Just wanted to post up my "lasting" impressions of the T50rp MK3 from when I had them for a few weeks back in October (I wrote down some notes, thinking I was going to do a review, but that's obviously not going to pan out now).
First, I ended up returning them to Guitar Center because they were just too damn uncomfortable and I couldn't wear them longer than 10 minutes no matter what I tried. I did try stuffing the earpads with rolled-up fragments of toilet-paper but that did absolutely nothing.
Sonically they were amazing—and I mean,
amazing! And for the price, they're a total
steal and
no-brainer! By far one of the biggest "bang for the buck" headphones I've ever heard, right up there with other giant-value killers like the KOSS KSC75, Yamaha MT220, and Audio-Technica MSR7. They were so sonically amazing that people really shouldn't be thinking about these especially when they're only $160—just buy them already! (And make sure to mod the earpads for comfort of course, which I didn't bother to do because I was just lazy & cheap.)
Between the two other closed headphones that I had at the same time, the MT220 and MSR7, the T50rp MK3 was way more similar to the MSR7—actually, it was definitely along the same sonic lines. Similarly very clean & clear, with a bass that managed to hit surprisingly hard & deep despite being clearly under-driven by my Gilmore Lite. And it sounded more "open" and spatial than the MSR7, which was expected from its semi-open design—larger soundstage, higher sense of the music being projected outwards more. The MSR7 was actually sort of closed-in and upfront-sounding in comparison. If I had to use an analogy, the MSR7 is definitely for those who like (or wouldn't mind) their music being served up somewhat-intimately and very directly, kinda like being close to the stage at a rock concert, while the MK3 is definitely for those who want more of a laid-back spatial "concert hall", if you will.
Another non-sonic reason I didn't warm up to the MK3 was because of its inefficiency—as I wrote before already, there was absolutely no way I could use it directly out of either of my computers, and I didn't really want to buy a new amp for my dedicated "Head-Fi" system either for music-listening purposes. I really thought it had potential as a computer headphone sonically too, but the inefficiency killed that for me, which was just too bad. I would've
loved its sound for gaming as well—its inefficiency became one of the most soul-crushing disappointments I've ever had in my closed (or semi-closed) headphone journey.
Now if only Fostex could plant the MK3's sound into a headphone that's actually comfortable to wear and efficient enough to be driven directly out of a computer sound card, that would be fantastically amazing! (And that's definitely one of the reasons I got on board the TH-X00 hype train!)
they are T40s mkIII and I'm lovin' them with HM5 angled lambskin pads. The only problem I'm having, and that I want to solve before I start to mod them, is that there is distortion/rattling in the left driver with sub-bass tones when playing at loud volumes; I believe the rattling can start at 60Hz depending on the volume. I'm using this site to check the sub-bass distortion, under the Quality section: https://www.audiocheck.net/soundtests_headphones.php. I'm using a Topping L30 on high gain but I don't know if that's enough juice for this headphone, for me they get loud enough at 12 o'clock but there is still a little of distortion.
