halcyon
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2002
- Posts
- 1,877
- Likes
- 283
READER BEWARE:
1. I'm not a headphone guru. I don't have wide and extensive knowledge of various headphones nor am I a golden eared audiophile (at least not yet >) )
2. What I describe is my personal experience with ATH-W100 headphones and reflects my opinion as of the time of writing. My opinions may and will quite probably change at least slightly as I gain in experience.
That being said, let's get to my review...
I had the distinct pleasure of auditioning Audio Technica ATH-W100 headphones for one and a half hours today at Staffhorst (Utrect) in the Netherlands. The pair in question was about two years old and from the looks of it used (i.e. demoed), but not beaten, scratched or overly used looking.
The associated gear was Arcam CD72 cd player and Arcam A75 amplifier, the headphone section of which I used to drive the aforementioned headphones. The headphone output impedance is rated at below 3 Ohms for the Arcam amp.
First the looks. They are quite beautiful and very big, almost colossal. They have swiveling headphone cups that turn c. 15 degrees to accomodate different headshapes.
The outer wood finishing is nice, wood grain clearly visible and wood parts matched between the cups.
The drivers are slightly angled so that they are not perfectly parallel to ears, but disperse sound slightly from in front of your ears.
Putting the headphones on is a much more pleasant experience than I anticipated. They feel quite light and do not press on my head and the self adjusting headband works almost perfectly on my head.
They exert no great pressure around the side of my ears and I could feel them dragging ever so slightly lower than my actual ear level, but this feeling was lost after couple of minutes of wearing them.
In short, they feel nice and comfortable. After 1,5 hours I felt slight hotness and I would not probably prefer to wear these (nor other closed headphones) for very long periods under hot and humid conditions.
Ok, how do they sound?
The first comment in my notes is: detail.
They sound as if they have a lot of detail in micro (texture, tonality changes) and macrodynamics (transient attacks).
However after a couple of minutes I feel as if they compress the sound a bit at certain frequencies. To be precise compression is not the right word, but lets say that the audible effect is somewhat akin to that.
The sense of some frequencies being more louder than 'natural' (we all have our reference for this, mine is good loudspeakers and live unamplified performance) is probably partially due to the phones NOT being diffuse field equalized.
Closely miked recording will not necessarily feel most at home with these cans, but recordings done from far with mics gearing more towards omnidirectionality fare much better.
This is a philosophical point and I don't think there is an exact right or wrong, but I think that at this stage I prefer diffuse field phones more _in general_. Keep that in mind with rest of my comments.
So, nothing bad to say about the phone yet, just the fact that it does not sound like DF equalized.
The next on my list is soundstage. The soundstage feels quite natural, although there seems to be (to me) a slight gap when transitioning from far left to center and then back to far right again.
In this sense the soundstage is not totally coherent, but still remarkably good.
The actual stage forms quite a lot inside my head and even the angled drivers cannot give me personally a great sense of outside my head directionality.
What the headspace does however is separate phase problems remarkably well. Out of absolute phase recordings will sound like coming slightly behind your ears, while the best in-phase recordings will sound like coming slightly from in front of you (only very slightly so). The rest of the recordings fall in between, so usually you'd have a soundstage inside your head.
In soundstage I feel there is another factor that feels a tad artificial and not quite there, although sometimes pleasantly euphonic: increased reverbation.
A very dry and close miked recording feels like it was recorded in a less dry room. A normal in-room acoustic recording feels as if recorded in a room that was a bit more live than it originally was (or so I feel). The notes will decay slower and give you more sense of surrounding space, which can feel pleasant. However, even thought this effect is slight, I feel it was a bit unnatural, although not unpleasant during my short audition. Like I said, euphonic.
Then the dynamics. These phones are quite dynamic and even scary on some good recordings (you can strike out all hyper-compressed 3 dB-worth-of-headroom-crap-pop-recordings out of your test list if you want to test their dynamics).
Good acoustic orchestral recordings can be scary at times. Modern hyper-compressed (as in dynamic, not psychoacoustic compression) music will sound hard and tiresome. At least to me personally. Of course it may sound energetic and groovy to others, but I don't think I could listen to badly recorded stuff on these headphones for longer periods at a time.
How about the highs and the bass, I hear you cry?
Well, to put it simply, the highs are glorious and airy.
Absolutely not fatigue to me personally, no stingy or grainy flavour with the equipment used, just highs that seem to go on forever and play very sweetly.
Triangles sound like triangles and hi-hats will have a distinct and correct natural attack.
