I totally prefer headphones to speakers. I love the intimacy of headphones and the fact that nothing interferes with the sound if you have a quiet room or decent isolation. However, I do not like in-ear monitors.
I can totally relate. Although I appreciate loudspeaker systems. I just don’t have as many opportunities to enjoy a loudspeaker system. My wife is too sensitive to loud music and I really like to turn up the volume if using a loud speaker system. Our system is decent yet easily prefer a session on my empyreans with my dialed in audio gear. It really makes a difference what gear you are using with heapdhones to truly get the best experience.
We all are sooooo different as you would know this and isn’t really surprising. But I can also agree that iem’s are less enjoyable than heapdhones. At least for me anyhow.
The empyreans are able to cleanly reproduce sub bass that no iem could ever dream of doing. (Cough) physics (Cough) I’ve spent upwards of 2K on iems and tried too many to know they are simply not for me. I have had custom ear tips made and it improves the experience too. Oddly I found some magnetostatic iems that sounded impressive to me, and didn’t break the bank. But still strongly prefer heapdhones.
Funny, I spend more time with my Sony wh-1000xm3’s since they are good noise canceling and help when I’m at my shop working on my cars. Lots of loud air tools and such, the only way to listen to music and protect my hearing.
I would like to see if meze audio would make a flagship closed back for those needing such a thing. Their neo99 and neoclassic walnut are actually pretty darn good I must admit. I have a pair of each and found them to have an excellent sound stage. In fact I bought a pair of the neo99 for my younger brother for Christmas. He is much much younger and just started college, so a pair of those along with a portable amp/dac was given as a combo and his first ever audio setup.
I just mentioned a closed back flagship, but I’d you notice the images for the empyrean online show some prototype designs and it appears they experimented with a closed back design. I wonder how that went. I would really like to see it. And know it’s not comparable to open backed headphones. Too many variables that affect sound staging . Some companies have done fairly well with making a closed back headphone but in the end, they are still closed back and sound closed back! I appreciate them all for what they are!
Headphones surely are my passion. God knows if I sold them all I could afford a really really nice loud speaker system that I would rarely get to enjoy. And really it’s about enjoying as much music as possible. Music is my passion and I want to listen as often as possible. Headphones are intimate as you said! The empyreans are the only headphones recently that have truly impressed me to the point I found myself listening til 3am or later. This is rare I lose track of time and find them to be deliver neutral sound. I personally would not really consider them V shaped in signature. We all hear very differently. The leather pads clearly have a bump up of the lower frequency (50hz - 200hz and possibly the lower sub bass a little 5-20hz) and also miss slightly around 2k-3K is subtle and more notable high end around 11k-14k when using leather pads. Just a bit more definition for sure! The Alcantara Pads are definitely more neutral and “rolled off” is not the correct term, but neutral. Since many headphones in this range are super bright in comparison and far from neutral when compared to even the leather pads. The empyrean I would not consider to be a warm headphone but more a wet/neutral sound if paired with the proper amp/dac. Some dacs will make these sound bright, since certain dacs have awfully nasty bright signatures to begin with. Especially a few dacs that are found in some cellphones. Delirium just mentioned the importance of gear, and sooo so very true indeed. They will make or break the overall experience with headphones.
Anyhow, this is me rambling. When really I just want to agree with your statement... we are in a headphone forum!!!