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Don´t think it has to do with seal. If anything a worse seal would make it sound more open since the air can escape
. More comparing it to fully open headphones is my guess? It´s not resonant compared to any other closed headphone I tried.
Well, a leaky closed headphone is not really akin to an open one. The seal is very important for the Edition 8 because it is a fully closed and isolated design rather than a vented closed design. Open, semi open, vented closed, fully closed, and in ear types all have different design considerations that affect the sound. Put your hands over the fully open cups of a Grado and everything falls apart. Break the seal on the Edition 8 and you don't get the intended sound. The effect will be different for each headphone, but in both of these cases you've compromised the design and in turn the sound.
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How do you get a bad seal w/ the ED8? My comment was only regarding low end bass resonance. Not sure if the other post meant the entire spectrum.
For me, the spot below the ear, where the jawbone and neck meet, is where the pads can break the seal. As the pads are wearing in it is becoming less of a problem, but for me that spot can sometimes create a gap. This can happen if I'm chewing or moving my head far from side to side. When the seal breaks, the low bass disappears, along with the impact, the the sound diffuses a bit. It's similar to a bad seal with IEMs, but in this case since the drivers are in cups surrounding the ears, outside sounds come in, inside sounds leak out, and the 'cupped hands around the ears' or 'seashell up to the ear' phenomenon occurs. Someone who puts these on a certain way and gets a sound that seems to echo is not getting the pads fully sealed. When I first got the Edition 8, I positioned them with the headband more forward than was intended and the pads didn't seal around my ears. I didn't get the low bass and I heard a diffuse (or what someone could call 'echoey') presentation. After moving the headband further back and giving it a bend those problems disappeared.
Others have noticed that positioning is important to these headphones, and since everyone's head shape and anatomy around the ears is different, proper adjustment is required to get a proper seal. Not everyone who puts these on for a trial listen–at meets or with store demo fro example–understands how they ought to fit, and so we get people giving impressions when they weren't wearing them or hearing them as they were intended. Those that own them have come to understand it and made proper evaluations given actual experience. And those owner evaluations don't include echos or resonance. The consensus has been that the Edition 8 makes fewer compromises for a fully closed and isolated design than other headphones of the same type.
Anaxilus, do you own the Edition 8? At what frequency do you hear resonance? I have yet to hear any resonance, and I've fed plenty of bass through mine.