certain people's dirty

I decided to extend this mod to try to combat a bit of the harshness in treble that reared its head after "opening it up" in all the previous mods, namely by doing the well-known blu-tack mod. I covered most of the earcup, and also mass-loaded the baffle with some blu-tack in strategic...

I hope this would be interesting to all fans of this headphone, as well as people looking for great bang for buck in closed on-ear.   I got a used pair of 518DJs and although I generally liked the sound, there were just a couple things that bothered me. The mid-upper bass was strongly...

Many people prefer the Schiit amps to the O2, so you might be happier this way anyway. I tried out the HD650 for about 2 months but in the end I went back to HD600 - I found the 650 too mid-bassy and thick. Recently picked up a Valhalla 2 and I'm over the moon. I personally don't think the X2 is...

I've added it to the reddit /r/headphones database, thanks!

I liked the K518.

Ya, could be. I still find the AAP bass to be on the loose side regardless. I haven't listened to CAL and it side by side, so that observation may be useless. The overall sound I still liked on the CAL though, that much I can say for pretty certain. They're probably kind of comparable.

I personally would rate the CAL! sound quality to be a bit higher. I think the bass is better controlled on the CAL!. The overall signature is relatively similar though, and they both have some signs of slow decay pointing to driver housing resonance. The build quality on the Sony is much much...

I agree, but the poster you were replying to was referring to the pad at the top of the head.

It's not a high res example of close micing. I'll try to find a more modern example.

Check out this clip:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N15_3_TP7I   Jascha Heifetz was notorious for insisting being mic'd super close, and the resulting recording is not what I'd call pleasing.   Listen from about 17:29 for a long cadenza.

Oh, it's not a "pleasant" sound that we hear under the ear when we play, especially if we're trying to project in a big hall. Kind of like how stage actors have to exagerrate all the consonants to make the words be understood in the back row. If you talked like that normally people would think...

I think what you're hearing is just detail you never heard before - a violin when mic'd very close, you hear all the hiss that actually is produced by the instrument. I know, because we violinists strive to produce that hiss under our ear - that's when we know that we're hitting the overtones...

HD650 has a pretty astonishingly good treble resolution, but I haven't heard any Stax. :P

I was gonna mention those but the price is high and the clamping force is immense.

V-Moda M100 I believe is going on sale.

Just picked up a pair for my wife - lovely warm and musical signature. I could easily use these instead of my Momentum 1 if it weren't for the chintzy build quality. Not saying they're matching them totally sonically or anything - the Momentum is more detailed and quicker - but it's an absolute...

I actually found the 545 a bit too bright for my taste but yeah, very articulate and clean, very different from these Sony's. I wanted a commuting headphone and for that I found the sound a bit too thin and lean. Also just a bit too much treble energy for classical. Edit, I just realized we are...

  Not even in the slightest?

Hmm. Obviously give them a week of intensive listening, but there's quite a few other headphones that fit inbetween those two tonally. I would consider HD600 on the warmer side closer to the X2, and the K701 on the more analytical side closer to Shure. Or if you want mostly neutral sound with a...

It's like figure skating. One judge's 8 is another's 10, and another's 3. And then there's the corruption.

Mind you, these plots are always "one HD600" vs "one HD580", and manufacturing variance also plays a pretty big role, so ideally we'd have bigger sample sizes for differences to have more meaning.

Treble ridges in CSD plots are known to be audible to the human ear, though, and not in a pleasant way.

  IMO violins have enough HF info that you can hear a bit of the edginess, from my listening anyway. Also I'm sensitive as hell to anything unnatural happening in string instrument timbres due to my experience with them.