bavinck
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2014
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Been listening for about two hours now, some early thoughts:
1) This thing definitely needs a low impedance amp to push out some current to tighten the bass up. As somebody earlier noted, a good IEM amp can serve them really well. I think you're probably short changing these if you're sending them anything more than 1 Ohm. With my Millett SSMH and AudioEngine D1, the bass is out of control. It seems fun at times, but it's messy. The Lyr on high gain is a recipe for bloated bass. Feed it through a Magni, O2 or Grace M9XX and the bass *really* tightens up. The Vali isn't bad with it per se, but doesn't do any favors at all either.I sort of expected this, from my experience with the D7000
2) two songs to listen to: Fiona Apple - Sleep To Dream and Muse - Super Massive Black Hole. This is certainly a gentleman's basshead can when amped properly.
3) There are times when I just have auditory flashbacks to the D7000 and there are times when I think "man, this is maybe better!" That's all I ever wanted out of it.
4) My cups are gorgeous, I'll put up some pictures shortly.
5) At some point I'm definitely going to have this recabled. As my new work can, I don't need 10 ft and I'd prefer a 3.5mm termination. It's not so much that I mind the cable, it just doesn't serve my needs as is.
6) I like the stock pads. They're firmer than I was anticipating
7) Very good soundstage for a closed can. Not going to compete with the HD650 by any means, let alone a HD800, but it's about as good as you get from a closed can.
8) It seems to keep sound in better than it keeps sound out. Which I like.
9) The treble is exactly what I'm after. Kinda reminds me of the treble of the HE400i, which I like. Forward without ever being sibilant
10) If there's one fault I'll lay early, I wish it was a tad more linear. Occasionally when somebody sings and the melody goes from lower treble to midrange, it sounds like they're turning away from the mic. But at the same time, it's this quality that gives the headphone it's overall fun U shape.
11) I would call it a U shape frequency response in comparison to what I remember from the few times with the TH600 and TH900, which I'd call a V shape.
12) It sounds okay/good out of an iPhone. You can hear distortion on hard, heavy bass transients. I actually prefer its sound out of an iPhone to the way it sounds out of the Lyr (with tubes) in high gain and the Vali.
13) Ranking the amps I've played it out of from best to worst match so far: 1) Grace M9XX 2) Lyr (solid state, lower power) 3)Magni 4) O2 5) Lyr (low power, tubes) AudioEngine D1 5) IPhone 6) Millett SSHM 7) Lyr (solid state high power) 8) Lyr (high gain, tubes)
14) Hadn't seen anybody mention this, but if you flip the bag inside out, it serves as a great cleaning cloth, which is really nice.
These are ultra-preliminary, but thought I'd just dump my listening notes.
Thanks for the impressions, very helpful. I also am a BIG fan of how the he400i handles treble so that is really good to read!