Hi everyone,
Some new thoughts on the ES10.
I'm one of the people which seperate (or try to) technical performance in audio equipment with colouration and voicing.
Last night I (finally) demoed the Audio Technica A1000X, and demoed the W1000X once more, I also tried the Shure SRH-1840. I've once held the Tesla T5p and A2000X as my favorites and I respect the K1000 so I'll use these headphones in this example. I also demoed some wooden edition Fischer Audio headphone and several IEM's which I'll omit.
Last night on a technical level I'd say the Shure SRH-1840 is the winner, you can hear it in the imaging and tonal quality, it's definitely pretty high performance so it'll win in several categories like imaging / seperation, SPL / extension for example the mids are a touch forward, it's not thin i.e. fairly nice depth etc.
On the other hand while losing in technical parameters like seperation and note quality, diffraction etc., the colouration and voicing is what makes a lot of Audio Technica headphones (and audio equipment in general) special and emotionally evocative. An enhanced or coloured TV with say, lots of blue and unnatural sharpness processing, would perhaps look cool but for some reason video is more about performance, like looking as natural and high-rez as possible with even colour balance, it seems like audio is often more often about sounding 'special'.
As such, the Shure SRH-1840 is the higher performance TV screen, but the Audio Technicas are often sonic pieces of art! In my demo the A1000X wasn't as special as I was hoping, it's actually fairly even-handed and not very captivating, of course it was a quick demo and there is something in there, though basically in my demo there wasn't 'enough' special-ness in there to warrant interest in it instead of a high-performance HP. Similar story for the W1000X, it looks stunning and all and perhaps there's some nice wooden voicing in there and the performance is fairly high, however it didn't click with my listening.
This is why the ES10 is so beautiful! To me it's a mystery of sound. The first time I heard it I couldn't quite 'hear' it or 'lock on' to the sound, it just sounded so unfamiliar, I thought that would pass fairly quickly as I became used to it, however every time I put it on and turn up the volume I still can't quite 'lock on' to it.
So combine the mysterious sound of endless shadows and sunlight with it's fairly MTV music type tailored FR and it's a pretty special HP.
A negative in my view is it's a little bass heavy for my ears since I usually prefer bass-light or r-shaped sound without sibilance at higher volumes. A plus is the bass is quite uniform and composed similar to the T5p, unlike for example the Denon D5000 which has unacceptable bass quality in my view. Another negative is it's quite sexy and captiving etc. however not very emotionally uplifting or musical like you want to dance or whatever.
If you only want pure performance values from a headphone you may as well skip straight to a Tesla T1 or K1000 though, or if you're after price versus performance there is Sony SA3000 and several alternatives.
These Audio Technicas like the ES10 and A2000X are niche sonic art.
So for me what it comes down to these days is pretty much 'how special sounding' versus 'how high performance', in that assessment the A1000X, W1000X and W5000 don't really captivate my senses sonically at least in quick sessions, and performance is lacking here or there, which leads to 'skip to K1000 / T1' thinking.
When I once compared the A2000X to the T5p I thought the A2x was laughably thin sounding like two pieces of paper, now when I think back depth vs thinness isn't as important and I place some more value in note purity, quality, voicing & source transparency.
