I've had mine for a little over two weeks, and I'm very happy with my purchase. They're not perfect, but they're definitely the best sub-$150 headphones I've ever heard, for the kind of sound I'm after.
The high treble range, above 8Khz, is very clean and precise, but a little recessed and removed from the conversation of the overall presentation. Small cymbals and bells sound great but just not at equal footing with the rest of the music. I personally don't mind, because I like a little roll-off in my preferred sound signature.
The higher mid range, between 4KHz-8KHz, is absolutely ridiculous. So lush and smooth, excellent vibrancy and no grain, and a bit forward compared to the rest of the spectrum. Listening to synth-heavy 80s music makes every note bounce with life. Listening to the excellently recorded drums on Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast album makes it sound like I'm getting a private drum lesson. Every hit sounds very close to like it would in real life on an expensive setup. Another note is absolutely no sibilance whatsoever. It's actually like they increased the presence and clarity of the high mids to the absolute threshold of replication, right before they would be reproduced as sibilant. On any tracks that gave you trouble with sibilance with other headphones, you subconsciously 'predict' it to happen again, and you're like "oh no oh no gotta prepare myself for that shrill sound", and then you're greeted with nothing but lush ultra-replication, just like real life. No tinniness or harshness of any kind at all. All of this also applies to the higher trebles, even though they are more recessed.
The lower mids, around 400-4000Hz, are nearly as good, but still not quite as impressive as higher in the range. Male vocals are clear and present but not as lifelike. However, guitar especially sounds crunchy and well-defined when distorted, and extremely clean and bouncy when not, just like synths in the higher range. I guess that means these perform a bit better with instruments than voice, but it's not a large margin.
Bass is definitely present, but recessed. I'm not a basshead, I'm a roughly-equal head. While "anemic" would be too strong of a term to describe the bass response, it is "light". Even though light, it still has great detail, though it has trouble replicating sound below ~35Hz. And all of <100Hz is considerably quieter than intended in tracks. Adjusting EQs, while not just a bad idea, has next to zero effect. I think the bass response can be described well with a phrase I hear others use a lot for various phones: it's there when it needs to be. An actual bass guitar with the multiple harmonies sounds clear and tasty, but sweeping bass tones in the background that help give tracks "body" and "fullness" are pretty weak. All that being said, it's still so much better than boomy, one-note bass that is still present in some headphones costing what these do.
These headphones benefited well from just 4 hours of usage (a.k.a burn-in). I haven't noticed any difference in performance after the 4-6hr mark, and I've now been using them close to 100 hours. The bass is still a bit thin and I'm sure that's how they'll always sound, which isn't so bad, but immediately out of the box the *entire* spectrum was thin-sounding. They also don't really need amplification, though they still got a bit more evenness in replication when I used one. Not a big difference and definitely not necessary.
Soundstage is good but not really "killer", which is pretty much the only aspect I disagree with tdockweiler over. It's better than a lot of other closed cans, but it definitely wouldn't be the first pro I would talk about when recommending these to others. It's not terribly wide, and quite horizontal, with no real vertical placement of instruments.
Comfort is quite good, but the headband does create a small point of pain on my head after about 2 hours; but it goes away very quickly after removal. Just take breaks. On the ear, they're fine and very pleasant; though I did notice a small design fault in that if you turn your head either direction, the opposite cup will pry off your ear a little and lose its seal, reducing perceived volume in that side by 10-20%. You need to have your head straight, basically, while listening to them. I actually thought at first that one side was louder than the other -- imbalanced -- and that I was going to have to return them. The only fault turned out to be that I was sitting crooked in my chair
Overall I'm super happy with these headphones and would like to thank tdockweiler for his recommendations and thoughts on them that lead me to my purchase. The only real negative is thin bass, which actually makes them a nice companion to someone with other bassy phones (me). The entire midrange far, far outclasses its pricepoint in quality and smoothness, and that's really what I was looking for. A great buy
and thanks for reading.
