Fanny Wang 2003 Headphones 2000 Series

A buddy of mine found a pair of these at microcenter for $30 on a crazy close out deal. The retail for these is $250. I borrowed them from him to test them out and give them a review and all I can say is they weren't even worth the 30 bucks. 
 
The first fundamental problem with these is they have an amplifier built in. That's great but it's not clean at all. You can hear the distortion it causes in the bass when you turn it on. You can also hear the bass rattle the plastic in the headphones on some tracks. The headphones have pass through but with the amplifier off the bass is gone completely, so in order to get these to sound anything like a headphone you have to have the amp on. 
 
The Bass:
 
Completely overbearing and muddy. Distorted to an extreme in some situations by the amplifier.
 
The Mids:
 
The mids on these headphones seem crushed down. They don't flow throughout the full sound of the headphone and it sounds as if they are trying to condense them for the bass. You get bass where you should get mids on the bottom side and you get nothing on the top side. 
 
The Highs:
 
The highs are rolled in to the mids at a fairly low frequency and are gone on top. There is nothing going on in the higher frequency ranges. They just cannot hit them. Acoustic guitar and voices suffer greatly from this and the clarity does as well. 

I wanted to like these headphones so badly... 
I was looking for a headphone that looked sweet and had great sound. I did some research and looked at some videos on youtube. Unfortunately i didnt have a chance to listen to them before i ordered them. I took the leap and i am quite disappointed. 
 
 

(a cool picture, if i do say so myself) 
 
Design 
They resemble the beats by Dr look a lot... and that is definitely a plus cause they are sleek, nicely finished and what feels like a REALLY solid build. I like the simplicity of the headphones and the color scheme was sick. They also have a really hard clamp to your head. They are heavy cans and after about an hour, my temple started to hurt while listening to music. Unsure if it was the cans or the sound that made my head hurt... 
Lets just jump into the sound
 
 
PRE AMP
The cans require 2 AAA batteries to run the pre amp and this thing is not good. Compared to any dedicated amp this thing is pointless. It really just boost the sound and makes them a little nicer on the ears but NOT much. They sound best just straight out of a ipod or laptop, dont bother with the DAC or Amp... In my testing they sounded worse on a dedicated system. WHich was really weird to me. Also this pre amp has a STUPID hiss to it. When watching youtube videos of just someone talking i had to turn the amp off to get rid of the hiss and crackle in the background from the video. 
 
Highs
SOOOOO BRIGHT! I cant listen to all my songs on, on mode/bass boost because of how harsh the highs are. They are ear hurting highs. The clarity is quite good comparative but at high db it just sounds bad... no other words to describe it
 
Mids
They are recessed... lack detail and clarity. The soundstage also doesnt help, it feels quite claustrophobic. I love my closed back headphones, but these things bring small soundstage to a new level. 
 
Bass
This is the only thing that shines on these cans. On bass boost the bass is thumping and quite good. It is deep and never gets muddy like some other phones in this class. These cans are made for hip/hop rap and dubstep/electronic.
 
I got these cans for $130 in LIKE NEW condition and now i understand why they were much cheaper then their retail suggested price. They are very cool looking and have a sweet design. The cable has some cool features, like a splitter to share music with your friends but the sound is just not good compared to even headphones in the $150 range. I understand the concept, they are an all in one set of headphones. Pre amp and sweet look while delivering some heavy bass. I would recommend them if you are not super into the sound and want a portable pair of headphones that THUMP. My beyerdynamic dt770 pro and Shure SRH840 blow these things out of the water. when i listen to the fanny wangs i want to just stop and switch to my other pair of cans. 
 
I guess there arent really celebrity endorsed headphones that dont sacrifice some sound... I dont get why they cant look great and sound great... Save yourself the hassle and get the Audio Technica M50s or Shure SRH840. If you want really deep bass and have a decent set up get a pair of beyerdynamics