Mine came today, I've been listening since I got home.
First, these are nice cans.
From some reviews I read I thought they might be too big for my average/narrow noggin, but they fit perfectly. Only gripes here are 1) maybe a slight bit heavier than I would like, and 2) the very edges of the pads itch a couple spots on my face and neck after a while. Very minor complaint. Mostly I tend to forget I'm even wearing them.
I'm coming from sony mdr-v4s, which are kind of bright and very detailed, very similar to the v6s, so in comparison the AD700s still sound a little dark and slightly veiled to me on some CDs. Years of playing guitar in indie rock bands knocked some sensitivity off my high end, so I tend to like some brightness. But the ATs are not an overly warm phone by any means, and I think I will probably adjust to them after they break in more and I get more used to them.
The soundstage on the other hand is really amazing. The presentation on a lot of things is very 3D, a very "in the music" experience. Whenever I went from the ATs to the sonys, I was like "what happened??"
The soundstage is so much more open, deeper and wider on the AD700s it's not even funny.
I think that, depending on the source, the bass is mostly fine, and is definitely waaay better than I was expecting. As others have pointed out, it just doesn't have that "slam" factor - but it's an open 'phone! Right now I'm listening to Kind of Blue on an old Panasonic SL-S160 PCDP with the XBS (bass boost) engaged, and the bass is near to perfection. Very tight, musical, no boominess or strain -- nice. Maybe I'm just not a bass head, but it sounds great to me.
Before the Miles Davis, I demoed New Order "Republic" on a sony CDP-302II, and that could have used a little bit more low-end enhancement, but it's really a preference call. I definitely didn't experience it as anything overly lacking or missing. Just to verify my impressions, I tested that CD on the panny, and it did fill out a little more, but not to the extent that I really thought the phones sounded crappy without the boost.
Going back before that was XTC Nonsuch -- I find that cd and English Settlement so amazingly well engineered I frequently use them as reference discs. Here it was the same story with the bass -- perfectly adequate imo. But here is where I really thought the mids and highs sounded more veiled and muted than I'm used to. That was the first thing I listened to and was in direct A/B comparison with the sonys so naturally it sounded a bit darker. Still, personally I think I would like to hear a little more "sparkle factor" in that range on the AD700s.
I noticed also on Kind of Blue during some of the sax notes that there is something a bit funky going on in one of the midrange freqs. Can't really pinpoint it yet, it's somewhere probably around 1-3k I think. Nothing major, I heard maybe a little boxiness that stood out at one point. Maybe it was just the note. But overall, I have to say jazz sounds absolutely *amazing* on these headphones. Best genre so far.
I tried listening to some things from my laptop, but my DAC isn't here yet and I couldn't really take too much of it. In general, it all sounded a little flat compared to the better sources, so I think it's not a fair test of the phones. Some really good mp3s sounded okay, I could listen casually to most of it if I had to. I think here the DAC is obviously going to make a huge difference, and then I'll be able to tell if possible a fiio is necessary to fill things out more like with the panny.
I also tested the AD700s straight from a sansui g-4500, and neither bass nor mid/highs were a problem there (to say the least
). I had to turn the treble way down, in fact. The bass was full and rich, and that actually describes the AD700s pretty well. I love the sense of depth and openness of these phones, and the sansui's strengths of clarity and power seem to match the AD700s perfectly. They really take power well, and through the sansui I didn't find any distortion whatsoever up to the point where it was too loud for me to go any higher. Not so on the portable, but with the right source, these things are smoooth up to as loud as you can take it.
Well, that turned into more of a lengthy review than I had intended. I hope those initial impressions help add to the info about these phones -- I think they're a really good value. For my preferences, the highs and especially mids could be slightly more pronounced to give less of a veiled sound on some material, and I can see how some people would want more authority in the bass. With the right source though, there is no problem there at all imho. If after a few weeks I find I'm still missing something in the mids, I'll think about checking out something else. But so far I think the strengths of these phones overshadow their weaknesses, especially for the price, and that they're worth giving some time to break in and get adjusted to.
B+/A-
