I've got about 120 hours on my new ESW9s and together with the Sony A867 they're delivering an amazing experience. Deep, textured bass. Full-bodied and silky smooth mids. Rolled off highs - very polite - with no harshness. Surprisingly wide soundstage too. I listen to mid to low tempo nujazz and jazz and they're fairly magical with this kind of music.
Out of the box they were a bit boomy actually, but that disappeared altogether after putting many hours of burn-in on them. To my ears I don't see these as muffled as some have claimed. Perhaps they needed that burn-in? Perhaps it's a question of clamp pressure and fit. Or maybe it's the wood styling that just gives that impression? When trialling on-ear phones in general, I've found that pressing down hard can make a headphone boom, and wearing them light can make them 'tweet'. I'm lucky that the ESW9 fits my head and ears like a glove. Their comfort has taken me by surprise.
One aspect of Joker's review that was particularly insightful: these headphones are beautiful and even though they're not flimsy per se, there is definitely the tendency to baby them. They're much smaller than they look in photographs, but they're not compact and they don't isolate well. They're actually more of a portable 'home use' headphone rather than an on-the-go piece of kit.
My Sony A867 (64GB) is the Japanese version, which comes with digital noise cancelling (when used with stock IEMs). I love this for listening to podcasts on the tube. I bought it from the Malaysian equivalent of Craigslist! As much as I loved my X1500, this is hands-down the better sounding player. The narrow soundstage/crosstalk of the X is gone. It's altogether more clinical and when paired with the ESW9 I feel there's a great balance between the two with no EQ necessary.
I chose the ESW9 because from reading the archives it looks like it has never been flavour of the month. Five years on it is still highly regarded, used and recommended by Head-fiers. Count me amongst their number! Thanks to the members who took the time to respond to my PMs as I researched the portable on-ear landscape. I made the right choice on portable source gear and portable headphone and my wallet has no complaints.
That was the end of an era for me, when I sold my N1 and E10 and started slumming it with MP3 players. What a beautiful player the E10 was. I've only recently gotten my enthusiasm for hifi sound back, hence I find myself making my first posts on Head-fi in 7 years.
