All righty, here are my impressions of the touring Vali unit as well as
grizzlybeast's production unit. Thank you
grizzlybeast for getting the tour arranged, and thank you to
Kennerton Team for lending the pre-production Vali for this tour. Also, thank you to
Andykong at Cayin for letting tour participants hear the Vali through balanced amps via their brown XLR cable.
About my audio preferences:
I generally favor headphones that have a smooth and clean frequency response that's more "flat" than "fun." After evaluating the frequency response, I start to get more picky about the instrument separation, imaging, soundstage, and lastly detail retrieval.
Touring Vali:
I only used the brown XLR cable with the touring Vali since I had a few amps that could utilise it: touring Cayin iHA-6, LH Labs Pulse X Infinity, and Geek Out V2+. I have an XLR to 3.5 mm adaptor too, so I used that to compare how the Vali sounded through single-ended amps.
From what I could tell, the Vali sounds more open and has better instrument separation when switching from unbalanced to bala sure it has good current output.
The overall sound signature of the Vali is warm-tilted. It's not my preferred sound signature, but it's a signature that many will enjoy. To me, the Vali sounded warmer than the HD650, but at the same time much more clear as a whole.
Starting with the bass, the Vali's bass is what I noticed right away. It's bumped up in presence compared to what I'm used to and it almost has a visceral feeling similar to that of planar magnetic headphones. It reaches the low notes pretty easily, and it doesn't sound slow, muffled, or woolly like I find many dynamic driver headphones to sound like.
However, I find the bass to creep into the lower-midrange a bit too much for my preferences and it gives the lower-mids a lot of warmth and fullness. Male vocals, lower guitar and piano notes, and some lower-female vocals actually sound pretty pleasant with this lower-midrange warmth. This reminds me a lot of the MrSpeakers Alpha Dog in this regard.
The upper-midrange is what really detracted me from liking the Vali on the other hand. Although the lower-mids were full-sounding, the upper-mids sounded tinny and lacking in weight to me. Some have described the mids as being "recessed." I don't think the mids are recessed per se, as I actually find the lower-mids to sound a bit forward, but I can see the upper-mids being laid back or recessed. It's just odd to hear the nice lower-mids only to hear the upper-mids being sucked out from the music.
Like a warm-tilted headphone, the treble response of the Vali is very polite. I really like this type of treble as it's non-fatiguing. Sure, it might be rolled-off at the extreme frequencies, but the Vali manages to keep things smooth.
Soundstage-wise, the Vali seems to be on the small side, reminding me of the LCD-2 a bit with how congested it sounded. It wasn't anything worth touting for, BUT the imaging and instrument separation of the Vali were pretty good and I did like how the Vali rendered instruments around my head and how separated they were.
Lastly, detail retrieval of the Vali was pretty good as a whole. The bass and lower-midrange had very good texture; the upper-midrange despite having the weird canny sound also retained a similar detail retrieval, and the treble seemed soft probably due to the roll-oiff and lack of a "sparkle" peak in the frequency response.
Aside from the sound, the Vali's wooden earcups are really stunning and I like them a lot. The metal adjusters on the headband are awkward at first, but fairly easy to use after giving it a few tries.
grizzlybeast's Production Vali:
I was using the single-ended cable with this version of the Vali, so I'm not sure how that would compare to the brown XLR+adaptor cable that was used for the touring unit. That being said, the warmth of the lower-midrange seemed to be cut back a bit on this production unit, which is a positive change I think. The timbre of the upper-midrange also seemed to be a bit better from what I had remembered before, but it still retained a similar canny sound that's laid-back compared to the lower-midrange still.
Wrapping up my experience with the Vali, it's not really my cup of tea, but if you like warm-sounding headphones, and especially headphones for the lower-midrange, or headphones that are not fatiguing, the Vali might be worth looking into!
