astroid
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2009
- Posts
- 1,042
- Likes
- 208
Its been a long journey.....
I used to be obsessive about my MP3 players, Ipods , Cowon X5, Creative Zen, Monolith , Sony , i tried so many i have lost count.
Then i got into Minidisc , i loved having the little plastic discs. I bought my wife one and made her 'mix' tapes , remember them.
After a while i realised that no matter what source i was using the sound quality was always only 'so' good , the difference between my MZ-RH1 and my Cowon X5 was not really noticable.
Headphones were not as popular at this time, most people used the ones supplied with their players. The Streets were full of white cable wearing suits.
The first 'wow' moment came when i was in Hifi corner in Edinburgh, i went in to look at CD players and noticed that they had a display set up with a chair and a big set of cans, i couldnt resist and sat down to listen. I was shocked, thats how i would describe it. The album was the 40th [size=11pt]anniversary[/size] edition of Pet Sounds, i sat for the whole album, i couldnt believe that a set of headphones could make me feel like the music was coming from the room around me!
The headphones were the HD600s.
Roll forward 5 years and i have a 'decent' home set up, i bought the HD600s and run them from my Aune MKII SE dac from a laptop running foobar.
I am happy with my home setup but a new job created a requirement for a good travel companion and finding it is proving quite a challenge.
Currently i am using the Denon D1100, i like them a lot but am always on the lookout for a something better.
I love Sony , always have.
I have just finished Akio Morita's biography 'Made in Japan' , i recommend it its a great read that should interest most folk here.
When Sony get it right thay have the ability to make the best audio equipment in the world. I love my Bravia , the ES range of components are still amazing and the Sony HD1 mp3 player is simply beautiful (although hobbled by Atrac and Sonicstage!).
So when i heard that Sony were releasing a new series of headphones i was very interested.
Sony headphones are a very mixed bag in my experience , the budget ones usually suck, Sony have used the same 30mm driver for years and they are pretty poor, most of Sony's best headphones have been at the higher end of the scale, R10's , CD3000 , SA5000 etc.
I am a little short of the green stuff right now, you know when you have months where things just happen , things that cost a shed load of cash? I have just had two months of that. I had to get glasses, car needed fixed, i am moving house and my place needed some major work done, in short if i suggested getting the Sony Z1000 to the missus right now i would get my balls served to me like two piping hot scotch eggs.
So i settled for the new MDR-ZX700.
Last month i bought the HD25-1 to try against my Denons and the HD25 lost, comfort and listening fatigue were the culprits, the HD25 made all tracks sound fast and a little shrill, the detail was amazing but after 30 mins i would get tired of the assault.
They are now in the hands of a DJ friend who loves them.
So i have now broken in the Sonys for 100+ hrs and i have travelled with them for the last week , are they keepers or will the Denons show them the door?
The Sonys RRP is £99 in UK, the Denon's £120 - you can get both much cheaper, so shop around.
Packaging and Contents...
The Denond come in a Plastic case with a cardboard insert, it looks fine, nothing special. The Denon comes with a good 'loooooooong' extension cable , a 1/4 adapter and a pleather pouch.
The cable and pouch are pretty good quality and the adapter is your standard gold fare.
The Sony comes in a nice Cardboard box with.......nothing, no adapter even.
The Sony are cheaper so i can see why there are no extras, however a pouch/bag would be useful for portable use.
Denon edge this one.
Next Comfort...
My idea of perfect comfort in headphones is the Pad material from Bose AE1 and the HD800's space around my ears.
The D1100 provides ample space around my lugs, if i adjust them well they dont touch them at all. This is no mean feat as my ears are pretty big, not 80 year old ears getting bigger as body gets smaller, big , more like big eared chimp, big.
The ZX700 in comparison have much smaller holes , they touch your ears all the way around, yet are still very comfy.
I think the pads help the Sonys, they are very soft and are slightly fatter at the back side, this matches the angle of your ears pretty well.
The Pads on the Denon are not as soft as the Sonys , they are also less breathable and make my ears sweat if the sun appears (which in Scotland is not that often).
The headband on the Sonys is wider than the Denons, it is also softer. Both are very comfy however and i dont really find one better than the other.
