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Changing the topic, am I alone in noticing how few of the 40 buyers have followed through with their implicit promise to post reviews?
I hope this situation will change soon, as there are plenty of potential customers for the next batch (myself included), who could benefit from such reviews (I'm wishing average_joe had got one, as I find his reviews extremely detailed and helpful).
Though I have the DX100 for like a week, I need more time to actually go with some conclusions on it. Though I'm not sure if it will be helpful to many headfiers, because the only pair of hadphones that I've got is Edition 8 and the only source I've got, besides DX100, is an iPod touch.
Edit:
Anyways, the initial impressions it is:
On average the sound is very tuneful. I really enjoy it. But when I first plugged my Edition 8 into it I was kind of disappointed. I expected the difference between DX100 and iPod to blow my head off (like when I first tried E8). Instead the sound was very pleasant, but it took a while for me to figure out at first little and later great differences in the sound.
The first thing to come to my head was a thought that there's like 10-30% of new musical information that I hear, comparing to iPod. Which I thought was impossible, because the Edition 8 are very detailed headphones by themselves and I believed what I heard from iPod was the best of what the record could present to me. I was definitely wrong.
The bass is more controllable. I can definitely hear patterns in it. It was like simple "boom" on my iPod. I've got an impression that with DX100 the bass got more attention than other frequency ranges. It's not that the others are bad. It's that the bass became a real pleasure to hear.
The soundstage is wider and deeper, like 150% that I hear from iPod on my Edition 8. It has more 3D effect in it - I can definitely position some of the musical instruments more to the left/right and farther/closer on the soundstage. But there's more to it. The soundstage is not empty. It's not like you hear some instruments put in different corners, but instead a wide stage filled with sound. Which is delivered by various instruments, positioned in different corners. I don't know how to describe it more accurate so I'll just leave it as is.
The separation of the musical instruments has gone to a new level. I can hear clapping of the crowd even beneath the music and it is not muddled, it sounds very real, like being there.
The sound of vocals that I hear from the DX100 are amazing. There were many times when I was twisting my head, just because the voice was so clear I thought someone came into my room.
And last but not least: a brief comparison with HM801.
I've had it like 30 mins in my possession so I've got a chance to briefly compare these two.
I started with the HM801 and I really liked it. The bass was very pleasant and mids were fine. I thought it was a bit dark (if I correctly use the term). Meaning that the highs were dim to my ear. I think if I didn't had the DX100 I might have bought the HM.
But then I plugged my phones into DX100. And I definitely liked it more. To my opinion it was a head above the HM. The sound was pretty balanced, there were no frequency ranges that DX100 would highlight more than others. Unlike the 801, which to my taste was paying too much attention to the lows and mids with no good treating of the highs. With DX100 sound was wider and fuller, more filled with music. The HM801 got the music to be concentrated (in a good way) and DX100 forced the sound to really open, to present it like it is, with lots of details and harmony in every frequency range. The soundstage was wider in DX100. The sound had more life in it. My opinion is that DX100 has more natural sound comparing to the HM801.
I had not much time with these two nor any vast sound testing experience, but I would definitely choose the DX100 over HM801 for its sound quality.
P.S. I'm not good with the sound language and my native language is not English, so I apologize for the clumsiness of the language in my impressions.
P.P.S. I've got a picture from the meeting where I've got a chance to compare these two. Thank you guys from pleer.ru!
P.P.P.S. Everything I wrote can be applied only to the records with good mastering and good quality of the record itself. There are tracks that despite everything sound practically the same from my iPod and from DX100. But the records that received a good treat at studios had really opened up and sounded great with all those awesome things I've described. And in fact, I was astonished when some records of 2000s opened up less than some records made in 80s and 90s. Before listening to DX100 I was pretty sure that everything recorded after year 2000 must be better in quality than those before.
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