I thought hd598 cs would do the job, but was disappointed. Sounded to me like speakers covered with a blanket. Dull and boring. After two weeks returned them back to Amazon.
It's a little difficult to reconcile those requirements and reality vs what you're hearing.
If you're "treble sensitive" it's easy enough to find something with less treble than that...however you already hear them like they're veiled. Which is weird considering they have a practically flat plateau from 500hz to 2000hz, barely dips at 3000hz, then peaks up at 4000hz, then nose dives at 5800hz, then you have a high peak at 9000hz. Basically, it's very, very, very difficult to reconcile being treble sensitive when this sounds veiled as opposed to "borderline scratching a black board."
If you had the HD650 it could just be a matter of the bass plateau needing trimming (or get an HD600 and trim the 3500hz peak if it hurts), but in your case, recommending anything with smoother and weaker treble than the 598CS can make your problem worse, but getting something with more treble can be problematic as most tend to just have more jagged response with louder treble peaks.
If you can tweak that I'd take the pads off and get rid of the foam covering the driver; or whatever you're using to drive these has a high output impedance boosting its bass, something that will make it problematic on any low impedance headphone you get since they will all get EQ-d, but it can go either way. Also, wherever you buy, make sure you can either try them out in the store or if online, that they have a decent return policy.
Recently, I have been listening to Grados sr 225e , and while I like the bass, the highs iritate my ears.
I listen mostly to bass jazz, blues, and classical music, and l double-bass, cello, drums are my favorite instruments.
If by "bass" you mean the hard, higher frequency bass notes on the "attack" of the drums on, for example, a Mighty Mo Rogers or Michael Ruff track, then that's not surprising as Grados do well in that area. Too well that, objectively, it's not necessarily good - they have an upper bass peak followed by an early bass roll off. Which means that if you're referring to the really low bass and you have a lot of it in there, it adds more to the possibility that whatever you're plugging them into has a high output impedance that is messing with the sound, so it's hard to rely on graphs since your gear will change it (and not in a predictable manner) on top of your own perception and the way you wear the headphones (ie wearing Grados slightly forward from the ear canal reduces how bad that treble can be for example; wearing headphones too tight also boosts the bass; etc).
Are there closed-back headphones with good bass and gentle highs for sensitive ears
? Thank you very much.
(After some research I put together a list of the headphones that, according to the reviews I read, could fulfill my expectations. And there are: ATH M50x, MSR7, HD380, V-MODA-100, Momentum 2. Any thoughts on these? )
Maybe try the HD380 but given it isn't one of the more expensive and more audiophile let alone esoteric products, see if local stores - maybe even pro audio stores - have demo units first and preferably try it with the exact device you're using.
