Redcarmoose
Headphoneus Supremus
Review of the Edifier H840 Full Size Headphone
Words Of Warning:
These are just my personal opinions. Buying cheap and unknown headphones is a slight risk. There is a chance that these will never get traction in the audiophile community due to the complete lack of a flat response.
Maybe the most important fact to remember is that these are in reality $39 headphones. No matter what accolades you read here, keep in mind these are $39 headphones. Reality is you can not walk into a BMW dealership and buy a new BMW for $13,000. Same goes for headphones, you are rarely going to find many headphones that you truly enjoy for $39. Some maybe, but not that many? Hence the strangeness in this review. I enjoy these. They are not without their faults which I will try and note here. All and all I first heard the H840s a year ago, but it took time before I obtained enough bravery to buy these cheap headphones. If you have a collection of headphones you already like and understand, what reason is there to get another low-cost and possibly sub-standard piece of equipment? IMO
Edifier is a Chinese company who gets some respect as being the new owner of the Stax headphone company. Even though they hold all the Stax technology, I'm sure there is none of it here.
"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas Anymore."
Comfort, Build and Packaging:
They come in a nice plastic box with a sealed top. The headphones are well protected. Pictures of the packaging are out there on the net, I just didn't feel like photographing the box.Lol
Inside you get nothing but the headphones and a small card warning you not to ever wear the H840s closer than 10cm from a pacemaker in 16 languages. Also a note that you should not plug the headphones directly into the wall socket.
The first thing I noticed is they are super nice to wear. On a scale of one to ten they get a solid ten. This all makes sense in that they are low-weight. Still I was a little nervous about long-term comfort because they are full size around the ear dynamic driver headphones. The cups are not that big and the padding is not that thick? Still my ears fit inside without touching and they are not hot. Just a home-run in the wear-ability department. No extra rickety sound when worn and no physical cable noise transfers.
If your questioning what this guy is about running around in the review, I don't know, he just ran by?
Build Quality:
They are very cheap looking. Still you'll find out that I'm giving them their marks for sound quality. On a questionnaire I would choose for the company to put 98% of the money into the sound and 2% into the build. Remember too that I'm not comparing apples to apples here but doing a comparison with the build-quality with headphones which cost $100s more. They do seem like they would last but I'm never taking them out of the house as portable headphones. They just seem like they could snap if any heavy force was applied to the arms holding the drivers. Again to put this all in perspective we need to remember the cost.
In the end these are simply plastic headphones with a stainless steel flat band holding them together. Still when studied with intense scrutiny they are built well enough for what they are.
My final favorite aspect of the build is the TPE anti winding cable, like the Sennheiser HD439 Headphones and the perfect clamping force. Truly I can't commend the company more for getting the clamping force just right straight out of the box.
So let's talk about sound and extra equipment used.
The Sound:
They are a V-Shape signature but have lower detail under the thick syrupy smoothness. These are a not flat sounding headphone but exude a pure euphoric color. Just walls of bass and bass texture which actually go to vibrate the headphones at higher volumes. It's the kind of dramatic emotional color that gives you that great feeling upon first listening. A great way to think about color is think of photography. In photography we can put a filter over a photograph, either a glass one on the lens or change the color tone after in Photo-shop. The end result is the whole photograph is going to have this unnatural hue. At first the hue is exciting, we know it's artificial but it's entertaining. Only after days or weeks do we realize this same sonic color is keeping us from seeing details and is basically just pouring a sweet syrupy audio resin over everything causing us not to see the true detail of some parts.
As long as we're aware of our fantasy world here all is well. We risk only two things here. One that it can limit the genres we enjoy and/or that everything can start to get super-boring once our listening mind figures out that we are not hearing everything in the music. This happens numerous time with my headphone purchases, where I get to place with the headphone relationship where all I hear is the muddy bass smearing the detail endlessly.
In a stable of better headphones, and more true to signal headphones, the above then will at times delegate the bass heavy headphone to a life of non-use. This seems to also be the learning curve for some at Head-Fi, the new members slowly work their way to a flat and true sound signature in both playback equipment and headphones in general. Some may look at it as a style in audiophile maturity.
So let's just try and validate why we would even entertain a signature so far from reality. Let's talk about musical genres and how this headphone actually walks an amazingly thin small line around the pitfalls which threaten to end our enjoyment.
The Sound In Detail:
Let's start with sound-stage. I'm a sound-stage fanatic. So bare in mind a big sound-stage with all the instruments placed in a organic sound field will win me over and cause me to overlook a mountain of sonic faults. All my reference headphones have a big sound-stage. The k701s, the AHD-7000s and the Sony MDR-CD 870. The CD-870s are a rare headphone that was made to reproduce a flat response like a cheap Sony R-10, but also had the sound-stage characteristics of the R-10. They were $200 in 1998.