No complaints about the highs from me.
The bass however, I must say, was lacking in one attribute: lowest extension.
The bass did NOT feel overbearing, nor did it feel overly mid-bass emphasized.
It was accurate, I could hear textures and it would decay fast enough for me not to sound smeared or boomy. Good bass until about 50 Hz.
After c. 50 Hz however, nothing much happens.
Of course, one should not expect much from a set of heaphones, even close ones (unless in-the-ear-canal type). Regardless, the lack of low extension was a disappointment.
I could turn up the volume just about as high as I could and not feel/hear a tiny amount of sound from the headphone with a bass note that had a center frequency of 40 Hz.
Other than that, the bass was good and good enough even for monitoring purpose (IMHO of course). Not overemphasized, not bloated, boomy or inaccurate. Pretty well-defined and in quite correct amount.
In summary I could say that I feel these phones are a tad hyperreal. Real, because they feel natural to wear and quite natural in their presentation, BUT still hyper so, because the way they are equalized. Some frequencies will be more emphasized than usual.
This will result in the "I'm getting much more detail from my records than ever before" effect for some people. This combined with the exceptional highs might even make some people's jaws drop. The bass will not do that though.
Taking off the phones about one and a half hours later I notice that the comfort level is still quite high, but the last compilation record of mostly badly recorded pop music (Aimee Mann, Massive Attack, Snuff, Primal Scream, MJ Blige, Radiohead, Talk Talk, etc) has caused my slight irritation of ears. I feel like not listening to anything but silence for a while.
Also, I find my notes say "trying to find that elusive 'correct' playback volume on many recordings". I kept going for louder volume and for lower volume on some tracks and not being fully content with what I heard.
Again, I think this is due to trying to find the correct volume (and hence the appropriate Fletcher-Munson loudness equalization curve) that would make these phones sound most balanced. With all tracks this was not possible, but this is IMHO a common failing of many headphones (and even many loudspeakers). As such, it's not a great minus in my list nor is any other nitpick on this long reviewish commentary of mine.
Would I have plunked down the 714 euros asked for this pair of headphones?
Only if the bass extension was a tiny bit lower, the reverbation a tad less evident and the sounstage slightly improved.
Would I buy these for 350 euros? Probably yes.
Am I interested in the upcoming W1000 with the advertised improved bass? Very much so.
As they are now, this is a very interesting, remarkably performing even if slightly peculiar set of headphones that is overpriced in most places in Europe for what I think I would get.
Please don't ask for direct comparisons to other headphones as I could not demo other phones with the same gear nor is my knowledge of other headphones very extensive.
EDIT:
The following music was used to audition these headphones:
Riley Lee: Moon Shadows (shakuhachi flute player with accompaniment, good harmonics test)
Eva Cassidy: Fields of Gold (female vocals with rawness, bad recording)
Urna: Chiwgaiin Shili (female vocals with really wide range, closely/dry miked with no processing)
Rebecca Pidgeon: Spanish Harlem (jazz/pop female vocals, excellent although a tad hyperreal recording)
Talk Talk: Ascension day (early 90's acoustic pop with studio processing)
Air: Lucky and unhappy (almost completely synthetic music, good bass test with the basslines)
Kodo: Bird Island (for pacing, dynamics and transients)
Zbigniew Presiner: Jardin D'Hiver (for acoustic space feeling, miked from far, triangles for note decay, very nice recording)
Murray Perahia: II Larghetto (piano reproduction, good recording)
Aaron Copland: Fanfare for the common man - Polytechnic Orchestra of HUT (overall church ambiance and soundstaging)
Aimee Mann: How Am I (badly recorded beautiful pop with lots of harmonic distortion from the guitar amplifier)
Lemon Jelly: In the Bath (electronic simplistic music with pure tones)
Massive Attack: Protection (decently recorded pop)
Radiohead: Everything in its right place (extremely harsh/digital and compressed and processed pop)
Primal Scream: Higher than the Sun (processed fake space soundstage from early 90's)
Snuff: untitled track (compressed melodic punk with shabby recording, but excellent energy)
Mary J Blige: I Love You (sample driven ascetic r'n'b with a decent bassline test)
Jonathan Elias: Movement I - Mery (acoustic space, male vocals)
Cantus: Let your Voice be heard (choir music with accompaniment, excellent recording, soundstage litmus test)
Sheffield Labs 'My Disc' (several test tones)
XLO recordings 'Test & Burn-in CD) (phase, soundstage gap, dynamics and acoustic music tests)
1. I'm not a headphone guru. I don't have wide and extensive knowledge of various headphones nor am I a golden eared audiophile (at least not yet >) )
2. What I describe is my personal experience with ATH-W100 headphones and reflects my opinion as of the time of writing. My opinions may and will quite probably change at least slightly as I gain in experience.