Overall they are both very comfy, i prefer the space around the ears the Denons give but like the pad material on the Sony better.
The Denon's make you look like Stewie Griffon , worth noting.
A draw really.
Build Quality...
Simple - A clear win for Sony.
The Denons do not feel expensive, they feel a little fragile. The headband feels like it could snap to me , this may just be my huge melon but i wouldnt feel safe bending them much further than i do to use them.
The cup is made of two materials on the Denon's , the outside is metal , aluminium i think and this sits over the rest of the cup which is plastic.
The plastic is sprayed silver on the arms , i would prefer it to be black, it doesnt look like metal , it looks a little tacky.
The cables on the Denon are cheap, rubbery but with a nice aluminium plug. They tangle easily.
However the Denons have stood up well to my daily commute (no scratches or scrapes at all) so maybe they are stronger than they feel.
The Sonys are SOLID , they look and feel tough, like a russian female shotputter. They are plastic but it is ABS and is similar in feel to the cups of HD25-1 and as you may know the HD25-1 cups will pretty much last a lifetime.
The pleather on the Sonys is of good quality , very soft and strong.
The arms can be twisted , turned and generally bent anyway you like and they take it without a creak, remind me of the SRH-840.
Cable is nice, tangle free with a nice bendy stress relief on the plug, the plug is also smaller than the Denon's which is better for portable use.
Even the plastic bales look really good, hard to tell they are plastic.
I love the look of the Sony's , the Z1000 must look and feel amazing!
Sound Quality...
I have grown used to the sound of my Denon's , when i listen to my HD600's after them for around 20 mins the 600's sound hollow and thin, so i decided when testing the Sonys i would do 2 days in a row of each, followed on the Friday by a day with my IEMs (Klipsch C3).
The music i listen too is very varied and my preference changes from month to month.
Last month i listened to Joanna Newsom , Suuns and Crystal Stilts, during the journey to work i tried to mix it up a bit to get an idea if the Sonys were better with some genre's over others.
The first thing i noticed with the Sony's was that the soundstage is not as wide as the Denon's.
listening to The Stones let it bleed showed the imaging to be very good though, the Guitar is clearly to your right and the drums are too the left with Mick in the centre along with the piano, it was just not as far too the left right as with the Denon's.
This song however made me aware of something, the Denon's have scooped out mids, the piano on the Sonys was right at the front but on the Denon's it sat much further back in the mix.
On the Denon's The Raconteurs 'Carolina Drama' can sound a little hollow, the soundstage sounds a bit artificial on it, like they are playing in an empty warehouse.
The impression of depth on the Sony's is good with the keyboards on The Shins "mines is not a high horse" sitting nicely behind the vocals.
Overall though , the Denon's do provide a big 'WOW' soundstage wise and this will get it many fans.
The second thing i noticed was that the Sony's bass is much stronger than i thought it would be , looking at Tyll's graphs on Innerfedelity made me a little nervous that the Sony would be bass shy, thankfully this is not the case...
The Sonys are not bass heavy or bass shy, the bass is somewhere in the middle. It doesnt have the bass range of the HD600 but what headphone at this price does?
If the Denon have a V shaped balance then i reckon the Sonys must have the opposite, the mids are up front with the bass behind and i think the treble rolls off a bit around 10-11khz.
The Denon whilst definately at the bassy end of the scale , have a wonderful level of detail in the upper ranges, the Animal Collectives albums are detail heavy on some tracks, there is so much going on that some headphones present it as some sort of blur, or they present the music in distinct layers that dont blend with each other and the rhythm falls apart , the Denon's and Sony's avoid this and both present music in a very natural way.
One thing i love about the Denon's is the overall tone they give music , guitars sound very woody, warm and natural , no metallic sheen at all.
The Denon's make music sound like music, i am sure you know what i mean.
In comparison the Sony's are a little more clinical, no less enjoyable but if the Denon's are 'Analogue' sounding then the Sony's are definately more like a well mastered CD!
I could not imagine using the Denon's in the studio, they are not neutral enough, the Sony's would be a pretty good studio can though, its tough , fairly neutral and comfy for long sessions.
The treble performance on these two is very different, the Denon makes a show of the high end , its a great show with no sibilance or fatigue but a show none the less.
