Azure
Headphoneus Supremus
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- Jun 13, 2004
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I finally have all three of these headphones in my possession to do some comparisons between the three. My amplifier is a Rockhopper M^3 (AD8610 + Elpac) and my source is the Sony SCD-CE595. The DT990s (2005 edition) are 250 ohms and may require more burn-in; the D2000 have close to 100 hours of burn-in; the SA5000s are well burned-in. I will update my impressions when I get my new source as I realize some headphones are very source dependent. The following are my impressions of SA5000 vs. DT990 vs. D2000; YMMV. I was kind of pooped toward the end and this is written in chronological order, so it may get more and more brief towards the end. I'm going to continue A/B'ing these headphones and will add more impressions where appropriate.
Before I get to the sound, just a few details about comfort and build quality. The SA5000 wins hands-down in terms of comfort. It’s light, very comfortable around the ears, and very soft on the head. Next would be the DT990, which has a nice, tight grip on the head (not too tight, in my opinion), and nice, soft velour pads. Last is the D2000, which has very comfortable pleather (?) ear pads that are more comfortable than the DT990’s pads. However, the D2000 loses points for fitting rather loosely on the head and around the ears. With regard to build quality, the DT990 is tops. It feels very durable and doesn’t seem like it’d break any time soon. The SA5000 is last here as it seems rather inflexible and somewhat fragile compared to the other two. When it comes to the cable, the DT990 is the best as it is plain and simple. The SA5000 is ridiculously microphonic, and the D2000 is very prone to getting curled up in twists and knots.
DT990 vs. SA5000
Okay, now onto the sound. The DT990 is a bass-heavy headphone, to the point of having too much bass. The bass is very prominent and tends to have a boomy quality with each note. Bass emphasis is important to feel a sense of rhythm in music, but the DT990 bass tends to distract from the rest of the spectrum. It seems to overshadow the midrange. The highs are emphasized with the DT990, and what I’m perceiving is a sort of “smiley face” frequency response, with added emphasis in the bass region and the highs, with a dip in the midrange. The result is a sort of closed, contained sound that gives me a sense of claustrophobia. The sound is very much forward and the soundstage is decent.
Going from the DT990 to the SA5000, the first thing that hits me is a sense of air. It’s like suddenly inhaling a full breath of fresh air after being locked up in a stuffy room for a long time. However, the euphoria soon ends. The SA5000 has a slight echo-y sound (not the cool kind of echo). Compared to the DT990, the SA5000 sounds “honky” in its presentation. Bass is anemic. You could argue that it is more detailed and extended, but trying to perceive bass is made much more difficult due to the anemic quality, so it is difficult to appreciate detailed bass with the SA5000. It’s in there somewhere, but it’s just so under-emphasized. The SA5000 also makes the bass harder to detect due to the unneeded emphasis on the upper midrange and highs. I never had a problem with the SA5000’s highs, but now I detect sibilance and an unpleasant echo-y quality. The highs are very peculiar. They have a sort of sucked out or warped quality. They have an artificial, thin, one-dimensional quality. It’s very difficult to describe. It’s kind of nasaly, if you know what I mean. One great thing that the SA5000s have going for them is their awesome imaging capabilities. Going from the DT990 to the SA5000, I felt very relieved to suddenly sense a sort of three-dimensional element to the music. The sound is much more open and airy, and it’s a lot easier to detect that there are actually different layers of sound that seem to have their own distinct place in the music. There’s a sense of air and precision between the notes that leaves much to be desired with the DT990. However, the SA5000 sounds like the music has been chopped in half. All you seem to get is the upper mids and the highs, while the rest of the music is under-emphasized. Female vocals also sound very inaccurate and echo-y/hollow/tunnel-y (As if the singer is singing to you through a long pipe). It’s very unnatural.
Going from the SA5000 to the DT990, you get a nice sense of body. The upper mid range and highs sound more natural, but are masked by the damn bass. The bass can really detract from the music and make it harder to appreciate female vocals with bass heavy dance music. Everything sounds more clustered together, condensed, and less distinct. However, vocals themselves, if you can decipher them outside of the heavy bass, sound much more realistic and natural. Everything is contained down with the DT990 into a package that is really bass-heavy. There is definitely a treble focus with the DT990, but it isn’t as apparent when going from the brighter SA5000 to the less bright DT990.
