Just to be fair, I put these on again for the first time in a few years, thinking that my memory of their sound might be a little bit rusty or exaggerated, but no. I can't believe I ever thought these were nice. Half of the vintage cheapies I've owned over the ages sound better than these do.
They're sort of flat... sort of. The FR itself is sort of a frown, however the bass distortion punches up the low end a lot (which is what recesses the midrange) and there's a big 10k peak followed by heavy rolloff. This is unacceptable. These are supposed to be monitors; perceived flatness is of utmost priortity. Perhaps this is considered "better" for personal audio listening by some, but as far as Audio-Technica's R&D goes it's outright lazy and incompetent. I do recognize that they released a revision of the M50 with a slight driver and damping tweak; mine are the old version. This fixes the loose bass but the tonality problem is still there and this also increases the distortion throughout the whole frequency band; again, Audio-Technica's incompetence at its finest, half-assing the issue instead of actually fixing the design flaws. This is their top-of-the-line monitor, they should be putting more into it. There are a lot of monitors at the $100-120 price point and these are horridly underdesigned. The Sony MDR-V6/7506 destroys the M50 as a monitor for nearly half the cost, and there was a V7 and V8 above the V6
.
For music, their bass is too loose and their stereo width is noticeably squashed into the head. They don't have any depth or placement. The midrange suckout makes vocals sound hollow and the 10k peak is rude and jarring. Their detail and top end control is outright dismal; they sound hissy, resonant, and poorly extended. They may not as bad as I remember them in this regard, but its still worse than any headphone I currently own, and that puts the nails in the coffin for me. They're also a lot less comfortable than I remember; my ears are touching the baffle plate and feel rather squashed inside the pads.
The M50 is not good. It is poorly designed. It is not worth its asking price. And yes, it is
grossly overrated.