[Pritolus]

Quote:

FIRST DAY INSIDE THE D7000; FIRST TIME POSTER!  

I just jumped from the D2000s today simply because I got the D7000s for $450 on craigslist.  Feeling pretty fortunate about getting them at that price.    

Probably helps that I've started listening to EDM first (amazing!), although I did throw some Deftones (white pony) action at them and was thrilled.  

Anyway, I loved my D2000s but am, of course, having very much fun with these.  

Cheers!

 

It's the same story for me. My D2000s kept breaking (the aluminum pin connecting the cups to the headband kept snapping right under the hex-nut), and here in Norway you are entitled to a brand new identical product or full refund if your product has the same fault three times within the warranty period. As that line of products is now discontinued (and replaced with a new line I absolutely detest) they could not get me a new pair. Lucily, a store in the same chain still had a demo-used D7000 I could get at a 25% priced reduction. Coupled with the refund from the D2000s and the fact that this would be the last pair of D7000s ever to be sold with a complete warranty in Norway it was a no-brainer. I also bought four replacement aluminum pins, just in case I would need them after Denon stopped producing more. Hopefully I'll never need them.
 
Shortly before my D2000s broke the last time I got a Cambridge DacMagic Plus, and it's doing wonders for my D7000. I realize the D7000 could benefit greatly from an even better DAC and/or amp, but since Norway is such a small country this is just about the best amp available in a store. Also, I knind of blew my budget getting the cans...
 
My current impression with the Denon AH-D7000 is that they're just excellent. The difference from the D2000s wasn't that big on my Colorfly C4 Pro portable player, but with the DacMagic Plus it's another story alltogether. The bass and general control the D7000s exhibit is simply marvelous. My friend bought a pair of D5000s about six months ago, and we're both looking forward to a comparison session with the DacMagic Plus.
 
I found that Yello sounds especially good with this headset, and particularly Desert Inn from the album Stella, and Rubberbandman from Baby.
I mostly listen to metal, but since most metal is rather poorly recorded and mixed I don't feel that it makes the D7000s sound as good as they actually are. I would very much appreciate any tips on well produced and well mixed metal, regardless of sub-genre.
Also: I'm new to Head-Fi, so be gentle with me; it's my first time.

 

[Sonic Defender]

Not much well recorded metal that I know of, besides Tool who still make decent albums content and sound quality. Older metal is really good (at least compared to todays metal for recording quality). Queensryche has an album called Empire that is very well recorded and worth a listen, but it is more prog rock than metal, but still very good IMO.
 
My D7000 should be delivered tomorrow so I can't wait for my test run! Should be stellar.

 

[grokit]

I've been listening to Metallica's Ballads double-disc set with the D7000 and it sounds fantastic.

 

[Pritolus]

Quote:

Not much well recorded metal that I know of, besides Tool who still make decent albums content and sound quality. Older metal is really good (at least compared to todays metal for recording quality). Queensryche has an album called Empire that is very well recorded and worth a listen, but it is more prog rock than metal, but still very good IMO.
 
My D7000 should be delivered tomorrow so I can't wait for my test run! Should be stellar.

 
Congrats! You're gonna love them! I'll have to see if I can source some Tool. Listening to Opeth (Heritage) right now, and it sounds fantastic!
 
Quote:

I've been listening to Metallica's Ballads double-disc set with the D7000 and it sounds fantastic.

 
I'll see if I can give it a listen. I absolutely love the Black Album, but the SQ on that is pretty crap. Master of Puppets is better, but still not super good.

 

[Sonic Defender]

Okay, I have these lovely cans humming away on my head now at a pretty high volume (no pain or damage level, just loud). I have been listening for about an hour now and I certainly have some impressions. First these headphones are very organic and live sounding. I feel that the music has a liquidy feel to it, very immersive in nature. The bass is very strong and textured. It does take some adjustment as I have had open headphones for years now. Now enclosure reverberation adds some colour, but I like it quite a bit. Musically instruments have colour so colour is only a negative for me when it doesn't sound correct to my taste and or when it is over presented. Neither of those conditions exist with the D7000 as far as I can tell. They seem to be much faster and nimble then my 880s and 650s were.
 
