So the recent blackout on a certain other social media website made me decide to finally go ahead and make an account here, and I thought this would be a great place to start since I recently got a pair of these.
Hope this isn't too long for the first impressions thread lol, but didn't feel quite thorough enough for a complete review.
It's important to note before reading my impressions that gear wise, I haven't listened to as much as many people on here. I have Dali Zensor 1 bookshelf speakers & a Jamo J12 sub, in a suboptimal room (some major dips and peaks in the low end regardless of sub placement) for my non-headphone listening, and as far as headphones go, I have these K702s, Sennheiser HD25s, the original CAL!, and Sony DR-BTN200s for my bluetooth listening. I've also listened to I believe some variant of the Sony MDR-7506s, and the Sennheiser HD280s, but no other well known headphones.
For amp/dac I don't have anything nice/fancy but I've tried comparing them with just my phone (Redmi Note 8) where they don't get quite loud enough, my iPad Air 3 (where to my pleasant surprise they do), my Asus B550-E motherboard, my Pioneer VSX-531 receiver, and my Behringer UMC1820 audio interface, which is what I currently have them plugged into. It might just be placebo/in my head, but it feels like the soundstage is slightly wider with the UMC1820 and VSX-531 than my other devices, but otherwise it feels like the only difference is volume and even on my phone they sound fantastic, just a little quiet. At some point in future I'll probably invest in a cheap portable amp just so I can drive them properly with my phone, but for now I'd say these were much easier to drive than I expected.
The first thing I noticed about these was that they're my first headphones that are sensitive to head positioning. If my ears sit more forward in the cups, the soundstage is wider, whereas if they sit further back the soundstage narrows a bit. Usually I prefer the former but in some songs with a less well defined centre image I'll move the cups forward a bit.
Speaking of soundstage, that's what I bought them for, and as hoped they completely blew me away. With certain really immersive recordings, while listening with eyes closed I've actually flinched when it felt like an instrument or vocalist was moving just past me.
Frequency response wise, I don't have golden ears so take this with a pinch of salt, but to me it feels like the highlight with these has been female vocals, guitar, and drums - which I think means mids and mid/upper bass?
I expected these to be thinner in the bass region than they are. It reaches low, just doesn't have quite as much slam behind it as my CAL!s. Outside of EDM though I actually find the bass from these to be more satisfying than my other headphones, because the wider soundstage gives me the illusion that the bass is filling a room like a sub rather than just vibrating the inside of my head. Am I alone in that respect or does anyone else also feel like a bit of width adds something there?
If I had a complaint it'd be the initial comfort, as the headband was really uncomfortable for me the first few days and left my head stupidly sore, but thankfully it's loosened up now and these do seem to disappear on the head like some people say.
Are we allowed to link playlists here? Since getting these I've put together a Spotify playlist of the songs that I most enjoyed on these and thought I might share, but don't want to break any rules.