DT990 vs. D2000
Going from the DT990s to the D2000s, the bass is much more controlled and seems to have more texture (it’s very difficult for me to detect texture in the DT990’s bass due to how boomy and over the top it can sound). The D2000 seems to pleasantly lie between the SA5000 and the DT990. The D2000 sound very smooth and controlled in the highs, and female vocals sound the best on them compared to the other two headphones. There’s no unpleasant echo-y quality or harshness. The bass is present enough that it doesn’t sound anemic or as if the music has been chopped in half, but it never seems to overpower the rest of the spectrum. It seems to add just the right amount of bass to every track (except Scooter songs, which seem to be recorded bass light and are dependent on bass emphasis from the rest of your rig; the DT990 was the only one out of the three that was able to add enough bass to Scooter songs to make them sound engaging). To me the D2000 sounds faster and more refined than the DT990.
The D2000 sounds much more balanced than the other two. Going from the D2000 to the DT990, the highs and female vocals are noticeably emphasized and have a sort of sheen on them. Female vocals have a hint of sibilance. Bass is boomy, undetailed, and seems to lack extension. The extra emphasis on the highs leads to a perceived greater sense of detail. The D2000 seems to have a more forward soundstage that is closer to “in your head” than the DT990. The DT990s have a greater sense of air and soundstage than the D2000.
The DT990 bass excels with songs that aren’t already mixed with lots of bass. The D2000 bass is much more precise with its slam (but don’t associate this with being bass-light, like the SA5000 is), so you can hear the nuances of bass notes with much more clarity than with the DT990. The D2000 has enough bass that you’re encouraged to nod your head your tap your toes to the beat of a song, but not so much that it masks the rest of the spectrum.
SA5000 vs. D2000
For electronica it’s a toss-up between the D2000 and the SA5000. Since we’re dealing with completely synthesized sounds, you can’t really describe anything as sounding unnatural or unrealistic. The SA5000 is known to be great with electronica. Everything is very precise and detailed, and all the layers and nuances are laid out in plain sight for you. The speed, detail, and air of the SA5000 mates very well with the genre of electronica. Thankfully, the D2000 is no slouch when it comes to electronica. The two headphones handle the genre well. The D2000 is more balanced sounding and adds more body and rhythm to the music in its presentation. It isn’t as detailed as the SA5000, making it is a bit more difficult to pin-point the placement of all the sounds in the music with the D2000. Texture goes hands down to the SA5000, but the D2000 isn’t too far off. The D2000 sounds smoother in its presentation, but definitely not smoothed over. The D2000 does add a bit of bass emphasis that helps keep the rhythm with electronica, but most of the electronica I listen to isn’t dependent on heavy bass. The SA5000 remains the way to go with electronica, but the D2000s aren’t a bad choice if bass volume is important to you.
Conclusion? If you’re satisfied with your headphones STOP AND RUN AWAY FROM THIS PLACE FOREVER. Don’t go buying other headphones just because you’re curious, or else you might notice flaws in your headphones that you never thought existed before. However, if I were to chose one headphone it would obviously be the D2000. It’s sound sits very nicely between the DT990 and the SA5000. It has just the right amount of everything. For electronica it'll depend on how sensitive you are to a bright sound and if your music is bass dependent. The only problems I have with it are 1. the cable (I can always re-cable the headphones), and 2. somewhat loose fit (can’t really do much here…). I’m going to hang onto all 3 headphones until I get my new source and to allow more time for burn-in; I’ll then report back to post if my impressions of the 3 have changed.
These are my current impressions. As side note, I should mention that the perceived sound quality of a headphone is rather dependent on your reference. The SA5000s used to sound perfect to me, but listening to the D2000 and the DT990 made me hear the SA5000s in a new light. Listening to the SA5000s for the first time in weeks after listening pretty much only to the D2000/DT990 sound VERY weird. The sound signature sounded very weird and was not what I was used to; for the first time I felt blinded by its brightness and appalled by the lack of bass. By themselves all three are very competent headphones, and their flaws aren’t as noticeable until you start A/B’ing them with other headphones.