The midrange is very nice and certainly very different from how my 880s presented it. Despite the very strong bass signature the mids are quite present. Vocals are rich and seem to be effortless and well placed in the sound field. I am also hearing a great deal more texture and detail retrieval/separation overall with perhaps a little less micro detail in the bass, however the 880s were excellent in this area. That said, it is quite early into my time with the 7000s so my brain is just starting to adjust to this new presentation. But the details are very strong and even with detail that was equally exposed with the 880s I hear a great deal more nuance and articulation. The various elements are very well separated and portrayed, but despite this the overall integration is very fluid and dynamic, quite engaging. There is a great deal of depth to the sound, not quite holographic, but pretty damn impressive. As for being closed cans, the soundstage is very adequate. For me, I actually don't like when the sound stage is too wide or deep. There is certainly some nice space surrounding the music. I'm punishing my ears a tad right now with a fairly hot mastered track from the newest Smashing Pumpkins album Oceania and the sound isn't coming apart at the seams.
 
There we go, some nice cool Manfred Mann, Spirits in The Night, damn I have to get up and turn the volume up! There is a very nice tonality with these cans, a slightly warm and smooth take on things which I tend to feel is genre friendly and allows for flexibility. There is no detail smearing, or if there is any it is very minor so the warmth that I am perceiving is very rewarding and not costing me detail. In fact I would make the argument that a great of retrieved detail can actually be a negative when the source is poor (which sadly so much material is), in cases like this I like a little warmth to temper the edges down a little.
 
These headphones will require many hours to really appreciate, but I can already tell they are special. As for all this your amp impedance must match the headphone or else talk, sorry, but I don't hear these great sonic penalties I have been conditioned to expect. Might they be there and I can't tell? Sure, but the sound is glorious so. Not to mention, despite the 7000s being very sensitive I am hardly getting any hiss at all so I would say that how the Auditor is designed, despite I think having close to 10ohm at output, seems to be working very well. Just wanted to add that in there. I am waiting for one of the engineers at SPL to give me his thoughts on how the impedance mismatch scenario actually plays out in real listening situations. Queen Another Bites the Dust is playing now, very nicely presented, plenty of detail, no edge. I have always felt Queen albums were well mastered, powerful yet not pushed to that edge where you pay for the energy.

 

[Pritolus]

Quote:

Okay, I have these lovely cans humming away on my head now at a pretty high volume (no pain or damage level, just loud). I have been listening for about an hour now and I certainly have some impressions. First these headphones are very organic and live sounding. I feel that the music has a liquidy feel to it, very immersive in nature. The bass is very strong and textured. It does take some adjustment as I have had open headphones for years now. Now enclosure reverberation adds some colour, but I like it quite a bit. Musically instruments have colour so colour is only a negative for me when it doesn't sound correct to my taste and or when it is over presented. Neither of those conditions exist with the D7000 as far as I can tell. They seem to be much faster and nimble then my 880s and 650s were.
 
The midrange is very nice and certainly very different from how my 880s presented it. Despite the very strong bass signature the mids are quite present. Vocals are rich and seem to be effortless and well placed in the sound field. I am also hearing a great deal more texture and detail retrieval/separation overall with perhaps a little less micro detail in the bass, however the 880s were excellent in this area. That said, it is quite early into my time with the 7000s so my brain is just starting to adjust to this new presentation. But the details are very strong and even with detail that was equally exposed with the 880s I hear a great deal more nuance and articulation. The various elements are very well separated and portrayed, but despite this the overall integration is very fluid and dynamic, quite engaging. There is a great deal of depth to the sound, not quite holographic, but pretty damn impressive. As for being closed cans, the soundstage is very adequate. For me, I actually don't like when the sound stage is too wide or deep. There is certainly some nice space surrounding the music. I'm punishing my ears a tad right now with a fairly hot mastered track from the newest Smashing Pumpkins album Oceania and the sound isn't coming apart at the seams.
 
There we go, some nice cool Manfred Mann, Spirits in The Night, damn I have to get up and turn the volume up! There is a very nice tonality with these cans, a slightly warm and smooth take on things which I tend to feel is genre friendly and allows for flexibility. There is no detail smearing, or if there is any it is very minor so the warmth that I am perceiving is very rewarding and not costing me detail. In fact I would make the argument that a great of retrieved detail can actually be a negative when the source is poor (which sadly so much material is), in cases like this I like a little warmth to temper the edges down a little.
 