The reason I bring up my older reference headphones is to put our H840 sound-stage into perspective. It's not as big as say the k701s but far better than a limited sound-stage like the M-50s produce. Incredibly the sound-stage is going to depend on upstream audio equipment and file source. The fact that I'm using $2500 interconnects to review $39 headphones just continues to wash our 2016 view of a hard reality farther into the Land of Oz.
Listening to our 16 bit-44.1 recording of Reprise 1990-1999 by recording artist Vangelis just goes to show that these headphones are wildly entertaining and a keeper despite the flaws and shortcomings they contain. Any high pitch instruments can and do find their way out of the mix. Maybe along with sound-stage the smoothness far out of the $39 level is the charm here. Combine the smoothness with a lush-big lower mid and bass area and we are dropping our jaws here. The fact that they can actually play lower bass drum tones in a defined center quadrant singled out from the rest of the musical information is nothing but a simple miracle for headphones of this price.
Listening to the 5th song on the album, " Monastery Of La Rabida " just seems like it was made for this headphone. Of course there are distortions around but the complete musical prowess in all the other areas is fully distracting. If anything this warm multi-harmonic lower mid and bass (pushed out to the edge of the stage like a cinema experience) just gets straight-up entertaining in a naughty and wrong way.
Even though the term Hi/Fi is short for high fidelity, seeing the term on the box somehow reminds me more of a mid-sixties idea of Hi/Fi? The 1960s when big 15 inch woofers and tube amps washed the listeners away becoming laid back with a drink while enjoying an easy listening record by some arranger like Les Baxter. We are also met with the new era of big China manufacturing where by economy of scale, a value unknown even 5 years ago can actually take place. A company like Edifier can come up with an audio product design and then make a gazillion billion of them and sell them to the ocean of Chinese audio buyers. If something sounds good and is low cost it will sell.
The Treble:
We have treble and treble detail sparkle but at times it's just slightly off. I would not call these woolly or even completly dark headphones, BUT there could be more treble detail and complexity at times. After talking so much about sound-stage there is a limit to where this treble goes, almost like the treble is slightly withdrawn in comparison to the lower mids, bass and mid-range. It's not always noticeable but can be a slight energy missing is some songs. What I'm saying is in comparison to some way more expensive headphones the H840s will provide a slightly less complex sound-stage and treble detail. The way I judge this detail is by playing songs that I know really well. I listen for the detail in sounds which I know is in the recording which my DAC and amp always provide. At times this detail is very clear in the music but just slightly buried in the mix. The treble is slightly dark? A slight film over it at times. The result is a total lack of sharp or overly bright treble tones. Most of the time this character actually works, adding to the fine line this headphone is walking.
The Mid-range:
We end with the mids as being the most important. Most of our information lives in this place. Again the mids are slightly dark too. Still every time I listen to the Edifiers I'm always impressed as to the placement and character of the mid-range. It's fast and fun, dramatic and warm.
The Bass:
These are bass headphones. I have modified other headphones to produce more bass than the H840s, so in a way the bass is tame. No way are you going to get a sick or queasy feeling from the bass on these, like some extreme bass headphones. They just have a tremendous bass energy at times, shaking your ears. The bass scales up with better files and equipment. The bass is fast and detailed and has a fabulous sub-bass character.
On the subject of volume and sound pressure levels:
These headphones get loud. Not only that but they actually sound better and better with volume. Due to their cost, I was a little apprehensive to find out how loud they would go. I went as far a 60% of full volume with the Asgard One. At that volume level the volume was far louder than I ever use. The headphones also shake like a sub-woofer but produce no rattle or clipping.
In Ending:
I was really hoping that the H840s would end up being a portable headphone for my uses. In the end they became much too precious to leave the house with. Combined with the fact that they just don't have any redeeming or outstanding sonic qualities out of an iPhone, just adds to the issue at hand.
Equipment used:
Schiit Asgard One Amplifier
DAC Magic Plus Up-sampling 16bit-44.1kHz files and 24bit-192KHz files from Foobar 2000 with WASPI in place.
Edifier H840 Full-size Dynamic Driver Closed-back Headphones
Virtual Dynamics Master Series RCA interconnects
To End With A Spark Of Reality:
I guess if you were to hold these headphones up to the best headphones, they just don't do the drums and vocal interplay that you need with pop or rock music. The drums can sound slightly box-like, artificial and thin at times. They also perform a style of slowness that many better headphones get away from. Still when listening to something like the Tron OST by Daft Punk they are 100% amazing and without fault regardless of any price paid.