That being said, let's get to my review...
I had the distinct pleasure of auditioning Audio Technica ATH-W100 headphones for one and a half hours today at Staffhorst (Utrect) in the Netherlands. The pair in question was about two years old and from the looks of it used (i.e. demoed), but not beaten, scratched or overly used looking.
The associated gear was Arcam CD72 cd player and Arcam A75 amplifier, the headphone section of which I used to drive the aforementioned headphones. The headphone output impedance is rated at below 3 Ohms for the Arcam amp.
First the looks. They are quite beautiful and very big, almost colossal. They have swiveling headphone cups that turn c. 15 degrees to accomodate different headshapes.
The outer wood finishing is nice, wood grain clearly visible and wood parts matched between the cups.
The drivers are slightly angled so that they are not perfectly parallel to ears, but disperse sound slightly from in front of your ears.
Putting the headphones on is a much more pleasant experience than I anticipated. They feel quite light and do not press on my head and the self adjusting headband works almost perfectly on my head.
They exert no great pressure around the side of my ears and I could feel them dragging ever so slightly lower than my actual ear level, but this feeling was lost after couple of minutes of wearing them.
In short, they feel nice and comfortable. After 1,5 hours I felt slight hotness and I would not probably prefer to wear these (nor other closed headphones) for very long periods under hot and humid conditions.
Ok, how do they sound?
The first comment in my notes is: detail.
They sound as if they have a lot of detail in micro (texture, tonality changes) and macrodynamics (transient attacks).
However after a couple of minutes I feel as if they compress the sound a bit at certain frequencies. To be precise compression is not the right word, but lets say that the audible effect is somewhat akin to that.
The sense of some frequencies being more louder than 'natural' (we all have our reference for this, mine is good loudspeakers and live unamplified performance) is probably partially due to the phones NOT being diffuse field equalized.
Closely miked recording will not necessarily feel most at home with these cans, but recordings done from far with mics gearing more towards omnidirectionality fare much better.
This is a philosophical point and I don't think there is an exact right or wrong, but I think that at this stage I prefer diffuse field phones more _in general_. Keep that in mind with rest of my comments.
So, nothing bad to say about the phone yet, just the fact that it does not sound like DF equalized.
The next on my list is soundstage. The soundstage feels quite natural, although there seems to be (to me) a slight gap when transitioning from far left to center and then back to far right again.
In this sense the soundstage is not totally coherent, but still remarkably good.
The actual stage forms quite a lot inside my head and even the angled drivers cannot give me personally a great sense of outside my head directionality.
What the headspace does however is separate phase problems remarkably well. Out of absolute phase recordings will sound like coming slightly behind your ears, while the best in-phase recordings will sound like coming slightly from in front of you (only very slightly so). The rest of the recordings fall in between, so usually you'd have a soundstage inside your head.
In soundstage I feel there is another factor that feels a tad artificial and not quite there, although sometimes pleasantly euphonic: increased reverbation.
A very dry and close miked recording feels like it was recorded in a less dry room. A normal in-room acoustic recording feels as if recorded in a room that was a bit more live than it originally was (or so I feel). The notes will decay slower and give you more sense of surrounding space, which can feel pleasant. However, even thought this effect is slight, I feel it was a bit unnatural, although not unpleasant during my short audition. Like I said, euphonic.
Then the dynamics. These phones are quite dynamic and even scary on some good recordings (you can strike out all hyper-compressed 3 dB-worth-of-headroom-crap-pop-recordings out of your test list if you want to test their dynamics).
Good acoustic orchestral recordings can be scary at times. Modern hyper-compressed (as in dynamic, not psychoacoustic compression) music will sound hard and tiresome. At least to me personally. Of course it may sound energetic and groovy to others, but I don't think I could listen to badly recorded stuff on these headphones for longer periods at a time.
How about the highs and the bass, I hear you cry?
Well, to put it simply, the highs are glorious and airy.
Absolutely not fatigue to me personally, no stingy or grainy flavour with the equipment used, just highs that seem to go on forever and play very sweetly.
Triangles sound like triangles and hi-hats will have a distinct and correct natural attack.
No complaints about the highs from me.
