Yesterday I finally had my first real gaming session (and generally my first game in months, finally) with the Fostex TH-900 and the Shadow Warrior Remake. I was a huge Shadow warrior nerd back in the day and played it several times, liked it much more than Duke Nukem. Liked the guns, that rocket nuke, the slicing with the sword and the funny speech. The remake handles the swordplay in a very stylish fashion (original was quite simple in it though still fun, swords against shooting enemies is always stylish) and introduces magic and passive boostsl. Anyway, yesterday...
You know, at the beginning of every stage/mission/chapter you can hear introductory drums and it's amazing with both HD 800 and TH 900 but I have to give the nod to the Fostex because the impact body can be "sensed" better. I know that the D7000 is similar to that but the Fostex is faster (and faster in general) in the lower departments so the sense of a body is much stronger. Heavy impact of bass and a fast attack/decay are two qualities that help create that sense. Headphones like the Signature DJ, X1 are not very fast down below so while the bass still contributes to the immersion it's rather a swimming pool of bass during many explosions and heavy guns or let's say the contures of the body are not really there, it's rather smeared, blurred and loose. In the above context I am not saying the HD 800 isn't fast, it just lacks the TH-900's impact.
As you can expect coming from a D7000 the soundstage is very big and let me tell you it doesn't leave me wanting more in no way or fashion. I had a lot headphones so far and also some closed ones and yes, the TH-900 isn't really closed but in either way it trumps so many other headphones in soundstage. And that is not only by pure size (which is always not enough to judge) but by the general feel of space in all directions. Some headphones are oval, some are downright flat, congested (planars especially) or too weak in the middle that left and right are more pronounced and the middle part is like a hole (AKGs) but in this case there's none of it. As I mentioned a few posts earlier TH-900, HD 800 and T1 do it right. I call it phantom center.
I had a long session last night and just woke up so I probably left out some more details about my experience but it feels good to have played a game for longer in all this time.
The only sad part about all this is the price of the TH-900. I really wish more people could enjoy it but since we are in gaming and not talking about Deutsche Grammophon records or Stockfisch the TH-600 seems to be quite good as well and looking over at pricejapan I think the price should be quite tempting for many here.
I will be playing more and more games over the next months and always compare the TH-900 with the HD 800, and possibly the Alpha Dogs. My English isn't good and fluent enough for a whole wall of text unfortunately so you have to bear with "snippets".
All my impressions are always from my DAC. I really love the Anedio, it's one of the very very few DACs that also do the HPA output right, with 0 noise on multi balanced armatures. They have measurements up on their side in every detail. I compared to a ton of other DACs like Benchmark, Matrix, Yulong, Violectric and the damn importing fee was still worth it. For you Americans who are living in dreamland anyway (regarding hifi and home cinema prices) that deal is more than awesome.