The Sony's high to mid is smooth , not two parts , one part. The Denon's sound like they have a crossover and you can sometimes hear it, a lot of Cans do in my experiance, but these Sony's sound like good a single driver speaker , the treble is soft in the same way.
To test for sibilance i use a track from the Ravonettes ablum lust, lust, lust , Aly walk with me.
At 2 minutes in begins a 40 second assault of shrieking guitar's and distortion , if you can listen to this and pick out the individual instruments without wanting to tear your ears off then the cans are ok.
Both passed but the Sony's made the experience not just bearable but enjoyable! The scooped out mids on the Denon's were apparent during this test making the piece lose cohesion.
Which do i prefer, well flat is nice on paper but in practise they can be a little .... dull, I love the Denon's balance but have started to question it after hearing the Sony.
The more i switch between the two the more i am aware of the Denon's mids being in the background, with some music its bearly noticable but put on something with well recorded piano or strong vocals and they are often too far back in the mix.
I checked these on my speaker set up and the Sony is closer to the mark.
Do the Sony's work well with all genre's , no not IMO, some indie rock on them is a little compressed sounding , the seperation falls apart on busy guitar tracks, acoustic is fine but the Denon's deal with rock better than the Sony's.
On the other hand the Sony's are better at sparse acoustic pieces, folk , that kind of thing and electronica. I think this is due to the mids being more up front.
Right now i am still undecided on these, technically the Sony's have better sound quality, the Denon's however may be a more fun listen.
How do they scale...
On my headphone amp i have always been surprised how well the Denon's scale , the bass tightens up and goes deeper, the mids move forward just a little and they sound a bit softer up top.
The Sony's , they got louder and the soundstage pushed out to the sides a little , thats it.
Be careful amping the Sony's i reckon you could blow them very easily.
So what will i keep ...... i dont know yet, i cant keep both as it makes me late for work trying to choose!
Right this minute i am missing the Denon's soundstage but loving Newsome's vocals on the Sony, i can also hear something else, there is a little guy on my shoulder and he is whispering "Z1000 , Z10000 , Z1000"
PS - pics taken on my phone , sorry!
I used to be obsessive about my MP3 players, Ipods , Cowon X5, Creative Zen, Monolith , Sony , i tried so many i have lost count.
Then i got into Minidisc , i loved having the little plastic discs. I bought my wife one and made her 'mix' tapes , remember them.
After a while i realised that no matter what source i was using the sound quality was always only 'so' good , the difference between my MZ-RH1 and my Cowon X5 was not really noticable.
Headphones were not as popular at this time, most people used the ones supplied with their players. The Streets were full of white cable wearing suits.
The first 'wow' moment came when i was in Hifi corner in Edinburgh, i went in to look at CD players and noticed that they had a display set up with a chair and a big set of cans, i couldnt resist and sat down to listen. I was shocked, thats how i would describe it. The album was the 40th [size=11pt]anniversary[/size] edition of Pet Sounds, i sat for the whole album, i couldnt believe that a set of headphones could make me feel like the music was coming from the room around me!
The headphones were the HD600s.
Roll forward 5 years and i have a 'decent' home set up, i bought the HD600s and run them from my Aune MKII SE dac from a laptop running foobar.
I am happy with my home setup but a new job created a requirement for a good travel companion and finding it is proving quite a challenge.
Currently i am using the Denon D1100, i like them a lot but am always on the lookout for a something better.
I love Sony , always have.
I have just finished Akio Morita's biography 'Made in Japan' , i recommend it its a great read that should interest most folk here.
When Sony get it right thay have the ability to make the best audio equipment in the world. I love my Bravia , the ES range of components are still amazing and the Sony HD1 mp3 player is simply beautiful (although hobbled by Atrac and Sonicstage!).
So when i heard that Sony were releasing a new series of headphones i was very interested.
Sony headphones are a very mixed bag in my experience , the budget ones usually suck, Sony have used the same 30mm driver for years and they are pretty poor, most of Sony's best headphones have been at the higher end of the scale, R10's , CD3000 , SA5000 etc.