These headphones will require many hours to really appreciate, but I can already tell they are special. As for all this your amp impedance must match the headphone or else talk, sorry, but I don't hear these great sonic penalties I have been conditioned to expect. Might they be there and I can't tell? Sure, but the sound is glorious so. Not to mention, despite the 7000s being very sensitive I am hardly getting any hiss at all so I would say that how the Auditor is designed, despite I think having close to 10ohm at output, seems to be working very well. Just wanted to add that in there. I am waiting for one of the engineers at SPL to give me his thoughts on how the impedance mismatch scenario actually plays out in real listening situations. Queen Another Bites the Dust is playing now, very nicely presented, plenty of detail, no edge. I have always felt Queen albums were well mastered, powerful yet not pushed to that edge where you pay for the energy.

 
See? I told you you'd love them

 

[Sonic Defender]

Quote:

 
See? I told you you'd love them

Damn straight brother, you did tell me that. I just now finished a fairly long listening session concluding with Pink Floyd - Run Like Hell. Okay, that is for absolute certain a reference track for well recorded rock. Call it classic, whatever, The Wall was an amazingly well laid down album from the sessions to the mastering. I'm lucky and my CD is not any remastered version. Most of the time I find remasters a disaster as that just means made louder because the label wants more sales. The odd remastered album in my limited experience is better, for instance Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms, that was a great remaster.
 
Another highly recommended test/experiencing the music track is from Genesis, Dreaming While You Sleep from the We Can't Dance Album. Quite a treat for the senses. I guess I'm using this post as a clearing house post as I also want to comment on my brief experience using the crossfeed software Isone Pro with JRiver Media Center 18.Okay, the sound is very addictive, and when a track plays that really benefits from the effects of being "reinterpreted/presented" it is spectacularly engaging. I can see why so many people rave about it. That said, I have opted to defeat it through JRiver for now. For all of the yummy goodness Isone Pro brings to the table, there was a pronounced colour shift that I couldn't quite get down with. While the sound became even more 3 dimensional, I found that the bass became noticeably less controlled and congested with the lower mids (or so I thought). That isn't to say that what Isone Pro does do for the sound field isn't really worth using, I just can't see myself shifting the colour that much all the time, certainly on occasion. Especially now that the D7000 is new to me, this is a time to hear and appreciate the stock sound signature. I have deviated from the stock sound by using a parametric EQ in JRiver to control for what is reported to be an enclosure based 60hz resonant frequency which is likely to be presented slightly more than it should be in the sound. My understanding is that this is a reality with closed back designs, enclosures will reverberate, and a total one more so than an open enclosure. I have taken off about .5db from the 60hz with a Q of 15 that should be affecting a very  narrow range of frequencies surrounding 60hz. To my ears this has taken away a little of the less than perfectly controlled bass energy you would expect from closed back headphones, plus my amp while stupidly good arguably is giving up some dampening factor, but damn it does it really well!

 

[Pritolus]

Quote:

Damn straight brother, you did tell me that. I just now finished a fairly long listening session concluding with Pink Floyd - Run Like Hell. Okay, that is for absolute certain a reference track for well recorded rock. Call it classic, whatever, The Wall was an amazingly well laid down album from the sessions to the mastering. I'm lucky and my CD is not any remastered version. Most of the time I find remasters a disaster as that just means made louder because the label wants more sales. The odd remastered album in my limited experience is better, for instance Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms, that was a great remaster.
 
Another highly recommended test/experiencing the music track is from Genesis, Dreaming While You Sleep from the We Can't Dance Album. Quite a treat for the senses. I guess I'm using this post as a clearing house post as I also want to comment on my brief experience using the crossfeed software Isone Pro with JRiver Media Center 18.Okay, the sound is very addictive, and when a track plays that really benefits from the effects of being "reinterpreted/presented" it is spectacularly engaging. I can see why so many people rave about it. That said, I have opted to defeat it through JRiver for now. For all of the yummy goodness Isone Pro brings to the table, there was a pronounced colour shift that I couldn't quite get down with. While the sound became even more 3 dimensional, I found that the bass became noticeably less controlled and congested with the lower mids (or so I thought). That isn't to say that what Isone Pro does do for the sound field isn't really worth using, I just can't see myself shifting the colour that much all the time, certainly on occasion. Especially now that the D7000 is new to me, this is a time to hear and appreciate the stock sound signature. I have deviated from the stock sound by using a parametric EQ in JRiver to control for what is reported to be an enclosure based 60hz resonant frequency which is likely to be presented slightly more than it should be in the sound. My understanding is that this is a reality with closed back designs, enclosures will reverberate, and a total one more so than an open enclosure. I have taken off about .5db from the 60hz with a Q of 15 that should be affecting a very  narrow range of frequencies surrounding 60hz. To my ears this has taken away a little of the less than perfectly controlled bass energy you would expect from closed back headphones, plus my amp while stupidly good arguably is giving up some dampening factor, but damn it does it really well!

