That's what they were like here, too, for the first week. Utterly cold and no contrast whatsoever. Later on, they had music played through with an adapted EQ for a night non-stop, and they improved. Burn-in with the right EQ makes all the difference. Now they're pretty much straight in frequency response, they also play nicely with an Apple Touch 4G player, though my ATH-M40 are modded rather heavily.
 

I'm curious, how did you mod yours?