[Mad Lust Envy]

Just got my 990s myself. Upon first impressions, I can easily say that they are tailored for audiophiles who do not wanna give up all the bass for the sake of a completely neutral/flat curve. People like me. They are for people who want a balanced sound with some serious bass that doesn't drown out the rest of the spectrum, and maintains a very airy, crisp sound all together.
 
I have a feeling they are going to be my very fave headphones.
 
That being said, I definitely need a beefier amp. The E7 can NOT drive them anywhere near a satisfactory level. I knew this, which is why I'm waiting on the E9 to be reviewed and sold, and if it fails, I'm going straight for the M Stage...
 
This isn't ideal, but I had to add the E5 after the E7 to get enough volume at LEAST during pink noise burn in. Not something I'll do for music...

 

[Slides]

Also, does anyone now if the Claro Halo can adequately drive these phones? Thx
 
Quote:

definitely, in my opinion! 

 
the hd595 is a great bang-for-buck headphone, but compared to the dt990 600 ohms, it would sound flat and lifeless. the bass, clarity, detail, and comfort of the dt990 is a notch above what the hd595 can offer, and the sound is much more enjoyable and livelier to my ears...
 
YMMV of course! 

 

 

 

[jac3atx]

Mad Lust Envy -- which impedance (32, 250, 600) did you get? The OP has 32 and I have 600, so if you just got 250 then we'll have this thread rounded out with three new owners for the three models, which would be fun.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

I have the 600ohm DT990. Sorry.

 

[jac3atx]

Don't be sorry, it shows that you have great tastes

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

Now I'm just waiting on reviews on the Fiio E9 to see how well it pairs up with it. I hope it's a transparent/neutral amp, as I don't wanna color the sound of my cans. I just want the power to drive them decently. If that fails, the M Stage is definitely on my list... I just rather save the $130 or so dollars if I get the E9 that would have gone to the M Stage.

 

[paconavarro]

Small update on this cans.
 
Strangely for the last couple days I had some strange headaches, I thought they were because of the stressful week we had at the company, but it wasn't the "usual" stress pain... something more like in the sinus area...
 
Today I started to believe it was caused by the DT990 and guess what, its true.
 
I have a small head, and the round earpads where making pressure on a nerve in my face, my wife's dentist so she confirmed that. The solution: I adapted the headband a bit so they are higher and moved them a bit to the back avoiding my cheekbones... Voilá !!!
 
So small heads be aware of that besides that this headphones are great!!!!!

 

[jac3atx]

I now have about 50 hours of burn-in completed for my 600ohm dt990's. Though the pace of change is much slower than in the initial 2 hours, I definitely don't have the sense that things are completely stationary yet. They do sound better than ever this morning after having classical music running through them all night last night.
 
My amp is supposed to arrive today. As I have mentioned, after reading so much about these cans in the forums here, I've actually been delighted at how good they sound straight out of the headphone jack on my computer. I thought that with the high impedance they would be unlistenable that way, but they are definitely enjoyable even if suboptimal. What I am really hoping that the amp will provide is a general tightening and bolstering of the low end, which still sounds a bit murky to me in my current setup. My fingers are crossed and I am optimistic, but we shall see...

 

[jac3atx]

paconavarro -- after reading your last post I tightened my headphones to sit a bit higher and farther back and you are exactly right, they are definitely more comfortable that way. Thanks for the tip!

 

[paconavarro]

Great to hear that jac3atc! I was very used to the elliptical earpad from sennheiser, but once you put them in the right place, this ones are far better, you can talk or eat without moving the headphones with the jaw.

 

[jac3atx]

Well, my amp did arrive on Monday and I've been too busy listening to write any updates. The Woo 3+ paired with the 600ohm DT990's is absolutely awesome. It reinforced and massively tightened the low end of the frequency spectrum. In general the dynamics are clearly better throughout all frequencies -- rapid passages of music like flamenco guitar sound much more crisp with the amp than straight from the computer. I know that solid-state is supposed to be better than tube for truly world-class dynamics, but a tube amp is way better than unamped for these high impedance cans.
 
A friend and fellow head-fier came over with his AKG-K701's and we did a little A vs. B listening on my setup (I know, not the best amp for his cans, but the overall flavor was evident). The most universally obvious difference between his cans and mine was in the bass, as in the K701's don't have it (or the OTL tube Woo couldn't provide the current to access it). Secondly, the DT990's were generally warmer. In some cases (acoustic guitars) it was very hard to tell any difference, in others (electric guitars) the added warmth was noticeable and very desirable, and in still others (symphonic classical) I found that the neutrality of the K701's felt more true to the music as it had been performed (though interestingly, my friend preferred the DT990's even there because of the bass). There was also one track that had a very rapid passage with an acoustic guitar, a mandolin, and a banjo playing simultaneously that I found I enjoyed listening to more with the DT990's but that with the K701's it was slightly easier to tell which note was being played by which instrument. That was splitting hairs though because my friend said he couldn't tell any difference between the two headphones on that track.
 
At the end of the day, I am still really thrilled with the setup I've got. An amp was definitely a necessity for lifting this high-impedance version of the DT990's to reach its potential. Now I can't help but wonder what a stand-alone DAC would add to the sound...

 

[paconavarro]

I'm the inverse situation jac3atx, I have a DAC bu no amp. I'm trying to get some kind of descent amp soon to pair it with the DAC and DT990's.
 
Because of a business trip I lend my macbookpro to my partner and I got back to my old dellPC installed foobar and some vst plugins for eq and balance settings, on my original eq in the mac I boosted a bit some frecs and in the PC Im using an Eq that only lets you go under 0dB and I must say that its very noticeable that the sound does not get clipped when boosting a frec. As soon I get my Mac back I'll put all my fecs under 0dB.

 

[jac3atx]

Interesting. I have ZERO intuition for what one should expect with your headphones with and without amping. It may be that as a budget rig you are much better off with the DAC instead of the amp. It is my understanding that the DT990~32ohm cans are nowhere near as hard to drive as the K701's (which are low impedance but obscenely low sensitivity) because they were designed so that they could be driven by a portable device. If that's the case, then the DAC may do more to improve their performance than an amp would, but that is really just speculation on my part.
 
Also interesting about the use of EQ. I have messed about with the one in Foobar2000 but mostly leave it turned off. My ears and intuition are good enough to tell when I make things worse, but I can't seem to find anything that I like better than flat. It may be if I only go "down instead of up" that I'd have better results...

 

[carledwards]

The 600 ohm version is my daily go-to choice for doing needle drops and listening to LPs/CDs/DVD-As. I use a Woo 3 to power them and it's a very good match. Happy camper, here!

 

[paconavarro]

Yes jac3atx the DAC is great for the 32 ohms, its the e7 so I get a preamp too, but I want to plug'em to a more serious apm.
carledwards its true they are very detailed, in fact I'm ripping again all my CDs cause I had em in mp3 at 192 and I notice the low quality of the files, so now is flac/wav rip. The hard part is that a very big part of the collection was stolen to my brother... tragic stuff, at the time he was working in a broadcast company and took many of the CDs in his backpack in a couple carrier cases for making some mastering, there were about 650 CDs. He parked his car in the work parking lot got down for picking up something fast leaving the backpack there and once he got back it was stolen... so much of the music is lost and I trying to borrow some CDs from friends..