alkalama
New Head-Fier
Possible to buy M1060C in Europe? or only to import from US?
Mine arrived this morning. Initial impressions are favorable, but I can't really A/B these things until I let them air out, they have a chemical smell out of the box. They are really beautiful, color is more like Purple Hearts than just dark.
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DMS has had them for months. Monoprice sent them to him in like October or something. Or an engineering sample at least.DMS will have them soon
is the chemical smell on the earpads mostly?
It is all over really, mostly the case stinks. I cleaned my headphones thoroughly and then let them air out separate from the case for a couple hours and the smell was almost gone.
Thanks for the info. Noted. Case will be going in storage anyway, I have no need for that behemoth.
The smell is mainly from the foam in the ear pads. It’s called off gassing. Exact same smell I had with my matteress. Pads need to be compressed and decompress so it realeases the gas from when they were made.
Im also tempted to get some eikon pads but dont want to mess with the sound, these things just sound so amazing. Currently listening to some Deadmau5 on them and these things just keep amazing me. The bass is fantastic, not too over powering but it is so there and hitting just right. The more music I throw at them the more I love them.
I was gonna hold off for more impressions before trying them, but I decided to just buy it anyway.
I hate these; they sound hilariously bad to me.
Okay, they’re not “throw it in the garbage” bad. The bass extends low and has some really nice rumble, which the M1060 never had to me so that’s cool. It’s kinda muddy but not any muddier than like an HD650, and it can actually get to 20Hz. So that’s the neat.
But wow this midrange. I like Grados, but this, this sounds so much harsher and shouty to me than any of the like ten Grados I’ve owned in my life. There’s a definite rise in the 1-2k region. Normally this sounds really artificial to me, like it does in Grados, the HD600, etc. A rise there just sounds weird but it does bring forward vocals and instruments, so it can be done intentionally. But this combines that already artificially forward sound with really, really bad timbre. The Ether C has one of the worst timbres I’ve ever heard in a headphone at any price and while this isn’t that bad, it’s pretty close. It’s more artificial than the ~$100 closed headphones I can think of like the M50X, DT770, etc. The low midrange sounds very dipped too, which is what happened when I tried closing my M1060, so that’s not surprising. The treble isn’t nearly as bad though. They have some harshness ~9-10k and lack presence, but that’s hardly audible under the screaming midrange.
I took some measurements with my flat plate coupler (which does have its problems with FR so I’m trying to move away from it) and my EARS.
FR:
Basically confirms what I heard with the low mid dip and upper midrange lift. It’s less raised than I thought it would be but I’m guessing the low mid dip and dipped low treble just accentuate it. If you draw a line connecting ~500Hz to 3kHz, you’ll a really nice 5dB rise in 1-2kHz which would explain why this sounds so shouty. I don’t quite hear such an extreme presence dip, but I also can’t really hear much other than bass and shout. Also, for completeness I measured these before burning in and will remeasure after. I have zero expectation anything will change but I know people will tell me to do it anyway so I’m doing it because it requires very little extra effort.
CSD:
I don’t really wanna use these because of how jank my rig is, but you can at least compare to the M1060 which had similar conditions. In fairness to the M1060C it doesn’t quite sound like the same ringing; most planar headphones measure with an “ortho wall” like this and it isn’t audible, though honestly I can’t tell if it’s that which is making the midrange so awful to me or just how the driver is.
I can’t recommend these from my first impressions; they’re hilariously unpleasant to listen to music with unless you literally only listen to bass. Full review next week?
I think my high level tube amp will help fix some of those issues. So I am not too worried. Looking forward to hearing them. I often say: every headphone that exists is good if you pair it with the right amp.