I had a look for my impressions notes: I had the Denons on loan from my good friend and fellow Forumer Meneer Jordaan...
I was looking forward to hearing the Denon AH-D7100 Music Master Audiophile Headphone.
Having read very divided opinions online I was curious to find out if these TOTL cans really are as good/bad as advertised!
I'm not a fan of the design, much prefer the Dx000 styling. These do look like Beats. Too much plastic.
Unbecoming a flagship IMHO.
The fit is huge. Using it on smallest setting and it's spot on.
Smaller heads will not deal with these. Comfortable enough, spacious cups.
First time I put it on backwards and it felt fine...
So what does it sound like? Based on the FR graphs I'm expecting very elevated bass, sucked out mids and vicious treble.
The D7100 does not disappoint.
It's so efficient @25 ohm that I'm actually hearing some noise when playing silence on otherwise dead silent amps [NFB11.32 and Kingrex HQ-1], which doesn't happen with any of my other cans.
IEM-type efficiency in a full size headphone isn't a good thing in my book, not when one has quality amplification. That's what it's there for!
Need to run NFB11 on low gain to get any range on the pot at all.
Still, might be good out of the V20, will find out later.
Listening impressions: TL;DR : I do not like the sound of this headphone. It's a disappointment. I don't know what Denon was thinking.
In fact when I first listened to it I had to check my settings - I thought maybe Sonarworks was active and EQing it as a HD600!
Bass was muddy and poorly defined, no mids at all and shrill highs. A bit of a mess.
This doesn't sound like a TOTL headphone.
Running through the usual test tracks (Santana, Jennifer Warnes, Metallica, Acoustic Alchemy, Fourplay, NIN, Dave Weckl Band, Allman Brothers etc etc)
Deep, defined bass is missing, soundstage is actually pretty good but it's tough to pick instruments out of the mess...I mean mix.
And damn, it's hot up top.
Vocals are recessed. Listening to The Unguided and it's a wall of noise instead of the precise Nu Metal attack that a great headphone provides.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd's guitar sounds like a detuned Ukelele.
It's not a refined headphone. My K240S pretty much kills it in every department.
On a positive note, it did sound reasonably OK on some Acoustic Alchemy stuff, but that's about it.
As always, my gear, my ears, YMMV.
But yeah, disappointing.