The bass however, I must say, was lacking in one attribute: lowest extension.
The bass did NOT feel overbearing, nor did it feel overly mid-bass emphasized.
It was accurate, I could hear textures and it would decay fast enough for me not to sound smeared or boomy. Good bass until about 50 Hz.
After c. 50 Hz however, nothing much happens.
Of course, one should not expect much from a set of heaphones, even close ones (unless in-the-ear-canal type). Regardless, the lack of low extension was a disappointment.
I could turn up the volume just about as high as I could and not feel/hear a tiny amount of sound from the headphone with a bass note that had a center frequency of 40 Hz.
Other than that, the bass was good and good enough even for monitoring purpose (IMHO of course). Not overemphasized, not bloated, boomy or inaccurate. Pretty well-defined and in quite correct amount.
In summary I could say that I feel these phones are a tad hyperreal. Real, because they feel natural to wear and quite natural in their presentation, BUT still hyper so, because the way they are equalized. Some frequencies will be more emphasized than usual.
This will result in the "I'm getting much more detail from my records than ever before" effect for some people. This combined with the exceptional highs might even make some people's jaws drop. The bass will not do that though.
Taking off the phones about one and a half hours later I notice that the comfort level is still quite high, but the last compilation record of mostly badly recorded pop music (Aimee Mann, Massive Attack, Snuff, Primal Scream, MJ Blige, Radiohead, Talk Talk, etc) has caused my slight irritation of ears. I feel like not listening to anything but silence for a while.
Also, I find my notes say "trying to find that elusive 'correct' playback volume on many recordings". I kept going for louder volume and for lower volume on some tracks and not being fully content with what I heard.
Again, I think this is due to trying to find the correct volume (and hence the appropriate Fletcher-Munson loudness equalization curve) that would make these phones sound most balanced. With all tracks this was not possible, but this is IMHO a common failing of many headphones (and even many loudspeakers). As such, it's not a great minus in my list nor is any other nitpick on this long reviewish commentary of mine.
Would I have plunked down the 714 euros asked for this pair of headphones?
Only if the bass extension was a tiny bit lower, the reverbation a tad less evident and the sounstage slightly improved.
Would I buy these for 350 euros? Probably yes.
Am I interested in the upcoming W1000 with the advertised improved bass? Very much so.
As they are now, this is a very interesting, remarkably performing even if slightly peculiar set of headphones that is overpriced in most places in Europe for what I think I would get.
Please don't ask for direct comparisons to other headphones as I could not demo other phones with the same gear nor is my knowledge of other headphones very extensive.
EDIT:
The following music was used to audition these headphones:
Riley Lee: Moon Shadows (shakuhachi flute player with accompaniment, good harmonics test)
Eva Cassidy: Fields of Gold (female vocals with rawness, bad recording)
Urna: Chiwgaiin Shili (female vocals with really wide range, closely/dry miked with no processing)
Rebecca Pidgeon: Spanish Harlem (jazz/pop female vocals, excellent although a tad hyperreal recording)
Talk Talk: Ascension day (early 90's acoustic pop with studio processing)
Air: Lucky and unhappy (almost completely synthetic music, good bass test with the basslines)
Kodo: Bird Island (for pacing, dynamics and transients)
Zbigniew Presiner: Jardin D'Hiver (for acoustic space feeling, miked from far, triangles for note decay, very nice recording)
Murray Perahia: II Larghetto (piano reproduction, good recording)
Aaron Copland: Fanfare for the common man - Polytechnic Orchestra of HUT (overall church ambiance and soundstaging)
Aimee Mann: How Am I (badly recorded beautiful pop with lots of harmonic distortion from the guitar amplifier)
Lemon Jelly: In the Bath (electronic simplistic music with pure tones)
Massive Attack: Protection (decently recorded pop)
Radiohead: Everything in its right place (extremely harsh/digital and compressed and processed pop)
Primal Scream: Higher than the Sun (processed fake space soundstage from early 90's)
Snuff: untitled track (compressed melodic punk with shabby recording, but excellent energy)
Mary J Blige: I Love You (sample driven ascetic r'n'b with a decent bassline test)
Jonathan Elias: Movement I - Mery (acoustic space, male vocals)
Cantus: Let your Voice be heard (choir music with accompaniment, excellent recording, soundstage litmus test)
Sheffield Labs 'My Disc' (several test tones)
XLO recordings 'Test & Burn-in CD) (phase, soundstage gap, dynamics and acoustic music tests)