[XERO1]

   
Agreed. 
 
You know what. I once A/Bed the 598 against the Ultrasone Edition 5 Unlimited.
Guess what, 598 wins in every aspects: resolution, transparency, you name a term. 

 
Not really a surprise. 

 
Those are some of the most over-priced headphones on the market.

 

[coletrain104]

So, since the original had burl wood accents, what are the newly colored accents in this? still burl wood, or just some black ring?

 

[Bananas Ananas]

This indeed seems to be a preparation for Amazon's black friday deal. :thumbsup_tone1: Last year they had regular version for $99 if I remember right.

 

[Beagle]

 
You know what. I once A/Bed the 598 against the Ultrasone Edition 5 Unlimited.
Guess what, 598 wins in every aspects: resolution, transparency, you name a term. 

 
For how many minutes?

 

[derbigpr]

   
Agreed. 
 
You know what. I once A/Bed the 598 against the Ultrasone Edition 5 Unlimited.
Guess what, 598 wins in every aspects: resolution, transparency, you name a term. 

 
 
Wouldn't surprise me if that was the case, looking at how the Ultrasone is built and designed, and looking at the quality of the components.

 
 
 
Looks like a driver baffle and ear cup that I'd (or any half decent engineer) design during a launch break, on a really, really lazy day, without caring at all about how the end product will turn out. It would literally take 10 minutes to design that in a CAD program from scratch to the point where it would be ready for a CNC machine. They didn't even bother designing a way to fasten the driver onto the baffle and make it replaceable, so they just glued it on...ridiculous for such an expensive headphone. And drivers look like they're some random off the shelf Chinese ones, look at that tiny magnet, even the entire driver body is made out of plastic, didn't bother making it out of aluminium like Beyedynamic does for example with high end models, it looks like a driver of a 20 dollar Sennheiser model.
 
So it's no wonder 2000 dollar Ultrasone headphones sound no better (and measure horribly) than well designed 200 dollar headphones.

 

[Edric Li]

 

 
You know what. I once A/Bed the 598 against the Ultrasone Edition 5 Unlimited.
Guess what, 598 wins in every aspects: resolution, transparency, you name a term. 

 
For how many minutes?

 
Long enough for me and my friend (who owned the ED5) to tell the differences. It was relatively a clear win within 15 minutes. He sold the ED5 some weeks later. 
 
Both were driven by my Paw Gold BTW. 
I used some of my favorite Loreena McKennitt's pieces as test tracks. 

 

[Beagle]

A $259 beats a $2599? This is good news. Some of the pricier Audio Technica cans also gave me pause when it was nearly impossible to see any physical difference, in some cases (ATH W5000) the build was actually worse than the $150 models. You live and you learn...and you become super skeptical of super expensive headphones. What are you actually getting for such a large cash layout?
 
On the other hand, often one headphone sounds better in a short comparison, but weeks/months later, the opposite might be true.

 

[Walderstorn]

   
 
Wouldn't surprise me if that was the case, looking at how the Ultrasone is built and designed, and looking at the quality of the components.

 
 
 
Looks like a driver baffle and ear cup that I'd (or any half decent engineer) design during a launch break, on a really, really lazy day, without caring at all about how the end product will turn out. It would literally take 10 minutes to design that in a CAD program from scratch to the point where it would be ready for a CNC machine. They didn't even bother designing a way to fasten the driver onto the baffle and make it replaceable, so they just glued it on...ridiculous for such an expensive headphone. And drivers look like they're some random off the shelf Chinese ones, look at that tiny magnet, even the entire driver body is made out of plastic, didn't bother making it out of aluminium like Beyedynamic does for example with high end models, it looks like a driver of a 20 dollar Sennheiser model.
 
So it's no wonder 2000 dollar Ultrasone headphones sound no better (and measure horribly) than well designed 200 dollar headphones.

 
 
Holy hell.

 

[Beagle]

   
 
Wouldn't surprise me if that was the case, looking at how the Ultrasone is built and designed, and looking at the quality of the components.

 
 
 
Looks like a driver baffle and ear cup that I'd (or any half decent engineer) design during a launch break, on a really, really lazy day, without caring at all about how the end product will turn out. It would literally take 10 minutes to design that in a CAD program from scratch to the point where it would be ready for a CNC machine. They didn't even bother designing a way to fasten the driver onto the baffle and make it replaceable, so they just glued it on...ridiculous for such an expensive headphone. And drivers look like they're some random off the shelf Chinese ones, look at that tiny magnet, even the entire driver body is made out of plastic, didn't bother making it out of aluminium like Beyedynamic does for example with high end models, it looks like a driver of a 20 dollar Sennheiser model.
 
So it's no wonder 2000 dollar Ultrasone headphones sound no better (and measure horribly) than well designed 200 dollar headphones.

 
And who do we have to thank for that? All of us riding the hype trains here at Head-Fi

 

[derbigpr]

 
 


 


Holy hell.

 


 


My thoughts exactly when I saw that a 2,5k headphone is built like a 100 dollar one. No wonder the measurements of it look like on the pictures underneath.


 


Note not only the general catastrophically bad frequency response, CSD and impulse response performance, but also the horrible channel imbalance in the lowest frequencies, I guess it's hard to use an exactly equal amount of hot glue on both drivers, so one is more tightly connected to the baffle and therefore moves less and produces more bass. Nah, we don't use some dampening in the earcup to take care of all those horrible resonances. We'll cover the headband with extremely overpriced ethiopian long-haired sheep leather instead.


 





 


That's a $2500 headphone ladies and gentlemen. For that money you can get an HD800.  And a T1. Just in case you get fed up with one of them, you know...


 


 


 


Let's compare that Edition 5 to the engineering masterpiece (relative to the ED5) that is the Beats Solo 2:


 


 





 


 


You suddenly can't help but feel like Beats are a really good value for money if you want easy to drive closed back headphones. Of course they probably subjectively don't sound as nice if you dig the uneven, schizo-like, mid-bass boosted, mid recessed, super bright performance of the Ultrasone, but it's undeniably a better engineered headphone that performs exactly as whoever designed it intended it to perform. Warm and slightly bass-heavy, but smooth, even and quick.


 


Ironically, cheaper Ultrasone headphone are actually better than their high end closed back models.

 

[donunus]

Guys in he US with old 598s or access to a friend's old 598s, please buy a pair of these 598se's so that we can confirm
whether they are exactly the same headphones.

 

[Edric Li]

  Some of the pricier Audio Technica cans also gave me pause when it was nearly impossible to see any physical difference, in some cases (ATH W5000) the build was actually worse than the $150 models. You live and you learn...

 
Ironically, cheaper Ultrasone headphone are actually better than their high end closed back models.
 

 
Maybe we are getting way too off topic, but I totally agree your points. 
 
Ultrasone, Final Audio Design, and in some cases Audio Technica, are some of the very few companies who do not price their gears according to the sound. 
I'm not saying they can't price them ridiculously, but Pro 900 and DJ 1 Pro, FIBASS, MSR7 and M50/70x sound just as good as, if not better than, the more higher-end gears from the same company. 

 

[ThickGlasses]

I wish they weren't twice as much in Canada ;_;

 

[XERO1]

 
  Let's compare that Edition 5 to the engineering masterpiece (relative to the ED5) that is the Beats Solo 2:
 

 
The Beats Solo 2's are legit.  Seriously.  They're the only Beats headphones that I would recommend to a friend, if they only wanted a Beats headphone, of course. 

 

 

[zemonn]

Well I, for one, will not be one to "upgrade" to the newer HD 598s.  The original just match my car's interior too well...