Well, opening the box, I had set my expectations aside. But boy does the build quality impress: rock solid, tank like cans, yet not heavy. Now I became nervous, what if Philiphs had poured all the budget into build quality, and not sound?
 
I plugged them into my amp, put my complex Arjen A. Lucassen "Starchild" track on which all my headphones are measured against, and they did not faulter. Instruments had their own place, all the specialties of Arjens instruments could be heard, and coming to the heavy space parts, it was very deep and rich for an openback. Here some few closed backs and planars will pull ahead, but no other midfi dynamic will do that. The extremely powerful singing of the few elite, could be heard clearly and naturally. Impressive.
 
Trebles were detailed, and lack the grain most people are on about. Trebles are clear compared to sennheisers HD600 slightly veiled ones. Due to the scoop in the treble range of what I remeber is about 6hz, there is no resonance in ear for me, which means these needed no further equlization out of box. Mids are mids though, they are good and impressive for the price, but nothing I notice or praise, they are just too well balanced.
 
Summary: Philips golden ears project apparently paid off and they created a headphone which punches way above its price (and on sale, imo unbeatable audiophile price/performance value), which even don't need an amp to sound decent (but will still benefit from one)

Shocked, to say the least, is what I was when I first listened to my DT880 250ohm. My jaw dropped. All the negative reviews were right, Beyer made a treble cannon instead of headphones. My despair deepened further when I heard no bass extension, still after a nice and loud 24h burn in. Literally no sub bass could be heard (30hz) and bass was extremely weak. I had to take out the big guns, my dads old amp, that extremely smooth and dark. Bass knob went to the maximum before it could have been considered balanced sounding. Trebles improved slightly by tuning them way down, but rang metallic through and through, though muddied.
 
Build is also an extremely mixed bag. Whereas the cans are nice aluminium, the headband fastening and adjusting points are extemely cheap plastic, which made the whole headphone feels flimsy. Comfort is A grade though.
 
My recommendation is to stay far away, anything by a serious manufacturer in the 100 to 300$ range will outshine these like a supernova. Dt880 will profoundly disappoint anyone serious about their quest for natural, balanced and rich sound.