I'm not familiar with these terms. I read of darkness and warmth and I have no idea what they're referring to. Also, part of the appeal of the Edition X is supposed to be that they sound good across genres. I've read a few posts stating they might not be very good for "edm", which I presume branches out to all sorts of techno and electronic music, which is concerning for me as that is a type of music I enjoy. I'm also curious about the HD800. For what is supposed to be a very popular higher end headphone I get the impression from comments that it has a sound not suitable for a good deal of music, and may be fatiguing as well. How significant is it that it's not planar magnetic either?
Good questions.
EDM. The Edition X is great for EDM. Don't worry about that. As for what genres they're not good with... depends on the amp somewhat.
Darkness/Brightness refer to the amount of treble in the frequency response. Warm/Cold are sometimes used interchangeably but I feel like warmth tends to mean an emphasis on low mids over upper mids as well. I'm a relative newcomer as well though so take that with a grain of salt.
Sound Signature - The Edition X sound is hard to describe because it is different from other headphones that I have heard. That's the trouble. It's not really a matter of frequency response--which seems fairly neutral actually. The perceived warmth comes from a slower decay rate in the mids compared to treble, but that also can be removed or enhanced depending on the speed of the amp so.... I don't know what to say. There are many other things like decay and distortion that contribute to a headphone's sound.
HD800 - I had a chance to hear the HD800 on a couple occasions and they were pretty good. They were brighter but you could always throw them on a tube amp. The soundstage is the main thing I envy about them. On the flipside, I like the mids a little more here. Dynamic vs Planar is not a big deal. High end dynamics always do special things to get more speed than normal, and I think there are merely tradeoffs between the technologies.
The Edition X v2 appeals to me for a few reasons. One, for a higher end headphone (not the highest of course) it's almost uniquely self-sufficient. Even the Fiio A5 should be enough for rewarding use. I was very unwilling to spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars for dacs and amps to enable extremely expensive headphones as are.
I went for them for that same reason. They don't need large amounts of power, just clean power. However, finding cheap amps that are clean is not as easy as you might think. I ended up getting a $300 desktop DAC shortly after buying my HEX, and I am going to get a very serious amp as well at some point. Though it is acceptable from my XDuoo.
I wouldn't worry about killing them with a magni. HiFiMan lies about the efficiency of all their headphones. According to innerfidelity measurements it actually needs slightly more power than the LCD-X or the Aeons, all of which come with XLR cables and the expectation from their manufacturer that they'd be run from high end desktop setups. I'm curious to know how that combo sounds actually.
Three, I didn't want headphones that would either be painful to listen to or inappropriate for different genres. For all of this money the notion that your headphones would be bothersome or inadequate is borderline absurd. Some of you apparently buy multiple of these for use with different songs but that just doesn't apply to me. I'm just a relatively speaking cheap-ass pleb in pursuit of an end-game that makes enough all-around sense. Did I make the right choice?
The headphone itself has no sibilance or shoutyness. No weird peaks, very flat and well-behaved. If there is anything painful in upstream equipment or in a recording itself though the Edition X will play it, because it is a detailed headphone.
Philosophically, I'm completely on board with you. I'm gonna go ahead and say that the correlation between price and quality is a loose one, sadly. I've heard many headphones up to $1000 that left me wondering if my SHP9500s sounded as good. The good news is... with the right source powering it, the Edition X is in the top 3 of the headphones I've heard.