 
This is very interesting. If you want the engaging crossfeed signature and retain the "stock" sound of your new cans I suggest you dig up what you can of albums where crossfeed was implemented in the studio. Opet's Heritage and Nirvana's Nevermind are good examples, and both sound excellent with my D7000s regardless of amp.
Isone Pro sounds very interesting, I think I might have to check it out someteime.

 

[Sonic Defender]

I have Nevermind here so I'll give it a listen. Love the music, but isn't that one of those horrible compressed 90s masters? I haven't played anything from that album in a few years so maybe it sounds better than I am giving it credit for? When I think about that album it reminds me of the fact I was able to hear it long before the band made it big. The brother of a friend of mine was really into grundge back when it was obscure and nobody was talking about it, it was just an underground cult thing about to explode. He came over for a rare visit and he had this tape of Nevermind that if I remember right (it has been quite some time) he found through the inddie channels that were responsible for the start of the grundge movement before the big labels got on board. I'm not sure if it was from the label that eventually released Nevermind or some kind of pre-release version that was kicking around the grundge-underground of the day. I don't think I took the music very seriously back then as this guy was in my mind then really out there. I'm sure he wasn't, but at the time he seemed quite wierd. I just remember how he was going on about Nirvana, who of course nobody I knew had ever heard of before. Funny.

 

[3X0]

As for all this your amp impedance must match the headphone or else talk, sorry, but I don't hear these great sonic penalties I have been conditioned to expect. Might they be there and I can't tell? Sure, but the sound is glorious so. Not to mention, despite the 7000s being very sensitive I am hardly getting any hiss at all so I would say that how the Auditor is designed, despite I think having close to 10ohm at output, seems to be working very well. Just wanted to add that in there. I am waiting for one of the engineers at SPL to give me his thoughts on how the impedance mismatch scenario actually plays out in real listening situations. Queen Another Bites the Dust is playing now, very nicely presented, plenty of detail, no edge. I have always felt Queen albums were well mastered, powerful yet not pushed to that edge where you pay for the energy.

Interesting.. I wasn't as blown away by the bass response on my D7000s as I was expecting, and I was suspecting my amplifiers output impedance might not be playing nicely with it. I found it strange since my W3000s play fine with just 40 ohm impedance and slightly lower rated sensitivity.

I do wish the impedance of the D7000 was just ever so slightly higher..

 

[Sonic Defender]

I would need a few other amps to compare against, but as it stands now the bass performance with the Auditor is pretty sick. I'm not even close to a bass head, if anything I would be willing to give up bass quantity for accuracy anyday. I would love to have a nice tube like the Woo Audio 6SE or another SS like say a Burnson Soloist to test and see how they mate with the D7000. Regardless of the colouration of the headphone, as the D7000 of course isn't flat neutral, I wanted to hear this legendary sound signature and I'm glad I have. As with all my gear, I'll use it lightly for about 2 years then I'm likely to sell it in mint condition so I can try another sound signature. Not sure where I'll go in two years, have to wait and see. I know my next move will be to sell my pristine Audiolab 8200CD and purchase a stand alone DAC as I have ripped my whole music collection to lossless files so the need for a transport is minimal. Looking into the Schiit Gungnir with USB. I owned a Valhalla and love the Schiit signature, service and design philosophy so that is a likely move in the next few months. The DAC in the Audiolab is fantastic, and the 8200 allows me to use it as a DAC only, but might as well go for a DAC alone at this point.

 

[superjohny]

Now i have a brand new set of LA-7000 sitting somewhere in the room but i dont have the proper dac and amp to drive it as it's been terminated to balanced ver...

 

[Sonic Defender]

Quote:

Now i have a brand new set of LA-7000 sitting somewhere in the room but i dont have the proper dac and amp to drive it as it's been terminated to balanced ver...

 
Now why would you go and do that to yourself? So funny.

 

[superjohny]

nah,i used to run audio-gd reference8 + MF V, which is pretty good but then since i moved job noway i can take these two rigs with me as they are just too heavy so i sold it leaving LA-7000 only being listened for like 30seconds to check it works. So hopefully, I will settled somewhere and starting collecting again.

 

[superpronker]

Has anyone tried them with the Kinrex HQ-1 amp with the D7000s? It looks so cool that I'm getting tempted to jump on a used one...