[TakashiMiike]

Here are the frequency response of the M50 pitched against my standard of neutrality, the hd600. As you can tell from this the starting around 1.5K - 5k are quiet recessed, this is what you are hearing. My recommendation is to buy a new headphone, I don't like EQ'ing parts of a headphone up, however you can try it, you'll probably want to push those frequencies about 5-7 dB's.
 

 
I noticed the same thing when I had the m50's. Also..
 
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are they a real pair?  Where did you get them from?

Why does this come up whenever someone says something bad about a headphone you own?
 
He's hearing what I heard, I didn't like my m50 with vocals either, and sold them shortly after buying them (bought them used so don't tell me about supposed burn in).
 
Edit: Also this quote from another thread is quiet applicable and well said:
 
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Originally Posted by sesshin 

In recording school they taught us that EQ, while integral and important, should always be the last resort. You should strive to get your audio sounding as perfect as it can without EQ, and then EQ the bare minimum amount and not any more in order to sculpt the sound the way you see fit.
 
I see a lot of judicial EQing going on, which may be fine if you are stuck with one particular setup, but it would seem to me from a purity standpoint you would want to change something in your signal chain before resorting to EQ to fix it. For instance if your signal is too bright, switching to a darker pair of headphones or a darker amp would yield richer results as opposed to EQing the crap out of it.
 
In photography (which is my profession now) its the same way. When you take a photo you want it to be as perfect as possible right out of the camera. Any post Photoshop work should be subtle and minimal. Photographers who go overboard with Photoshop editing are trying to cover up a bad photo. It's the same with audio.

 

 

[Beagle]

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Does this increase sound leakage?????
 

No, not that I noticed.
 
 

 

[reivaj]

probably could have gotten something with more midrange focus to appreciate the vocals better. I am 100% with you on that. i listen primarily to trance, vocal trance, and progressive(pretty much a fan of armin and above and beyonds sets). I only really use my m50 for like hip hop where there is more bass emphasis and voice isnt as important as long as you can hear them.

 

[roma101]

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The M50s are all rounders. Not specialists. Whoever told you that Electronic is the M50's forte is probably shooting off his behind for that one. You should've gotten the HFI-580 for that genre, but since you bought the next best thing, enjoy it
 
Vocals though, they're more toward a "natural female" subgenre. Electronized (lol, is that a real word? XD) vocals don't really sound good on the M50, at least for me.
 

Agreed, I was thinking HFI-580's also. 
 

 

[jerg]

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I assume you meant 200 Hz and not 20 Hz there. He wants to bring up the vocals a bit, not drown them with bass.
 
 

I meant 20 Hz. It does not in fact drown out the vocals because M50's bass is mediocre in quantity without EQing (despite all the 'frequency chart bump herp derp").
 
higher bass frequency ranges (100~300 Hz) do accentuate vocals as well.
 

 

[TakashiMiike]

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I meant 20 Hz. It does not in fact drown out the vocals because M50's bass is mediocre in quantity without EQing (despite all the 'frequency chart bump herp derp").
 
higher bass frequency ranges (100~300 Hz) do accentuate vocals as well.
 

First off don't appreciate being called a herp derp for posting a frequency chart
 
Secondly vocals are much more complicated than that, your 100-300 Hz suggestion is kind of bogus.
 
Try eq'ing out the 1-5k range and listen to what it does to female vocals, it makes them sound recessed. I'd say the most important part for female vocals is 1-5k if you want them to be less recessed boost that range a bit. 
 
The 200 Hz range really has to do with the fullness of vocals, not how recessed they are.
 
But again my recommendation is buy new headphones.
 

 

[ucdavisboy]

To my ear the recessed mids can be all but solved with a couple (if not one) simple mods to the headphone and the right amp. Even powered right off my ipod 3.5 jack (yuck) the mids are only recessed to me because I know they are....and sometimes I forget. Amped and out of the dock port the mids are, if anything, forward. As always it depends on the individuals ear, source material and music type. For some reason on more highly compressed music, I find the M50 mids seem to drop back more relative to everything else. Same is true of older music that hasn't been remastered.