I'm completely in love with the sound of these cans, but I'm running into some comfort issues that I'm wondering if anyone else has dealt with.
The issue for me is that the metal grill over the driver just behind the ear pads presses into the anti-helix of my ear. (Of course, the super-thin fabric on the inside of the ear pad is in between, but that provides no padding). With other over-ear headphones that I've owned, my ear simply presses into some padding on the inside of the ear cup, and I guess sometimes presses the fabric into the cavity surrounding the driver. But with the MH40s, the hard metal is there pressing back, and after just a few minutes it starts to feel numb, and a few minutes later, it really starts to hurt. After a half-hour or so of listening, when I remove the headphones, I can still feel pain and tingling in my ear for 15 or 20 minutes.
I’ve tried bending the headband so that there is virtually no pressure on the ears—it feels like the ear cups are just dangling off the sides of my head from the headband perched on top—but that doesn't do anything.
It’s the damnedest thing. I’ve never had headphones that do this, over-ear or on-ear. Sure, on-ear cans tend to give me moderate discomfort after long sessions, but I’ve never had an over-ear pair that’s less comfortable—and the only explanation I can think of here is that the ear is directly in contact with the metal grill.
It’s bad enough that they’re almost unusable for me—which really bums me out because I love how they sound so much! And I know that lots of people consider these cans very comfortable, indeed. (Apparently they've got better-formed ears than mine.) Anyone else have this problem with them?