Words Of Warning:
These are just my personal opinions. Buying cheap and unknown headphones is a slight risk. There is a chance that these will never get traction in the audiophile community due to the complete lack of a flat response.
Maybe the most important fact to remember is that these are in reality $39 headphones. No matter what accolades you read here, keep in mind these are $39 headphones. Reality is you can not walk into a BMW dealership and buy a new BMW for $13,000. Same goes for headphones, you are rarely going to find many headphones that you truly enjoy for $39. Some maybe, but not that many? Hence the strangeness in this review. I enjoy these. They are not without their faults which I will try and note here. All and all I first heard the H840s a year ago, but it took time before I obtained enough bravery to buy these cheap headphones. If you have a collection of headphones you already like and understand, what reason is there to get another low-cost and possibly sub-standard piece of equipment? IMO
Edifier is a Chinese company who gets some respect as being the new owner of the Stax headphone company. Even though they hold all the Stax technology, I'm sure there is none of it here.
"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas Anymore."
Comfort, Build and Packaging:
They come in a nice plastic box with a sealed top. The headphones are well protected. Pictures of the packaging are out there on the net, I just didn't feel like photographing the box.Lol
Inside you get nothing but the headphones and a small card warning you not to ever wear the H840s closer than 10cm from a pacemaker in 16 languages. Also a note that you should not plug the headphones directly into the wall socket.
The first thing I noticed is they are super nice to wear. On a scale of one to ten they get a solid ten. This all makes sense in that they are low-weight. Still I was a little nervous about long-term comfort because they are full size around the ear dynamic driver headphones. The cups are not that big and the padding is not that thick? Still my ears fit inside without touching and they are not hot. Just a home-run in the wear-ability department. No extra rickety sound when worn and no physical cable noise transfers.
If your questioning what this guy is about running around in the review, I don't know, he just ran by?
Build Quality:
They are very cheap looking. Still you'll find out that I'm giving them their marks for sound quality. On a questionnaire I would choose for the company to put 98% of the money into the sound and 2% into the build. Remember too that I'm not comparing apples to apples here but doing a comparison with the build-quality with headphones which cost $100s more. They do seem like they would last but I'm never taking them out of the house as portable headphones. They just seem like they could snap if any heavy force was applied to the arms holding the drivers. Again to put this all in perspective we need to remember the cost.
In the end these are simply plastic headphones with a stainless steel flat band holding them together. Still when studied with intense scrutiny they are built well enough for what they are.
My final favorite aspect of the build is the TPE anti winding cable, like the Sennheiser HD439 Headphones and the perfect clamping force. Truly I can't commend the company more for getting the clamping force just right straight out of the box.
So let's talk about sound and extra equipment used.
The Sound:
They are a V-Shape signature but have lower detail under the thick syrupy smoothness. These are a not flat sounding headphone but exude a pure euphoric color. Just walls of bass and bass texture which actually go to vibrate the headphones at higher volumes. It's the kind of dramatic emotional color that gives you that great feeling upon first listening. A great way to think about color is think of photography. In photography we can put a filter over a photograph, either a glass one on the lens or change the color tone after in Photo-shop. The end result is the whole photograph is going to have this unnatural hue. At first the hue is exciting, we know it's artificial but it's entertaining. Only after days or weeks do we realize this same sonic color is keeping us from seeing details and is basically just pouring a sweet syrupy audio resin over everything causing us not to see the true detail of some parts.
As long as we're aware of our fantasy world here all is well. We risk only two things here. One that it can limit the genres we enjoy and/or that everything can start to get super-boring once our listening mind figures out that we are not hearing everything in the music. This happens numerous time with my headphone purchases, where I get to place with the headphone relationship where all I hear is the muddy bass smearing the detail endlessly.
In a stable of better headphones, and more true to signal headphones, the above then will at times delegate the bass heavy headphone to a life of non-use. This seems to also be the learning curve for some at Head-Fi, the new members slowly work their way to a flat and true sound signature in both playback equipment and headphones in general. Some may look at it as a style in audiophile maturity.
So let's just try and validate why we would even entertain a signature so far from reality. Let's talk about musical genres and how this headphone actually walks an amazingly thin small line around the pitfalls which threaten to end our enjoyment.
The Sound In Detail:
Let's start with sound-stage. I'm a sound-stage fanatic. So bare in mind a big sound-stage with all the instruments placed in a organic sound field will win me over and cause me to overlook a mountain of sonic faults. All my reference headphones have a big sound-stage. The k701s, the AHD-7000s and the Sony MDR-CD 870. The CD-870s are a rare headphone that was made to reproduce a flat response like a cheap Sony R-10, but also had the sound-stage characteristics of the R-10. They were $200 in 1998.