EDIT: After some more listening time and getting used to the DT990 sound, I've chosen DT990 in the end. This is how I saw it:
DT990
Pros:
-Bass volume/physical impact (D2000 offers no competition in this regard)
-Air and soundstage
Cons:
-Dry, sucked out mids
-Uncomfortable velour pads
D2000
Pros:
-Smooth, balanced sound across the frequency range
-More "juicy" mids compared to DT990
-Greater bass extension
Cons:
-Very little bass volume/physical impact
-Lack of air/soundstage
While the D2000 has a more coherent sound with better mids, I just can't get over the lack of bass volume and air/soundstage. I'm sticking with the DT990s, but I wish it could have slightly leaner bass with more prominent mids.
Before I get to the sound, just a few details about comfort and build quality. The SA5000 wins hands-down in terms of comfort. It’s light, very comfortable around the ears, and very soft on the head. Next would be the DT990, which has a nice, tight grip on the head (not too tight, in my opinion), and nice, soft velour pads. Last is the D2000, which has very comfortable pleather (?) ear pads that are more comfortable than the DT990’s pads. However, the D2000 loses points for fitting rather loosely on the head and around the ears. With regard to build quality, the DT990 is tops. It feels very durable and doesn’t seem like it’d break any time soon. The SA5000 is last here as it seems rather inflexible and somewhat fragile compared to the other two. When it comes to the cable, the DT990 is the best as it is plain and simple. The SA5000 is ridiculously microphonic, and the D2000 is very prone to getting curled up in twists and knots.
DT990 vs. SA5000
Okay, now onto the sound. The DT990 is a bass-heavy headphone, to the point of having too much bass. The bass is very prominent and tends to have a boomy quality with each note. Bass emphasis is important to feel a sense of rhythm in music, but the DT990 bass tends to distract from the rest of the spectrum. It seems to overshadow the midrange. The highs are emphasized with the DT990, and what I’m perceiving is a sort of “smiley face” frequency response, with added emphasis in the bass region and the highs, with a dip in the midrange. The result is a sort of closed, contained sound that gives me a sense of claustrophobia. The sound is very much forward and the soundstage is decent.
Going from the DT990 to the SA5000, the first thing that hits me is a sense of air. It’s like suddenly inhaling a full breath of fresh air after being locked up in a stuffy room for a long time. However, the euphoria soon ends. The SA5000 has a slight echo-y sound (not the cool kind of echo). Compared to the DT990, the SA5000 sounds “honky” in its presentation. Bass is anemic. You could argue that it is more detailed and extended, but trying to perceive bass is made much more difficult due to the anemic quality, so it is difficult to appreciate detailed bass with the SA5000. It’s in there somewhere, but it’s just so under-emphasized. The SA5000 also makes the bass harder to detect due to the unneeded emphasis on the upper midrange and highs. I never had a problem with the SA5000’s highs, but now I detect sibilance and an unpleasant echo-y quality. The highs are very peculiar. They have a sort of sucked out or warped quality. They have an artificial, thin, one-dimensional quality. It’s very difficult to describe. It’s kind of nasaly, if you know what I mean. One great thing that the SA5000s have going for them is their awesome imaging capabilities. Going from the DT990 to the SA5000, I felt very relieved to suddenly sense a sort of three-dimensional element to the music. The sound is much more open and airy, and it’s a lot easier to detect that there are actually different layers of sound that seem to have their own distinct place in the music. There’s a sense of air and precision between the notes that leaves much to be desired with the DT990. However, the SA5000 sounds like the music has been chopped in half. All you seem to get is the upper mids and the highs, while the rest of the music is under-emphasized. Female vocals also sound very inaccurate and echo-y/hollow/tunnel-y (As if the singer is singing to you through a long pipe). It’s very unnatural.
Going from the SA5000 to the DT990, you get a nice sense of body. The upper mid range and highs sound more natural, but are masked by the damn bass. The bass can really detract from the music and make it harder to appreciate female vocals with bass heavy dance music. Everything sounds more clustered together, condensed, and less distinct. However, vocals themselves, if you can decipher them outside of the heavy bass, sound much more realistic and natural. Everything is contained down with the DT990 into a package that is really bass-heavy. There is definitely a treble focus with the DT990, but it isn’t as apparent when going from the brighter SA5000 to the less bright DT990.
