[Lohb]

Really interested to get my hands on these after the 2 above opinions of them ! Think I'll have to flex that headband out though, it looks uncomfortable....get a suspension comfort strap made for it if I keep them.

 

[imackler]

 The HP50's even being lighter than the 940's are actually more uncomfortable probably because of the thinner headband. Additionally the insufficient clamping design that impacts the bottom of each ear cup creates a terrible seal that regardless of adjustments I’ve made has significant changes to the SQ every time I turn my head..

 
Even though I don't plan on keeping the HP50, in contrast I'd have to say that I found them extremely comfortable and easy to get a good seal with, with a pleasant amount of clamping force. I didn't listen for long, and while the sound wasn't for me, I'd be happy if all headphones were this comfortable and light. (They are ugly to look at in the mirror, though!) 

 

[wakeride74]

 
Even though I don't plan on keeping the HP50, in contrast I'd have to say that I found them extremely comfortable and easy to get a good seal with, with a pleasant amount of clamping force. I didn't listen for long, and while the sound wasn't for me, I'd be happy if all headphones were this comfortable and light. (They are ugly to look at in the mirror, though!) 

 


The clamping is fine for most of the cup but the bottom portion does not have enough force to maintain a seal. Every time I turned my head the sound would change. I thought the PSB was much more comfortable in this and the headband fit.

 

[SlinkyDink]

So it's been a whole week since I've received these in the mail, with about 40 hours through them I am even more obsessed! It may be all in my head, but man have these headphones opened up!  At first I knew they were fathoms ahead compared to what I was using before, but I really believe that they are "burning in" very well. Although I also believe it's probably just my ears adapting, the bass has opened up and the sound is more warm compared to what I believe it started out as, but by no means is it heavy on the lower frequencies at all.  When I throw on the Bose QC15's I cringe at the high frequencies and feel drowned in bass, again the Bose's are my only benchmarking points to base my observations off of for they were all I knew before the NAD's.
 
I've also gotten use to the placement of the headphones on my head so proper sealing is no longer an issue as well as just proper sound in general. I also think the cups have taken their form around my ears so the bottom of the cups seal very well despite the fact that the force may feel lacking in that area.

 

[AtomicWalrus]

[So this got really long by the time I was finished. Sorry? Here's a summary for the TL;DR crowd:
-Loving the sound. I don't know if they're actually "neutral" but that's definitely how they sound to me. Tracks with bass sound bass-y, acoustic tracks sound realistic, etc.
-Compressed wall of sound tracks can sound pretty bad. They probably should sound like a jumble since that's clearly how they were produced, so I'm inclined to make this another point for neutrality.
-Not loving the physical build of the headphones. Would prefer to transplant this sound into a better headphone design.
-Comfortable, which seems contradictory to above but isn't. Once they're on and sealed properly they're great to keep on so long as you don't do a lot of moving.
-Obviously they look silly, but I don't care.
-May need to compare to something considered similar like the Spirit Pro b/c of issues with the build]
 
A shot of me wearing them:

Sorry, couldn't resist. Moving on...
 
Physical/Design:
 
This sound seems to be exactly what I was looking for, however I'm generally unhappy with the majority of the physical aspects of the headphone. Aside from looking silly the headband seems weak and easily breakable (I see there's actually already been a story of a broken headband on here). I have a feeling the clamping force is going to get weaker over time, which is bad news from my perspective because I also get very little clamping force at the bottom of the cups.
 
It seems to me that the wacky headband design is intended to provide force against the center of the cup because the connection should do this when worn:
_    /
  |  /
  | /
  |/
  |
_|
 
My head's apparently too wide for this to work and the metal bit that comes out of the cup ends up lying flat against it like so:
_ |
  ||
  ||
  ||
  |
_|
 
Which puts the majority of the clamping force on the top and makes it really easy to break the seal by moving your head around. If I keep relatively still it's fine, but it results in more adjustment than I'd like from an over-ear headphone. If the clamping force gets weaker over time due to the obviously very thin metal of the headband this could be more of a problem than it already is.
 
I've seen pictures of the Focal Spirit Pro worn (also looks relatively silly) and its approach seems like it's likely to work with a larger range of head sizes... Basically the headband is "normal" but then juts out right above the cups so that it can apply inward pressure regardless of the overall headband fit. Another crude rendering:
   |
    \
     \
      O
_    /
  |  /
  | /
  |/
  |
_|
But I've also seen other shots where this didn't work out and it ended up flat anyway. Overall I think V-Moda nailed it when it comes to getting even clamping force in a portable by putting the connections on the side of the cup and closer to the head than the back of the cup. Avoids anything sticking off to the side very far while making sure that force is only ever applied to the center of the cup.
 
It's really unfortunate that the headband isn't better, because the cups themselves are very comfortable and sufficiently large considering the overall bizarre trend towards headphones for people with tiny ears (did someone do a survey and find that most headphone users have tiny ears? What is going on here?). Square pads aren't the best choice perhaps, but I think it would be fine if the clamping force were properly distributed on my head.
 
I also get a good amount of what I guess you might call creaking. The metal poles that come out of the headband for adjustment do a bit of wiggling where they meet the part that comes out of the cup and make some noise in the process, and the hinge at the cup itself (that lets the cup rotate up/down, not the fold flat mechanism) does that classic "makes a crack noise when it first moves" thing I've seen with a lot of hinge mechanisms. Like the seal concern this never comes up if I'm just sitting at a desk, but when I move my head significantly or touch the headphones at all I always get one of those "crack/pop" noises. Not a huge complaint, but since they're marketed as portables I think it's worth bringing up.
 
