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Originally Posted by sohels /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Isolation is not very important for me but sound leakage is. Would listening at moderate levels disturb a second person in the room? I'm most impressed and grateful for your offer of measuring this with an SPL meter but I don't think that will be necessary.
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I work in a cubicle farm where there is only about 10 feet of space between myself and the next person. At moderate listening volumes, they are unable to tell whether I am listening to music or not with both the RP-21 and the K240 Studio. And the K240 is not a true closed headphone... rather it is a semi-open (hybrid) design. I did a test with the Q40 where I had someone else listen to them about 4 feet away, at my normal listening volume, and I could not hear a thing. So my initial impression is that the Q40 has similar leakage levels as the RP-21. And both the Q40 and RP-21 have lower leakage than the K240 Studio. But even the semi-open K240 Studio does not leak that much... and in fact it is the headphone that I have used the most at work despite being semi-open.
This is in stark contrast to a phone like the DT880, whose semi-open design is more open than closed. With the DT880, the whole room would be able to tell what you are listening to. Same goes for K701, any open Senn, any Grado, etc.
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Secondly, the sound stage - how good is instrument separation and imaging? Does the music sound very upfront and cramped or is it more 'open'? |
My opinion is that the soundstage in the Q40 is slightly better than my other studio headphones (RP-21 and K240S)... those other two have a very narrow, closed in soundstage. The Q40 has a wider soundstage in terms of Left and Right, but it is not as wide as a DT880, Grado, or other open phones. The Q40 soundstage is also rather compressed in the depth (front-to-back) plane... it doesn't have much front to back imaging. Everything sounds like it's coming from the left, the right, or in the middle (but no distinction between front and back).
I don't know of any closed headphone that has an extremely wide soundstage. I've demoed the Ultrasone Proline 650 at Guitar Center ($299 MSRP) and those sound fairly closed in like the Q40 also.