[Harryo]

I have recently purchased the Roland RH-50 headphones for use with a portable DAB radio and an MP3 player and have been impressed with their performance.

I'm now wondering what the Roland RH-A30 headphones are like and wondered if anyone has tried them, if so would be interested in hearing comments on them

Harryo

 

[gelogelo2165]

i've had them for 3 years.
They're great really, haha.
Clean and balanced good for studio work and mixing.
really well-built too hope i helped.

 

[rayjuodas]

 
Sorry for double-posting. I copy pasted this from another thread where RH-A30 was mentioned. Yeah, I have them and I had RH-300 before them. They are great. Sparkly (too sparkly?), well balanced. I wish I could compare them to Sennheiser HD595, but I don't have those anymore. I think in some ways they sound similar (I might be wrong though - I know how fragile and subjective our memory can be), I liked HD595 very much, but they were too veiled in the highs and I could not use them for judging mixes, but sheer music enjoyment was immense with them (as well as watching movies).
RH-300, on the other hand, was a little subdued in the highs and maybe a touch too exaggerated in the "mud" spectrum (around 500 hz), so overall presentation was a bit too "dark", if I can use this word. I have written a full blown comparison of 7 closed headphones way back, and wasn't quite sure which one is better: ATH-M50 or RH-300 (RH-300's sound signature seemed to match my Dynaudio BM15 studio monitors a bit more closely, except for less prominent highs on the phones). Anyway, since then I've sold RH-300 and got RH-A30 instead, and still, kept my M50 (these seem to work best for judging mixes (as a different perspective to monitors)). RH-A30 are more bright (maybe even too bright for my taste, but sometimes it's good - i.e. using them with the darker sounding albums), not "boomy" at all, although they have bass in them.
Here's my comparison, for anyone interested: http://www.head-fi.org/t/575445/7-closed-headphones-vs-dynaudio-bm15-monitors-srh840-ath-m50-ath-a900-rh-300-q40-hfi680-pro-dj100-etc

 

[koolas]

I have RH-A30. Will do a review some day, but for now I will just say they are good. I compared them in shop to ATH-M50, and I preferred them. It's because RH-A30 sound IMHO cleaner than ATH-M50. In shop I used Beethoven 3rd symphony, and Airport tune from J. O'Callaghan Subculture album.

First I tried ATH-M50 and played the symphony. I was really impressed with the sound ATH-M50 produce that I couldn't wait to see how RH-A30 will do, and so I tried them next. After just first few seconds I already noticed RH-A30 sound cleaner, more transparent. The high treble range on ATH-M50 to me sounded quite uncontrolled and imprecise, while on RH-A30 they sound extremely accurate. To put it in simple terms - I was in shock that cans for 200 euros can sound so good. Then I tried trance tune expecting some problems with low end, but I was surprised again - the low end was very present and well controlled. I just bought them and continued listening at home.

I find them very hard to use with pop music, because most of pop is badly mastered, and on these cans you will hear all that. Apparently both classical music and electronic music are usually well mastered and in that case it is a genuine pleasure to listen to. I use headphone out of my NAD744 toslinked and set to Tone Defeat off course. I tried also headphone out of PMA500, but the I didn't like the soundstage. One that I get from NAD is really extreme, something very unique.

On these headphones the difference is easy to spot. Just lunch some game with 3D sound and you'll see how easily you can point out where the source of sound was. Not only direction, but also distance, you just know exactly where the sounds are coming from. When listening to symphony orchestra you will easily know where each section was located relative to microphone used for recording.

RH-A30 are my current favorite headphone. Before I was considering getting HD600, but now I just know it's not going to happen, because these cans sound better.