Quote:
But there is one thing about the O2's that cannot seem to compete with dynamic phones and this is in the area of...dynamics. The first thing I noticed with the O2's after hearing its amazing naturalness and transparency is the snare drum. The O2s were unable to reproduce the true dynamics or impact of a snare drum. In any real rock or jazz session, the snare drum always will emerge from the soundfield as a seperate rhythm driver along with the kick drum. The O2's just were not capable of achieving this. The only two headphones I HAVE HEARD that is able to achieve a correct snare dynamic, drive and impact belong to Sennheiser. Those are the HD800 and HD650.
That's also one of the first things I noticed about the 007MKII. I have a song I always use to test if a headphone is sibilant/sharp/bright--it's got a sharp synth snare sound that on sibilant/bright headphones will be kind of painful to listen to, but on warmer/smoother headphones, will not be harsh or unpleasant at all. I totally trust the upper mids/lower treble region of my Klein + Hummel O 300D's (if you look at the frequency chart of the 300D's, you'd know what I mean--flat as a ruler), and on those monitors, the snare hits are just a tiny little bit sharp, but not irritating, so I know that is the standard in which I judge sibilance/brightness. On the 007MKII, those snare hits sound very warm and smooth and pleasant, and so far away from being sharp/harsh that I think it's actually a bit more dull than total accuracy in that frequency range (6Khz~8Khz). But it's so hard to complain about it because it sounds so damn good.
Quote:
The bass on the AKG K701 goes as low as the D7000 with no roll-off. It is perhaps as articulate or more so than D7000. However without the presence it does not serve as a reference according to my needs of a flat frequency response - I was pleasantly surprised with Tyll's latest measurements with several popular reference phones - the D7000's on paper were the most flattest in frequency response - a conclusion I had made in regards to the D7000 having never seen the measurements whatsoever. Of course there are numerous headphones - a lot of open phones that are largely more transparent - that is however a different issue to flat frequency response altogether. Also of fascination to me was the fact that the HD600, recently measured by Tyll, had measurably lower overall THD than the HD800....the HD650 are supposedly lower than the HD600 yet again (yet to be confirmed). Fascinating as that is how I've heard it all along.
That's what I thought too when I listened to the K701 recently in Hong Kong. The sub-bass is definitely there and well-extended, but the entire bass presence is just not full enough, making for an interesting but skewed sound. I don't know why so many people always bring up K701 as some kind of holy grail of accuracy and neutrality. I did like its sound and it wasn't nearly as bright as I thought it might be.
I also tried the K601, and I agree with most people who say it's a more balanced sound overall than the K701. Neither has the authoritative bass I'm looking for though, but otherwise I really liked them.
While testing those I also tested the Triple.fi 10 Pro, Etymotic ER-4P, and the UMX3. The Triple.fi sounds quite warm and doesn't have the kind of articulation/clarity/air I prefer (which is one of the things I don' t like about the W3). The UMX3 is more balanced than the W3, but still not there in terms of clarity and air. I really liked the ER-4P because it's got great clarity and articulation, but its bass is just not substantial enough, which is a shame, because it's not something you can just EQ with your MP3 player, since typical EQ's on players do not extend into the sub-bass region. Of all the IEM's I've tried to date, I think only the SE530 gets close to having a good bass extension without that bass bloat like so many IEM's (the W3 for example). I would love to try the JH13/16 one day since they're probably the only IEM's capable of that big full-size headphone sound.
Quote:
You might want to consider finding an O2 mk1 if you're looking for more extended bass
I'm always a bit nervous about discontinued models, since support will not be available and parts might not exist anymore if I need something fixed/replaced. How is the O2MK1 different from the 4070 in terms of extended bass?
