Oh I remember feeling like this the first few days with Empyrean, a tiny bit. As in, everything feeling just a step or two away, less immediate, less involving (than my LCD-i4s).Yeah sure, i mean the feeling that youre listening to speakers, without being in the music. For me the utopias deliver such a kind of liveliness and space between the instruments that it really puts you in the music. When i was looking for headphones more than a year ago i wanted to be sure that bass was presented well. So naturally i started to listen to audeze. I was wary of too much high tones (i liked sennheisers but they tire me because of too much brightness in the sound). Then i decided to listen to utopia versus the audeze line up and there was no doubt that i liked utopia better. Still i miss the lows of audeze. Audeze for me was flatter in that it missed some energy in the sound because of the lack of energy in the higher spectrum. I maybe think that too get the good lows you have to lose some of the highs ( a bit like fender vsgibson)?
That is something that definitely resolved itself in the next few weeks due to run-in. It is still never going to be as "in-your-face" as the i4 (or the Utopia), but the distanced feeling subsided for me.
Still, the thin/rolled-off bass you described doesnt sound normal - looking forward to your experiences when you get to compare them to another set.