HD600 sound SO natural to me, surprising to hear this.

 

[Chastity]

Beyerdynamic DT-990 Pro... wow I hated these. So metallic sounding. I gave them 2 weeks, and then they were gone. Replaced them with the DT-1990 Pro, as I was still curious about the brand. These I kept.

 

[AetherDrive]

Dekoni Blue, bloated bass with a weird plasticky timbre. I bought them as my first planars as the reviews on drop were mostly positive and they were on sale. My first listening session with them was spent wondering if something was wrong with my equipment lol.

 

[lanep]

Sennheiser HD 6 series. They always sound way too veiled / muffled for my liking. I've owned them 4 times - 6xx, 600, 650, 6xx again - and sold them every time. Then again I don't have a tube amp yet, so I'll definitely be purchasing them for at least a 5th time in the near future.

 

[Mink]

In retrospect the Denon D5000s. Not that I disliked them at the time, but with the knowledge and taste I now have I find that their reviews at the time were completely off the mark.
Numerous times they were described as a closed-back version of the HD650s, even better. Their sound was supposed to be lush, warm and smooth. The wooden cups were supposed to add an extra warmth and smoothness.
No, they are not warm and smooth. They sound pretty distant and thin in the mids. Very edgy in the high mids and highs and the bass has a boom of doom and some bloom that makes up for the lack of body in the low mids. In hindsight they could sound worse than the despised Beats by Dr. Dre.

 

[TWerk]

In retrospect the Denon D5000s. Not that I disliked them at the time, but with the knowledge and taste I now have I find that their reviews at the time were completely off the mark.
Numerous times they were described as a closed-back version of the HD650s, even better. Their sound was supposed to be lush, warm and smooth. The wooden cups were supposed to add an extra warmth and smoothness.
No, they are not warm and smooth. They sound pretty distant and thin in the mids. Very edgy in the high mids and highs and the bass has a boom of doom and some bloom that makes up for the lack of body in the low mids. In hindsight they could sound worse than the despised Beats by Dr. Dre.

Good call out - agree on the D5000. I also owned D2000 and D7000, I think either is a better choice for sound quality.

The 5000 was just way too boomy/bloomy in the lows and unrefined throughout, not a good headphone and it wasn't cheap either.

 

[TWerk]

Sennheiser HD 6 series. They always sound way too veiled / muffled for my liking. I've owned them 4 times - 6xx, 600, 650, 6xx again - and sold them every time. Then again I don't have a tube amp yet, so I'll definitely be purchasing them for at least a 5th time in the near future.

I'd stick with the 600. 6XX sounds veiled to many people (myself included), less so for the 600.

I have a 600 and it is not as resolving or fatiguing in the highs as other headphones but run on a good solid state amp, they don't sound veiled either.

I think a lot of that i what you are used to and drawing comparison against.

If anything, I think a tube amp might veil them MORE since tube tends to smooth the overall sound, generally speaking.

 

[mudnut]

Sennheiser HD 6 series. They always sound way too veiled / muffled for my liking. I've owned them 4 times - 6xx, 600, 650, 6xx again - and sold them every time. Then again I don't have a tube amp yet, so I'll definitely be purchasing them for at least a 5th time in the near future.

That's exactly my experience with the entire line of 6 series. Had 650, 600, 650, 660, 600S2 and they all sounded muffled and blurred like I was listening to them through cotton ball in my ears. Tried them on a bunch of tube amps I owned (Class A SET, Push-Pull, and hybrids) and sadly they didn't get any better. Sennheiser did redeem themselves by my recently acquired HD800S with its great resolution and spacious yet natural soundstage. I also find its bass impactful and well-textured.

 

[Nirvana Woman]

There's two. First the HD650, I just couldn't with those. Reference grade headphones but so claustrophobic, so shouty, such poor bass response. I got them because I was looking for an upgrade to my HD598 and though I could notice the improved resolution I didn't like anything else about them. I'm huge on spaciousness and bass and those happened to be the two things the 650 couldn't do, at all. I didn't know that before I bought them, back in 2012. I've gotten my hands on the 58x jubilees and they are everything I hoped the 650 would be, a real upgrade to the HD598.

The other is the Meze Classics. The tuning is hilariously bad. Way too much bass, no treble, poor resolution. They aren't right. The other thing is the pads are just terrible. Bad durability, bad comfort. And those metal tubes are just always creaking. Waaay overpriced, and they recently increased in price from 300 to 310. I don't know who's all those people who buy them. I don't wanna know lol.

 

[SolarCetacean]

I think I never sent back a headphone as fast as I did with the Audio Technica ath-a990z
Underwhelmed by every aspect of the headphone.

I really liked the A990Z after I swapped the earpads to Brainwavz microsuede ones. I found it really cleared up the sound and improved the comfort for me. But stock, yeah, I recall being underwhelmed.

For me, it would be the Grado Hemp. I had demoed the 325x right before, and the Hemp sounded muffled, muddy, and dull in comparison.

 

[Darylc]

From all the headphones I've tried & bought, I've only ever returned 2.

Biggest dissapointment for me was the NDH-20's. "mix & master neutral headphones" - No.
Sound was incredible, one of the lowest distortion headphones I've listened to, but the sound signature is just mental. There's a massive dip right at 1Khz where the rest of the response seems to fulcrum from. Just weird and I wasn't bothered trying to EQ a problem that big.
Not very comfortable either, felt like dustbin lids on my ears, ha.

The other pair were DCA Aeon Noire.
I knew i was getting a bassy V-shaped headphone with these, but wow, the mids are buried under the bass & treble. No-where near as strange as the NDH-20's though, it's a much smoother curve to the mids dip.
One of the most comfortable headphones though.
I may have been a little hasty returning these and not giving them enough time though, they're the only closed back headphone I keep landing on when I look around every once in a while.

I eventually got a pair of Audeze LCD-XC ('21) Love them, took a bit to adjust to the tuning, but nothing like the near immediate dislike from the above.

 

[catscratch]

None of your headphones are impressively bad, not really.

Because the Taket H2 exists.

Down in the Mariana's Trench of badness, well below the awful depth of Ultrasones, DT990s, and DT48s, below even the vintage elevator simulator headphones of the 60s lurking on the bottom, submerged and buried somewhere in the primordial muck is the one and the only, the mythical beast, the Taket H2.

Let those who look for it beware.

 

[Thomasr]

How do we know for sure that some of these "bad" headphones don't just need one million hours of burn in?