[u2raides]

 
 
          Hello enthusiasts or people who might be interested in one person's take on these ultra expensive cans.
 
          Before I begin, I would just like to state that I don't consider myself to be an ultra hardcore audiophile. Haviing said this, however, I do listen to a fair bit of music, not to mention being an amateur musician who knows how an electric guitar, piano, drums, and base guitar sound like live. I have certainly owned a few excellent headphones in my time, I have had the pleasure of listening music through "Shure SE530's, grados 225I, and more recently the 'Koss Portapros." The Shure's sounded excellent; but they just coudn't achieve that "Large sound stage" that full size headphones could offer, but the details and clarity were all there. The grados were really punchy but thin sounding. Believe it or not, the "koss portapros," I thought, sounded the best of the three, offereing a solid bass not too boomy but definetly there, and the sound separation was rather good. Trebles sounded good, mids were nicer. I eventually decided to set out on a quest to find the best sounding phones that would play decently from an un-amped ipod. I took the plunge, and forked out a paycheque on the Ultrasone Edition 8's.
 
          Initially, to my dismay, I was un-impressed by these aristocratic phones. They sounded weak and thin.. that is, until I realized that I wasn't wearing them properly. You see, I placed the cups on my ears rather than tucking my ears inside the cups themselves. Therefore not achieving a complete seal. Once I did finally figure out how to wear them, the sound became much fuller and louder. They sounded great, but not outstanding. And so I decided to try and burn them in. I would play them incessantly for eight hours straight during the night and than let them rest during the day, repeating this process for about  a week . What happened during this time was interesting, at abouth 30 or 40 hour mark, the sound became more dynamic, I started to hear subtle details and nuances that I am convinced I never heard before. In addition, the overall sound presentation started to sound rawer, as though the songs were recorded in a live concert environment. You could actually hear the echoes in the vocals. What happend next was puzzling. At about the 50 hour mark to about the 90 hour mark. The sound detiorated.The music sounded muddier. The datails and nuances were still there but they lost that live and raw feel to it. Than all of a sudden at about the 100 hour to 110 hour the phones underwent a sort of metamorphosis, the songs sounded even more rawer than before and that live presentation became more intense. I'm currently at about 120 hours of burn in and am shooting for 200 hours. I will keep you posted. Incidently, to those who might be concerned, theses headphones can achieve a very loud volume plugged through an iphone by headphone standards.