DT990 vs. D2000
Going from the DT990s to the D2000s, the bass is much more controlled and seems to have more texture (it’s very difficult for me to detect texture in the DT990’s bass due to how boomy and over the top it can sound). The D2000 seems to pleasantly lie between the SA5000 and the DT990. The D2000 sound very smooth and controlled in the highs, and female vocals sound the best on them compared to the other two headphones. There’s no unpleasant echo-y quality or harshness. The bass is present enough that it doesn’t sound anemic or as if the music has been chopped in half, but it never seems to overpower the rest of the spectrum. It seems to add just the right amount of bass to every track (except Scooter songs, which seem to be recorded bass light and are dependent on bass emphasis from the rest of your rig; the DT990 was the only one out of the three that was able to add enough bass to Scooter songs to make them sound engaging). To me the D2000 sounds faster and more refined than the DT990.
The D2000 sounds much more balanced than the other two. Going from the D2000 to the DT990, the highs and female vocals are noticeably emphasized and have a sort of sheen on them. Female vocals have a hint of sibilance. Bass is boomy, undetailed, and seems to lack extension. The extra emphasis on the highs leads to a perceived greater sense of detail. The D2000 seems to have a more forward soundstage that is closer to “in your head” than the DT990. The DT990s have a greater sense of air and soundstage than the D2000.
The DT990 bass excels with songs that aren’t already mixed with lots of bass. The D2000 bass is much more precise with its slam (but don’t associate this with being bass-light, like the SA5000 is), so you can hear the nuances of bass notes with much more clarity than with the DT990. The D2000 has enough bass that you’re encouraged to nod your head your tap your toes to the beat of a song, but not so much that it masks the rest of the spectrum.
SA5000 vs. D2000
For electronica it’s a toss-up between the D2000 and the SA5000. Since we’re dealing with completely synthesized sounds, you can’t really describe anything as sounding unnatural or unrealistic. The SA5000 is known to be great with electronica. Everything is very precise and detailed, and all the layers and nuances are laid out in plain sight for you. The speed, detail, and air of the SA5000 mates very well with the genre of electronica. Thankfully, the D2000 is no slouch when it comes to electronica. The two headphones handle the genre well. The D2000 is more balanced sounding and adds more body and rhythm to the music in its presentation. It isn’t as detailed as the SA5000, making it is a bit more difficult to pin-point the placement of all the sounds in the music with the D2000. Texture goes hands down to the SA5000, but the D2000 isn’t too far off. The D2000 sounds smoother in its presentation, but definitely not smoothed over. The D2000 does add a bit of bass emphasis that helps keep the rhythm with electronica, but most of the electronica I listen to isn’t dependent on heavy bass. The SA5000 remains the way to go with electronica, but the D2000s aren’t a bad choice if bass volume is important to you.
Conclusion? If you’re satisfied with your headphones STOP AND RUN AWAY FROM THIS PLACE FOREVER. Don’t go buying other headphones just because you’re curious, or else you might notice flaws in your headphones that you never thought existed before. However, if I were to chose one headphone it would obviously be the D2000. It’s sound sits very nicely between the DT990 and the SA5000. It has just the right amount of everything. For electronica it'll depend on how sensitive you are to a bright sound and if your music is bass dependent. The only problems I have with it are 1. the cable (I can always re-cable the headphones), and 2. somewhat loose fit (can’t really do much here…). I’m going to hang onto all 3 headphones until I get my new source and to allow more time for burn-in; I’ll then report back to post if my impressions of the 3 have changed.
These are my current impressions. As side note, I should mention that the perceived sound quality of a headphone is rather dependent on your reference. The SA5000s used to sound perfect to me, but listening to the D2000 and the DT990 made me hear the SA5000s in a new light. Listening to the SA5000s for the first time in weeks after listening pretty much only to the D2000/DT990 sound VERY weird. The sound signature sounded very weird and was not what I was used to; for the first time I felt blinded by its brightness and appalled by the lack of bass. By themselves all three are very competent headphones, and their flaws aren’t as noticeable until you start A/B’ing them with other headphones.
EDIT: After some more listening time and getting used to the DT990 sound, I've chosen DT990 in the end. This is how I saw it:
DT990
Pros:
-Bass volume/physical impact (D2000 offers no competition in this regard)
-Air and soundstage
Cons:
-Dry, sucked out mids
-Uncomfortable velour pads
D2000
Pros:
-Smooth, balanced sound across the frequency range
-More "juicy" mids compared to DT990
-Greater bass extension
Cons:
-Very little bass volume/physical impact
-Lack of air/soundstage
While the D2000 has a more coherent sound with better mids, I just can't get over the lack of bass volume and air/soundstage. I'm sticking with the DT990s, but I wish it could have slightly leaner bass with more prominent mids.