The reason I bring up my older reference headphones is to put our H840 sound-stage into perspective. It's not as big as say the k701s but far better than a limited sound-stage like the M-50s produce. Incredibly the sound-stage is going to depend on upstream audio equipment and file source. The fact that I'm using $2500 interconnects to review $39 headphones just continues to wash our 2016 view of a hard reality farther into the Land of Oz.
Listening to our 16 bit-44.1 recording of Reprise 1990-1999 by recording artist Vangelis just goes to show that these headphones are wildly entertaining and a keeper despite the flaws and shortcomings they contain. Any high pitch instruments can and do find their way out of the mix. Maybe along with sound-stage the smoothness far out of the $39 level is the charm here. Combine the smoothness with a lush-big lower mid and bass area and we are dropping our jaws here. The fact that they can actually play lower bass drum tones in a defined center quadrant singled out from the rest of the musical information is nothing but a simple miracle for headphones of this price.
Listening to the 5th song on the album, " Monastery Of La Rabida " just seems like it was made for this headphone. Of course there are distortions around but the complete musical prowess in all the other areas is fully distracting. If anything this warm multi-harmonic lower mid and bass (pushed out to the edge of the stage like a cinema experience) just gets straight-up entertaining in a naughty and wrong way.
Even though the term Hi/Fi is short for high fidelity, seeing the term on the box somehow reminds me more of a mid-sixties idea of Hi/Fi? The 1960s when big 15 inch woofers and tube amps washed the listeners away becoming laid back with a drink while enjoying an easy listening record by some arranger like Les Baxter. We are also met with the new era of big China manufacturing where by economy of scale, a value unknown even 5 years ago can actually take place. A company like Edifier can come up with an audio product design and then make a gazillion billion of them and sell them to the ocean of Chinese audio buyers. If something sounds good and is low cost it will sell.
The Treble:
We have treble and treble detail sparkle but at times it's just slightly off. I would not call these woolly or even completly dark headphones, BUT there could be more treble detail and complexity at times. After talking so much about sound-stage there is a limit to where this treble goes, almost like the treble is slightly withdrawn in comparison to the lower mids, bass and mid-range. It's not always noticeable but can be a slight energy missing is some songs. What I'm saying is in comparison to some way more expensive headphones the H840s will provide a slightly less complex sound-stage and treble detail. The way I judge this detail is by playing songs that I know really well. I listen for the detail in sounds which I know is in the recording which my DAC and amp always provide. At times this detail is very clear in the music but just slightly buried in the mix. The treble is slightly dark? A slight film over it at times. The result is a total lack of sharp or overly bright treble tones. Most of the time this character actually works, adding to the fine line this headphone is walking.
The Mid-range:
We end with the mids as being the most important. Most of our information lives in this place. Again the mids are slightly dark too. Still every time I listen to the Edifiers I'm always impressed as to the placement and character of the mid-range. It's fast and fun, dramatic and warm.
The Bass:
These are bass headphones. I have modified other headphones to produce more bass than the H840s, so in a way the bass is tame. No way are you going to get a sick or queasy feeling from the bass on these, like some extreme bass headphones. They just have a tremendous bass energy at times, shaking your ears. The bass scales up with better files and equipment. The bass is fast and detailed and has a fabulous sub-bass character.
On the subject of volume and sound pressure levels:
These headphones get loud. Not only that but they actually sound better and better with volume. Due to their cost, I was a little apprehensive to find out how loud they would go. I went as far a 60% of full volume with the Asgard One. At that volume level the volume was far louder than I ever use. The headphones also shake like a sub-woofer but produce no rattle or clipping.
In Ending:
I was really hoping that the H840s would end up being a portable headphone for my uses. In the end they became much too precious to leave the house with. Combined with the fact that they just don't have any redeeming or outstanding sonic qualities out of an iPhone, just adds to the issue at hand.
Equipment used:
Schiit Asgard One Amplifier
DAC Magic Plus Up-sampling 16bit-44.1kHz files and 24bit-192KHz files from Foobar 2000 with WASPI in place.
Edifier H840 Full-size Dynamic Driver Closed-back Headphones
Virtual Dynamics Master Series RCA interconnects
| Music used: Rush "Test For Echos" HD remaster Rush "Moving Pictures" HD remaster Daft Punk "Tron OST" 16 bit-44.1 kHz Red Book Vangelis "1990-1999 Reprise" 16 bit-44.1 kHz Red Book | |
To End With A Spark Of Reality:
I guess if you were to hold these headphones up to the best headphones, they just don't do the drums and vocal interplay that you need with pop or rock music. The drums can sound slightly box-like, artificial and thin at times. They also perform a style of slowness that many better headphones get away from. Still when listening to something like the Tron OST by Daft Punk they are 100% amazing and without fault regardless of any price paid.
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