Backstory: These sat in my headphone cupboard mostly unused for almost two years. Periodically, I pulled them from the shelf, built up some inspirational hope, placed them on my head, and then felt a pull for one of my other headphones.

The Joy: In the beginning the electric bass electrified me, and audiophile recordings for jazz and rock made for sonically pleasing playlists for these, but I never found them able to genre hop - a requirement for my style of listening. Basically, you could find an album that sounded tantalizing, but poke about, and the air went out.

Step Up: I found the overall signature too dark. Without the foam inserts, the treble held too much sway, but with the black inserts, you had great harmonic balance between bass, mids, and treble but I also felt some of that old Sennheiser veil. Music isn’t supposed to be always soft like silk. And certainly, play a low-fi album or one poorly mastered or just an old MP3 and these headphones do fall apart. I always admired how the Sennheiser HD650 could take just about anything and make it all Sennheiser HD650ish. What made those headphones glorious almost always worked. Aeon Flow demands great recordings for great sound.

I got a Ifi Micro Black Label for my other main headphones, and basically shoved these to the back of the headphone cupboard once again. Yet like I have for two years, I pulled them out periodically and honestly, with the pairing with the Micro Black Label, I felt it was a step up from my Chord Mojo. I know, such decadence to have both. Mojo is without question amazing, and I’m sure many folks love the pair with Dan Clark’s headphones. Still, it created a shift.

Do Your Own Work: There is a secret I can tell you now that will increase your listening pleasure by multitudes. I imagine most people may be put off by it. I get that. Still, I’m just saying that if you want to do one thing in your life that will increase your listening experience, it’s this: meditate.

Meditation just gives you one path - I mean there are lots of practices throughout the world that help you concentrate. I am saying though musical experience is as much as about the listener as it is how you listen and what you listen to. Truth is, we could do reviews on how well we listen - and that would tell us as much about our listening experience as a headphone review.

To some extent, we buy headphones that do the concentrating for us. Have ADD or just want headphones to cut through your crap and capture you with music? Do you need that addictive, pounding bass to constantly bring you back to the music? No jazz trio or concerto for you! That’s fine though. Enjoy your trip. I can say with 100 percent confidence you don’t need to buy these headphones.

I don’t think you’ll get the awe of the first listen to Sennheiser HD650. Check on the Internet, you can find so many people disdaining the Aeon Flow Closed, and really, Dan Clark is with you to some extent: he did make a newer, better version. And well, I can’t comment on it because I haven’t heard it, and man, I’m slow when it comes to understanding headphones anyway.

Put in the work of concentration though, and I think these shine.

The Kool-Aid: I think these cans need to be homebound. If you want a politer headphone for the office, it could work. I don’t like polite headphones for the office, but that’s a separate tangent. They certainly leak some sound though, and they don’t really isolate exceptionally well either. The main use though for them is deep listening.

I have scoliosis so my standard for comfort goes beyond what most people want. These truly rest lightly on your head, don’t even way much in your hands. Yes, I’m slightly biased as that I did listen to Hifiman 500 for a couple years - certainly a scoliosis no-no. As I’ve aged, I now must have comfort, and these provide that like a favorite sweatshirt.

With the black inserts, you get a little planar, warm magic, but nothing overrides or pulls you to one part of the musical spectrum. Everything is effortless, comfortable. You don’t have a wide soundstage and you do find yourself close to the action, like three or four rows back if those kinds of descriptions make sense to you (they only do for me once I’ve heard the headphones). You won’t get an endgame experience in detail or separation, but they also don’t compromise on any of that. By having all parts of the spectrum be in balance, they can be boring, especially with the south of neutral, warm sound signature. That boredom though reflects on myself, my inability to engage with the music, to listen deeply. When I am in a mode of concentration, what was once boring now lets me hear it all in a way of intimacy with my ears that I suddenly find breathtaking.

I can get lost in Eddie Vedder’s recent homemade release or I can pull out my morning playlists that often start with classical, move onto ambient, some jazz, a little folk, build up with alternative or EDM, dip into underground rap or some experimental stuff with an edge and conclude with some soul or R&B. With these cans, I can close my eyes for forty minutes and go there.

Want to be seduced by headphones? Dan Clark has lots of other options, but if you want a musical landscape that allows you the listener to engage with the music, these planars do the trick.

Highly recommended as such.

I can't imagine another 650 review is needed for the known universe, especially here on headfi. While I enjoy reading them, I also don't take the "objective" reviews seriously. While I would everyone to have the cans that move them into a space for deep listening for music, I can only be concerned here with my ears. And what I hear from the 650 goes beyond the "veil" or analytical accounts of treble range or sub bass. What we have here is an artistic expression - masterfully done. It's more than just the science or looks. What I know is that from the very first point I put these on, I feel myself falling deeply into the music, even my songs produced poorly or poorly ripped or just plain old. I entered into the zone of music for some profound enjoyment of different musical artists.
 
In listening, the number one factor for enjoying music still comes down to me, the state of my mind, my ability to listen deeply. All I ask of the cans is to meet me there when I'm ready.
 
When I'm open and wearing these headphones, I fully music.
 
With these cans, music is a verb.

I have my home listening station featuring a Hifiman 500 and the necessary economic infrastructure needed to make those shine. That's where I spend time deep listening, sipping hot tea, moving into a musical headspace with no distractions. Highly recommended use of free time, but has actually nothing to do with this review other than to acknowledge that I do not recommend the Westone UM Pro30 for only listening to music.
 
Instead, I've found that time commuting, walking, and performing the repetitive chores of being a high school English teacher have all jumped up a level of joy and in a way consciousness with these headphones. These headphones are for music as background, but moving throughout the foreground as well. As a person with too much anxiety/creativity/intellect at times, the bass emphasis without being basshead cans is grounding. Furthermore, there's just enough micro detail while walking through the woods and listening to Four Tet it's almost an intoxication. And yet, because the top end is present but the lesser of three, I find the music never supersedes what you're doing, a necessity for my use of IEM's.
 
Grading high school freshmen essays is a painful tedium that you could compare to your own work-use of headphones. Most of them have merit: kids try hard for the most part to be common core, but most also lack any originality, have so many mistakes that I'm essentially looking for the biggest fire, and many kids as freshmen simply don't have the cognitive ability yet to develop complex analysis. Not dumb, just not happening. So, I can spend two or three hours doing this, and each kid will get a little better if you do it right and return it promptly.
 
Enter Explosions in the Sky. Quality post rock can pull me through the final hurdles of essay grading. Never start there, but with the Westones, the power guitar soaring over the thundering bass keeps me from checking out while at the same time, the soaring highs don't pull me from what I'm attempting to finish. The kids never have any idea that their required revisions to finalize the grade happened because of this.
 
So that's my recommendation with these: Accessories to life when you want the actual life part to be in the lead.