I am a little short of the green stuff right now, you know when you have months where things just happen , things that cost a shed load of cash? I have just had two months of that. I had to get glasses, car needed fixed, i am moving house and my place needed some major work done, in short if i suggested getting the Sony Z1000 to the missus right now i would get my balls served to me like two piping hot scotch eggs.
So i settled for the new MDR-ZX700.
Last month i bought the HD25-1 to try against my Denons and the HD25 lost, comfort and listening fatigue were the culprits, the HD25 made all tracks sound fast and a little shrill, the detail was amazing but after 30 mins i would get tired of the assault.
They are now in the hands of a DJ friend who loves them.
So i have now broken in the Sonys for 100+ hrs and i have travelled with them for the last week , are they keepers or will the Denons show them the door?
The Sonys RRP is £99 in UK, the Denon's £120 - you can get both much cheaper, so shop around.
Packaging and Contents...
The Denond come in a Plastic case with a cardboard insert, it looks fine, nothing special. The Denon comes with a good 'loooooooong' extension cable , a 1/4 adapter and a pleather pouch.
The cable and pouch are pretty good quality and the adapter is your standard gold fare.
The Sony comes in a nice Cardboard box with.......nothing, no adapter even.
The Sony are cheaper so i can see why there are no extras, however a pouch/bag would be useful for portable use.
Denon edge this one.
Next Comfort...
My idea of perfect comfort in headphones is the Pad material from Bose AE1 and the HD800's space around my ears.
The D1100 provides ample space around my lugs, if i adjust them well they dont touch them at all. This is no mean feat as my ears are pretty big, not 80 year old ears getting bigger as body gets smaller, big , more like big eared chimp, big.
The ZX700 in comparison have much smaller holes , they touch your ears all the way around, yet are still very comfy.
I think the pads help the Sonys, they are very soft and are slightly fatter at the back side, this matches the angle of your ears pretty well.
The Pads on the Denon are not as soft as the Sonys , they are also less breathable and make my ears sweat if the sun appears (which in Scotland is not that often).
The headband on the Sonys is wider than the Denons, it is also softer. Both are very comfy however and i dont really find one better than the other.
Overall they are both very comfy, i prefer the space around the ears the Denons give but like the pad material on the Sony better.
The Denon's make you look like Stewie Griffon , worth noting.
A draw really.
Build Quality...
Simple - A clear win for Sony.
The Denons do not feel expensive, they feel a little fragile. The headband feels like it could snap to me , this may just be my huge melon but i wouldnt feel safe bending them much further than i do to use them.
The cup is made of two materials on the Denon's , the outside is metal , aluminium i think and this sits over the rest of the cup which is plastic.
The plastic is sprayed silver on the arms , i would prefer it to be black, it doesnt look like metal , it looks a little tacky.
The cables on the Denon are cheap, rubbery but with a nice aluminium plug. They tangle easily.
However the Denons have stood up well to my daily commute (no scratches or scrapes at all) so maybe they are stronger than they feel.
The Sonys are SOLID , they look and feel tough, like a russian female shotputter. They are plastic but it is ABS and is similar in feel to the cups of HD25-1 and as you may know the HD25-1 cups will pretty much last a lifetime.
The pleather on the Sonys is of good quality , very soft and strong.
The arms can be twisted , turned and generally bent anyway you like and they take it without a creak, remind me of the SRH-840.
Cable is nice, tangle free with a nice bendy stress relief on the plug, the plug is also smaller than the Denon's which is better for portable use.
Even the plastic bales look really good, hard to tell they are plastic.
I love the look of the Sony's , the Z1000 must look and feel amazing!
Sound Quality...
I have grown used to the sound of my Denon's , when i listen to my HD600's after them for around 20 mins the 600's sound hollow and thin, so i decided when testing the Sonys i would do 2 days in a row of each, followed on the Friday by a day with my IEMs (Klipsch C3).
The music i listen too is very varied and my preference changes from month to month.
Last month i listened to Joanna Newsom , Suuns and Crystal Stilts, during the journey to work i tried to mix it up a bit to get an idea if the Sonys were better with some genre's over others.
The first thing i noticed with the Sony's was that the soundstage is not as wide as the Denon's.
listening to The Stones let it bleed showed the imaging to be very good though, the Guitar is clearly to your right and the drums are too the left with Mick in the centre along with the piano, it was just not as far too the left right as with the Denon's.
