Ok, let me get this first bit out of the way: I don't like ATs. I've listened to the AD700, AD900, ESW9, ESW10JPN, 10VTG, W10, W11, and L3000 (and some of those model numbers might be slightly off, as they drive me nuts). In every case, they all sounded badly like I was listening to two small speakers strapped to the sides of my head. While the tonality of the ESW10JPNs was spot on, they were just too boring for $500 and, I feel, desperately need a re-cable for them to deliver enough detail, making them very seriously expensive for what they are. However, I live in Stax and AT-land, Japan, so I figured that sure there must be at least one AT out there that doesn't sound awful to me, without having to outlay crazy amounts of cash. May Edit: I've ended up liking the ESW10JPN's, strangely enough. My ears (or actually my brain) seem to have changed.
After a chat with some other head-fi'ers, I decided to "take one for the team" and get a pair of A1000X. The reason for this was 3-fold: Nobody has written anything much on them, except brief comments by GuSensei and another HF'er who has the A2000X. Secondly, if I don't like them, I can sell them here. Thirdly, if I do like them, I can sell them here and buy the A2000X, which isn't that much more expensive. I also might bring them to Canjam, wife and wallet permitting.
Ok, onto the cans themselves:
First impression was how very light the box was, light enough that I wondered if there were headphones in there at all. I haven't owned any very light cans since my MB Quarts, so it was a pleasant thought that they might be light enough not to give me a headache like new HD-600s and K701s do. The packaging is a reasonable balance between being fancy, neat and holding the phones in place. Fancy packaging can easily add $30 to the cost of a product, so, nice as it is, in principle I object to the over-engineering of what's just going to sit in my cupboard the whole time I own a pair of headphones.
Once I worked out the mild origami to get the headphones out while keeping the box in perfect condition, I actually read the blurb, which was in English. I'm glad I did. There was mention of an OCCC cable -- good going. They are obviously aimed at headphiles, so it didn't go about explaining the acronym and they aren't found in shops hanging off a hook on the demo rack over here. The cans themselves are only 275 grams -- stuff-all basically, very much giving a "neatly-moulded plastic" feeling, though very much a mass-manufacture impression, with none of the attempted fancy-ness you get with, say, Denons, and no shiny-ness such as you get with Sennheiser HD-600s or 650s. The headphone arcs are thin springs of flat metal, the cups are just fairly basic formed aluminium and the 3.5mm plug + 6.5mm adaptor are neither bad nor great. The funniest thing is the frame, which is aluminium, but is coated in such a way that the first time I saw it, I swore it was plastic!
I can't say I'm ever happy to have pleather ear pads, but at least they aren't the annoying shape that most ATs have that sit on your ears, even with the circumaural (full-size) models. The thing that annoyed me the most about full-size ATs was that the pads needed to be thicker so the soundstage (headstage) could come out. Pleasantly, I noticed the drivers are angled forward, along with the pads, giving me hope that they might actually have a proper soundstage, instead of the wide-but-with-no-depth sound other ATs I've tried had.
Putting them on my head, the fit sucked totally first go. If you have a very wide head, they'll fit right, but it was obvious that adjustment of the headband arcs was going to be necessary for me, as the pads were sitting on my head touching under the ears, but not above. Not surprisingly, pressing in from the sides while listening to music, the amount of bass changed considerably, not to mention the comfort. I carefully re-shaped the arcs at the sides just above where they are screwed in and at the top to make the arc more oval than round and that improved things. It took me a few small adjustments to get them close to "right". I was being careful to adjust in small increments so I didn't end up leaving any obvious bends in the arcs. If they clamped hard, rather than soft, the bass would end up sounding like you had a subwoofer straped to your head, so the light clamping they were designed with is close to ideal for them, though initially I feel they need to be slightly tighter to bring out a tad more bass.
