It's an over ear as the pads are just big enough with a tiny bit of depth for my ears to fit in. At first it felt like an on ear when my ears pressed up against the pads before adjusting it to get my ears inside its center. There will be some sound leakage as the pads are thin and soft, so while this headphone tries to clamp on your head, I feel it will still leak sound more than headphones with much thicker firmer pads.
It's an over ear as the pads are just big enough with a tiny bit of depth for my ears to fit in. At first it felt like an on ear when my ears pressed up against the pads before adjusting it to get my ears inside its center. There will be some sound leakage as the pads are thin and soft, so while this headphone tries to clamp on your head, I feel it will still leak sound more than headphones with much thicker firmer pads.
I see... wonder if 3rd party earpad replacements for the original MDR-R10 will work better? Those who've gotten their pair need to start pad rolling xD
I see... wonder if 3rd party earpad replacements for the original MDR-R10 will work better? Those who've gotten their pair need to start pad rolling xD
You have a very well known (at least here) neighbor lover of closed back headphones (Malevolent), but don't say to him about your HD 800-S... Your wife (like mine) shouldn't be happy when you use your HD 800s (although I enjoy a lot the briefly times I can use mine ).
Ok so this is going to be the last comparison for quite a while as I am trying to aquire one other headphone and an amp that I feel will be relevant to this thread. I think since we reached a ceiling on capabilities when comparing the es-r10 to the verite closed that I should end for now with the stellia not because of what we can probably assume the stellia will be better at-reinforcing the es-r10 as not a summit fi killer in the typical linear sense of more money means more detail and resolution, but because the stellia tries to sound like speakers in a room while being closed like the es-r10. The stellia is also the only focal headphone I've heard and owned so I can't say how well other focal headphones would compare to the es-r10.
That being said let's begin. The stellia uses a pure beryllium m shaped dome driver. As mentioned in my previous post comparing es-r10 to the vc I mentioned that the utopia speakers using this type of driver material-while exciting to listen to was very fatiguing. This downside lead to a short lived demo session. I liked what I heard from those speakers but I had no intentions of owning speakers for general music listening. I've read that the stellia was kinda like a mellower closed back counterpart to the utopia headphone so I think I made the better choice of making the stellia the focal I ended up buying second hand.
The stellia is easy to drive and offers a pretty impressive sound in that its fast, the presentation it tight, the bass has this tactile clap-slap-punch, and a somewhat v shaped sound to it without necessarily presenting all the downsides we associate with a v shape sound. The background sounds closed off making me feel like the air has been sucked out. The stage is a little outside my head but overall narrow and pretty deep. All of this results in a straight forward fun listening experience that is compatible with many genres of music.
With that said you could say both the es-r10 and stellia are virtual speaker rooms curated by there respective manufactures for a specific presentation in mind. The es-r10 sounds wider, images a little bigger and sounds brighter. The stellia is narrower but is more cleaner and orderly like the vc. Both have depth, but the stellia at times may sound a hair deeper because of that sucked out air effect. Images on the stellia have a plucked distinctness that resembles a planar. The es-r10 while very well separated won't layer as well as stellia so sounds in comparison to the stellia will appear with less refinement as expected of the price difference. The stellias bass will hit hard and maintain a tight subbass but its not a bass cannon headphone by any means.
Yes the stellia has more detail, resolution, speed, but keep in mind that we are entering the last 5-10% of sound so while the stellia will show immediate increases in these areas, in the grand scheme of things its not going to be anywhere near sounding twice as detailed (law of diminishing returns and all that). Distant sounds on stellia will have more physicality to them and can be heard with a bit better clarity than es-r10.
Now after saying these things I can say with absolute confidence that I would take the es-r10 over the stellia every time. This is because despite the stellia showing technical benefits it suffers from the same problem as the hifiman he-r10d. What I mean is, it presents information, but fails to make me care. The sound is too squeaky clean to be believable.
Keep in mind this headphone is still an in your face experience, but even then it fails to capture my attention fully, causing my mind to wonder and I feel I'm not that interested in listening to music from this for long (not all that fatiguing a headphone to listen to exactly). Real instruments have natural distortion that is removed on higher end cans. This probably leads me to believe that audiophiles buy tube amps to bring this feeling back, but with headphones like the es-r10, I don't think about getting any tube amp, it sounds magical just out of a solid state setup. In other words the stellia cannot capture the euphonic mids and glass treble because the images have a glossy metallic coating on all the music. The utopia speakers had this metallic effect as well, but the metallic emphasis is less prevalent on the stellia. I'm simply not a fan of this effect compared to the es-r10 which sounds more natural to me.
Lastly I wanted to add that while the verite closed has a clean background and similar effects of the stellia beryllium driver, it does not have the same level of metallic effect and couple that with its wooden cups at least sounds more natural to my ears when compared to the stellia.
Also I keep forgetting to mention to @Ciggavelli and others who bought this that when you get your es-r10 get some kind of cloth to clean the wooden box as it leaves wood dust impressions behind. Also there are a few tiny toothpick shaped pieces of wood that might appear as you open the wooden box. I did not get a splinter or anything, but thought you should know, so pay attention to what happens as you handle the wooden box.
I couldn't help but give it a little listen. I've tried out some Electric Wizard albums (very heavy sounding stoner rock/doom). I must say I am very impressed off first listen. The soundstage is higher than I expected. The clarity is actually very good; not veiled like the Elites. Dynamics are good, but I want more bass. I don't think I'll be listening to rap out of these. But, the one thing that sticks out, and I can't quite put words to it yet, but the tone is amazing. The distorted guitars sound perfect. I guess it sounds "woody," but in a positive way. More impressions to come
These are very light, and the comfort is good. After like 30 minutes of listening, he could sell these for $4K. Electric guitars sound so good on these
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I hope you enjoy them 
