Hi akatona,
Just want to clarify, re: R10 vs. Denon. I owned the R10 for 8 years, sold it because on balance I preferred the mod-ed D5000. I have been mis-understood and mis-read by some as saying something like "the mod-ed D5000 is superior to the R10". That is making a statement of "fact", that I have
*never* made, yet took a lot of grief for from people who mis-interpreted me. I do happily make subjective, personal statements like "
I prefer the mod-ed D5000 over the R10". I think it's absurd for anyone to claim any headphone is the absolute bestest EVAR in the world (and we do not make that claim for our products); it's like saying "chocolate is best flavor in the world". Tell that to all the vanilla lovers, strawberry lovers, etc.
What we offer at Lawton Audio is a flavor of headphone that we feel is comparable with any of the top-tier cans out there (including all the best Grados, Senns, etc.), and feedback so far seems to bear this out. No one headphone size fits all ears; what top headphone one ends up with is always ultimately a matter of
*personal taste*. To that end, our slogan is "World-Class Headphones.. And More", not "World's Best Headphones..."
OK, back to your question.
Quote:
| can your LA2000 modification outperform the Grado GS1000 |
Er, see above.
But seriously, you've given me some clues as to what you respond to sonically, so I can make some guesses as to how you might ract to our phones. This is also a good opportunity for me to discuss our audio philosophy and our sonic goals with the mods we do to the Denons.
I think there are basically two kinds of listeners, people who are into MUSIC, and people who are into AUDIO. We at Lawton Audio are firmly in the first camp. Audio is merely a means to an end; at worst it gets in the way of the music, at best it evaporates, giving you a direct connection to the musical world created by your favorite artists. Music is supposed to be enjoyable and is inherently, er, "musical". It inherently has richness, it has body, it has inner-glow, it has life. That's why it lights up the pleasure centers of the brain. If a piece of audio is incapable of reproducing music, we think there's something fundamentally wrong with it.
So many audio-lovers, I find, are pleasure-averse; if they accidentally experience the unfamiliar tingling feeling of joy or happiness or connection from a piece of audio they recoil and label it "colored". I find that audio-lovers tend to assemble systems that are (to me) cold, dry, thin, dull and lifeless. They like to call that "neutrality". Yet, ultimately, it sounds like AUDIO, and not like real, live, actual MUSIC. Something truly "neutral" should not act as a sort of sieve on the sound, filtering out all the heart and soul of the music, it should get out of the way and let it rip. We think there is no such thing as (and no two people will agree on what constitues) absolute "neutrality"; in the end there is only "I like" and "I don't like". I bet many of those so-called "neutral" systems ultimately gather dust, as they just aren't much fun to listen to.
akatona, you use two red-flag words for me in your description of what you like about the Grado, "wramth" and "air". I find these words mean different things to different people.
Sometimes, I find when people use the word "warm" to describe something, they mean a sort of thin, gauzy, dry and polite tone that lacks full treble extension and rolls the bass off pleasantly and has a white background and sort of soft-focus quality to the edges of sounds. If that is one's definition of "warm", the Denons won't really do that. They do have solidity, substance and body with real meat on the bones; they are high-rez phones with crisp, focused details and jet-black background. Treble extension is full and open, and bass response is rock solid with a nice punch. But the tone of our phones is rich, slightly liquid, and warm in the good sense of the word. Again, some people may call them "colored", but we say it's "natural", "realistic", and yes, "musical".
WRT to "airy", to some people that describes a sound that I hear as hollow, insubstantial, see-through, ghostly, amorphous, floaty, misty, foggy etc. Instruments tend to have soft-focus edges and bleed into one another. Again, the Denons won't do that, they present a solid, substantial image located precisely in space, each instrument is easily picked out and followed if you so choose. "Air" in audio is supposed to refer to the space around musicians in which their instruments are allowed to breathe and fully express themselves; on that score we think the Denons definitely deliver. Open headphones, to my ears, have a general tendency toward providing the "bad" kind of "airy" experience I described above. Almost all of my favorite headphones I've heard have been closed. What you may sacrifice in terms of apparent soundstage size you get with open phones (although it tends to fade out at the edges and blends individual sounds into a foggy soup), you more than make up for with fullness, solidity, precise imaging, black background and true air around instruments with good closed phones. Our custom cups for the Denons are the result of a lot of experimentation and are larger than stock (but not too big you start to introduce unwanted elements), and as a result present a larger, more expansive and deeper soundstage than stock. Our headphones throw a very large soundstage (without the usual gap in the middle of the image), by just about any standard.
The issue with the stock Denon phones as we see it, is that, while they are very open and clear and resolving, punchy and fun, they go several steps too far-- way past "exciting" and over into plain-old "fatiguing". The markl Mod tames their beastliness, shouty-ness, and pummeling, punishing bass, while retaining enough character to make them highly entertaining, fun, engaging, and "musical".
So, based on all that, whether the LA2000 will appeal to you akatona, maybe you now have some more information to make a judgement about that. Cheers.