Speaking of the bass, while I was experimenting with pressing the headphones in closer to my ears, I noted that there seems to be some, but not a lot of reverberation was going on with the headphones themselves. So far, I don't feel it's going to be something requiring a markl-style damping treatment, as the headphones don't have enough mass, and the bass isn't strong enough to mess up the rest of the sound. However, I'm also wondering where the deep bass is, as it's hinted at, but isn't really delivered.
Incidentally, when I first joined Head-fi, I had considered ATs to replace my MB Quarts, which similarily have large drivers and are light-weight. A few months ago, I bought a pair of new-old-stock QP 250s, which are similarly closed with pleather pads. Unlike my QP 55Xs, they combination of making them closed and using pleather pads results in more bass, but the at serious expense of the treble. Swapping pads would bring back the treble but nuke the bass. The A1000X thankfully does not suffer from this problem, sounding somewhere in between the very bright QP 55Xs and the QP 250, but with a similar, fairly "light-and-bright" sound, but with some pleasing, if not reach-in-and-grab-you-by-the-balls deep bass. They remind me somewhat of the Grado HF-1s in this regard so far (the only Grados I've tried unfortunately, so I don't know enough about Grados in general), having just been un-boxed.
Switching to my Zu-recabled HD-600s emphasises the brightness of the A1000X, the HD-600s sounding heavier and thicker with less treble emphasis and more in the lower end of the spectrum. Considering the HD-600s are some of my brighter cans, that says a lot. Maybe they would be good for someone looking for a Grado sound in a closed headphone?
Initially they are somewhat harsh-sounding, but showing good potential if the soundstage can open up, the bass develops, the mids and treble end up less tinny-sounding and the harshness goes. Despite being closed cans and fairly closed-sounding, they have some hits of spaciousness. Unlike most cans which have deliberately uneven padding to angle the drivers slightly forward, the part of the frame the pads sit on in the A1000X is wider at the back and the pads are a consistent thickness all round.
Ok, I think that'll do for initial impressions. I know everyone will want pics, so I'll get onto that shortly. The A1000X's are going to get over-night burn-ins and be played simultaneously with my Stax when I listen with them. I'll report back in a few days with more impressions. Also, I know someone will ask me how they sound with the Compass, so I'll try them with that later.
May 31 Update:
They've now had a few days of burn-in. The treble and mids have lost their hardness. I spend a few hours listening with borrowed ESW10JPNs to get the Stax sound out of my head, and gone from not liking them to considering buying a pair. Anyway, the A1000X: Supposedly my C2C amp is on the sweeter side of neutral, compared to some amps that are more "straight wire with gain", which is good, as the A1000X are still bright, but with this amp, not fatiguingly so, for me at least. I wonder if a tube hybrid amp would be the go for them? The sound with them is still very much "aluminium", compared to the "wood" of the ESW10JPN's, making me wish for more romance in the sound. I think the issue is still that they need a bit more in the mid-bass region to sound good. The result is a "light" sound, with most of energy still in the upper regions of the frequency spectrum. Pushing the cans closer into one's head still pushes up the bass and lowers the treble, but it's not entirely satisfactory. I don't consider them, at this stage, particularly fast headphones, that is, when music gets complex, there is some smearing of the sound, and the separation is somewhat poor. However, I am used to Stax, which just don't do this. Switching to ESW10JPN's (a pair with low hours on them, note), the bass is there, and the mids and vocals are sweeter, without the more peaky treble of the A1000X. In fact, the 10's sound dark in contrast. However, they have the similar characteristic of making piano and some other instruments sound somewhat tinny.
As an interesting experiment I then switched to my HD-600s. They share a darker top-end with the 10's, but without the mid-bass hump that the 10's have that give the sound body. The spaciousness of the sound after both the other cans was a shock.
I've finally taken pictures too.
Gear used:
MacBook Pro → Audio-gd Reference 1 DAC → Audio-gd C2-C.
[size=xx-small]Cables: PS Audio & Audio-gd power cables, Van Den Hul Optocoupler, The First Ultimate and The Orchid ICs.[/size]
