[FritzS]

for quality often a mass product is better in quality.

but not necessarily

 

[plakat]

The only thing Bose needs to know is how to handle plastic… and no, just making a lot of them doesn’t make them good in quality. It just proves that the manufacturer can scale its assembly…

Bose fills one very specific slot with its headphones, which is defined neither by sound nor material quality. I don’t like them, I don’t like their attitude and I don’t like their products. But that aside it’s rather ridiculous to quote it as having high quality compared with e.g. The APM or the Composer.

 

[Nomax]

His medals

[/satire]
(sorry @Nomax I took advantage of this eleven )

NOMAX

 

[Purzel]

NOMAX

He even takes virtual medals. I give you 10 more so you can be prouder .

 

[Purzel]

but not necessarily

that’s why I said often

 

[xxx1313]

@Nomax is in contact with many manufacturers behind the scenes, not only with Austrian Audio. DCA, Sennheiser, Meze and Audeze, to name only a few. Without his influence I would expect that there were even more headphones around these days with heavy weight, coarse, with bad fit, off tonality, very hard to drive, sometimes looking similar to things manufactured by kindergarden children, but nevertheless with obscene prices. Some manufacturers still produce these things, but this is the fault of those of us who still buy these monstrosities.

It is hard to grasp the negativity of some people against a headphones with none of these obvious drawbacks mentioned above, which they never tried and their flood of (obviously) mostly irrelevant comments. Everybody is free to express their opinion, but it does not help the community to repeat non-arguments into perpetuity.

Coming back to the Composer, I still enjoy it very much after a few months of use. Its sound quality surpasses every other headphones with similar price, imo. So if you like its neutral tonality, it is the real deal for sure. Even more so because it is so easy to drive. It is priced reasonably, because Austrian Audio also aims at the professional audio market.

Cheers,
Bernie

 

[Trance_Gott]

If anyone is looking for a Composer in top condition with invoice from a German dealer at a top price, please contact me.

 

[John Buchanan]

He even takes virtual medals. I give you 10 more so you can be prouder .

C'mon mate - move on. Nomax isn't engaging with you, so please leave the thread.

 

[jamesjames]

The drivers are indeed angled.

I see. Apologies if I've missed something in an earlier post, but is the housing itself angled under some sort of dust cover, or are the pads angled?

 

[jamesjames]

Having looked now at some reports from shows, I can see that the 'angle' of the ear cups can be changed by rotating them to some extent. But it seems this is more about comfort than firing angle of the driver toward the ear. This seems a nifty idea, but it was the firing angle that was of particular interest to me. It would be great if someone could provide an answer on this.

A common thread which seems to emerge in the random comments that I've seen/heard outside this site is that the Composer is quite 'intimate' in its presentation. The emphasis seems to be on frequency range rather than imaging. These comments suggest to me that it might not share a great deal in terms of imaging with the HD800S or K812 - and might share more in this respect with the Utopia. Any thoughts on this from those who've heard them?

 

[Trinkle]

Having looked now at some reports from shows, I can see that the 'angle' of the ear cups can be changed by rotating them to some extent. But it seems this is more about comfort than firing angle of the driver toward the ear. This seems a nifty idea, but it was the firing angle that was of particular interest to me. It would be great if someone could provide an answer on this.

A common thread which seems to emerge in the random comments that I've seen/heard outside this site is that the Composer is quite 'intimate' in its presentation. The emphasis seems to be on frequency range rather than imaging. These comments suggest to me that it might not share a great deal in terms of imaging with the HD800S or K812 - and might share more in this respect with the Utopia. Any thoughts on this from those who've heard them?

When the composer was hinted, I was anticipating something dramatic in this regard, as this is the feature where companies have not pushed things too far as evidenced by the dramatic changes being made to the OAE -1. Even the OAE-1 is not going all out as Axel Grell cannot use the ring driver which he developed in Sennheiser. The ring driver being large and non spherical in shape makes the sound waves act more like planes of sound instead of spherical waves which improves soundstage as the spherical shape of the sound gives away its close proximity to the ears.

People sometimes call large soundstages artificial. Well no soundstage from a headphone is large enough to be artificial. It is the tampering with frequency response to increase soundstage that sounds artificial. Soundstage has a lot of room to be improved through geometric tricks, without tampering with the frequency response. As long as a headphone does not give the impression of listening to speakers to the listener, soundstage can be improved and even with the HD 800S you could sometimes feel the sound emanating from a point too close to your ears depending on the recording.

I just wish Axel had the freedom to go all out with his ideas in Sennheiser, but its sad ideal things just dont tend to happen in this world.

 

[Nomax]

@Trinkle
I think if you listen to the Composer you'll quickly realize how far ahead of the HD800s it is
(At the end of the day, it is still the tonal and technical performance that characterizes a model, and not the soundstage)

NOMAX

PS.lol

 

[jamesjames]

I agree the Grell phones seem very promising indeed. I've not mentioned these above, but the MySphere 3.2 and Sony MA900 are two models which I've owned and enjoyed - relying on forward driver positioning and angle - I hope the new Grell phone is even better. But to date the slightly 'closed' phones I've mentioned above (eg, HD800S) have seemed better to me in projecting a slightly more coherent performance space. As I've mentioned, I found the K812 extremely good in this regard also. On balance I've prefered them - and I use crossfeed. I'm hoping the Composer might have something to offer here too ...

 

[jamesjames]

@Trinkle
I think if you listen to the Composer you'll quickly realize how far ahead of the HD800s it is
(At the end of the day, it is still the tonal and technical performance that characterizes a model, and not the soundstage)

NOMAX

PS.lol

I'm not sure I agree with that. At the end of the day the apparent performance space is critical.

 

[Nomax]

I'm not sure I agree with that. At the end of the day the apparent performance space is critical.

AA has achieved what Sennheiser and Focal have not achieved to this day, and you can hear that very quickly and clearly

NOMAX

PS.Low End/Bass....I would gladly do without an oversized sound stage