This song however made me aware of something, the Denon's have scooped out mids, the piano on the Sonys was right at the front but on the Denon's it sat much further back in the mix.
On the Denon's The Raconteurs 'Carolina Drama' can sound a little hollow, the soundstage sounds a bit artificial on it, like they are playing in an empty warehouse.
The impression of depth on the Sony's is good with the keyboards on The Shins "mines is not a high horse" sitting nicely behind the vocals.
Overall though , the Denon's do provide a big 'WOW' soundstage wise and this will get it many fans.
The second thing i noticed was that the Sony's bass is much stronger than i thought it would be , looking at Tyll's graphs on Innerfedelity made me a little nervous that the Sony would be bass shy, thankfully this is not the case...
The Sonys are not bass heavy or bass shy, the bass is somewhere in the middle. It doesnt have the bass range of the HD600 but what headphone at this price does?
If the Denon have a V shaped balance then i reckon the Sonys must have the opposite, the mids are up front with the bass behind and i think the treble rolls off a bit around 10-11khz.
The Denon whilst definately at the bassy end of the scale , have a wonderful level of detail in the upper ranges, the Animal Collectives albums are detail heavy on some tracks, there is so much going on that some headphones present it as some sort of blur, or they present the music in distinct layers that dont blend with each other and the rhythm falls apart , the Denon's and Sony's avoid this and both present music in a very natural way.
One thing i love about the Denon's is the overall tone they give music , guitars sound very woody, warm and natural , no metallic sheen at all.
The Denon's make music sound like music, i am sure you know what i mean.
In comparison the Sony's are a little more clinical, no less enjoyable but if the Denon's are 'Analogue' sounding then the Sony's are definately more like a well mastered CD!
I could not imagine using the Denon's in the studio, they are not neutral enough, the Sony's would be a pretty good studio can though, its tough , fairly neutral and comfy for long sessions.
The treble performance on these two is very different, the Denon makes a show of the high end , its a great show with no sibilance or fatigue but a show none the less.
The Sony's high to mid is smooth , not two parts , one part. The Denon's sound like they have a crossover and you can sometimes hear it, a lot of Cans do in my experiance, but these Sony's sound like good a single driver speaker , the treble is soft in the same way.
To test for sibilance i use a track from the Ravonettes ablum lust, lust, lust , Aly walk with me.
At 2 minutes in begins a 40 second assault of shrieking guitar's and distortion , if you can listen to this and pick out the individual instruments without wanting to tear your ears off then the cans are ok.
Both passed but the Sony's made the experience not just bearable but enjoyable! The scooped out mids on the Denon's were apparent during this test making the piece lose cohesion.
Which do i prefer, well flat is nice on paper but in practise they can be a little .... dull, I love the Denon's balance but have started to question it after hearing the Sony.
The more i switch between the two the more i am aware of the Denon's mids being in the background, with some music its bearly noticable but put on something with well recorded piano or strong vocals and they are often too far back in the mix.
I checked these on my speaker set up and the Sony is closer to the mark.
Do the Sony's work well with all genre's , no not IMO, some indie rock on them is a little compressed sounding , the seperation falls apart on busy guitar tracks, acoustic is fine but the Denon's deal with rock better than the Sony's.
On the other hand the Sony's are better at sparse acoustic pieces, folk , that kind of thing and electronica. I think this is due to the mids being more up front.
Right now i am still undecided on these, technically the Sony's have better sound quality, the Denon's however may be a more fun listen.
How do they scale...
On my headphone amp i have always been surprised how well the Denon's scale , the bass tightens up and goes deeper, the mids move forward just a little and they sound a bit softer up top.
The Sony's , they got louder and the soundstage pushed out to the sides a little , thats it.
Be careful amping the Sony's i reckon you could blow them very easily.
So what will i keep ...... i dont know yet, i cant keep both as it makes me late for work trying to choose!
Right this minute i am missing the Denon's soundstage but loving Newsome's vocals on the Sony, i can also hear something else, there is a little guy on my shoulder and he is whispering "Z1000 , Z10000 , Z1000"
PS - pics taken on my phone , sorry!