Including this here because it has nothing to do with the actual tuning and is more of a build consistency issue: The drivers seem very well matched. This is a personal point of frustration for me with many headphones (for example I recently returned a K545 that had terrible driver matching). Beyond simply creating L/R channel imbalance a headphone with poor driver matching makes you wonder just how different other units are, and that's someplace you don't want to go when you spend several hundred or above. On another forum I read a comment stating that Paul Barton was very aggressive with the manufacturer about driver consistency and I really respect that. Off topic, but I also have a lot of respect for V-Moda's attention to this subject even though I don't feel the M-100 sound is right for me. No headphone in this price range or above should have driver consistency issues and I'm more inclined to give my money to companies that understand this.
 
Sound:
 
Once they're on it's a different story. I'm not particularly an expert on what neutrality implies in terms of audio gear, but from a physiological perspective I would say that finding output neutrality is a matter of finding what is psycho-acoustically perceived as neutral. In that regard I'm inclined to believe that the headphone target curve research this tuning is clearly based on (see IF's comparison between the target curve and the HP50) is headed in the right direction. My ears seem to agree, as I've found the HP50's primary sonic feature to be that it has almost no sonic features at all.
 
In other words, you could give someone these headphones and a particular track and they might come to the conclusion that the HP50 had the properties of that track. If I play something from Massive Attack's Mezzanine, which is electronic music from the late 90's and has a really good dynamic range for an electronic album, I might think this was a bass-heavy headphone like the M-100. Play a more modern electronic track with a compressed dynamic range (and thus very little bass emphasis in the track itself) and you could think they were too low on bass.
 
Properly recorded music (especially from actual physical instruments) has consistently sounded excellently realistic on the HP50, which to me seems like a reasonable if purely subjective test of neutrality. In my experience a headphone like the HD25 or M-100 adds a desirable frequency emphasis to over-compressed music, but also has a tendency to make actual recordings sound wrong (why's that bass player so much louder than everyone, who makes cymbals the lead instrument in a track, why are all the bass instruments in this orchestra positioned in the audience, do I have a vocal remover EQ on, etc.). I'm not trying to say that these are objectively neutral for recording reproduction so much as I'm saying that they seem extremely neutral compared to the competitors in their class.
 
I've also had very positive results from positional audio tests (some binaural recordings, a bit of "where's that helicopter" in Battlefield 4). I feel this more or less translates into soundstage, basically the ability to clearly detect positional data in the audio when it exists.
 
On the other side anything that was over-compressed sounds like it looks when opened in an editor: Like a fat, jumbled mess of noise. Try Radioactive by Imagine Dragons if you want to hear the most disgustingly compressed sound brick ever (so compressed and clipped you could probably argue it's a hipster aesthetic thing). For tracks like this some added bass and possibly treble is basically required to make it possible to follow (gives you something to focus on and distracts from the jumbled sound wall effect). Honestly not really a big loss; Even with the correct frequency emphasis a track this compressed doesn't ever sound better than "slightly acceptable."
 
Conclusion:
 
I really wish this sound came in a better physical package. Giant studio monitor format would be fine with me, but if we need to stay portable I'd love to be able to transplant this sound into the M-100, or maybe the P7 (though I haven't actually worn these so maybe I shouldn't say that, they just look like they'd fit really well). In fact if I had any influence over what V-Moda was doing I'd tell them to get on that immediately.
 
I use an Amperior when I want a portable headphone because it works really well in that application. The mid-bass punch and treble spike allow you to still follow the music when there's noise without turning it up to dangerous levels and they do a great job of staying in place (plus you can wear pretty much any type of sun/regular glasses without breaking the seal since they're on-ear). The sound of the HP50 would make a perfect home headphone for me (need closed if you're curious), but I feel like designing it as a portable created a lot of physical compromises for zero gain in this case.
 
I'm very torn at the moment. Great sound, but will that get me past my issues with the physical headphone itself? Because of my issues with the design I'm probably going to also look at the Spirit Pro, which seems to have a very similar sound according to measurements and subjective reports (and high clamping force is a plus for me). I'd also like to try the 7520, but without seeing any measurements I don't know if I can trust Sony at this point. Both of these headphones seem strangely hard to find, even online.
 
I also feel like I should try the PSB M4U 1 since its measurements appear nearly identical (tuned by the same person so not shocking), however I'm concerned that its physical design would also bother me (looks like it's trying to be a Beats knockoff and has a plastic headband that seems like it could crack in addition to those folding hinges that.. well you get the idea). Maybe it would be comfortable and seal more consistently though, which is all I really want to change about the HP50.
 
 

---

The remainder of this post discusses the loudness wars vs. neutral gear. It's maybe kind of off topic, but this is essentially part of my reaction to the HP50 so I'm including it.
 
I really hope this is how things will move in the closed headphone space. The current trend of frequency emphasis headphones is simultaneously a symptom and a cause of the loudness wars from my perspective. It begins with compression of dynamic range in order to "win" the loudness war (sound louder than the previous and next songs when played side by side). This tends to remove any frequency emphasis from the track that was supposed to be there, so music which was intended to have powerful bass or detailed treble often loses these features. Because bass is the hardest to hear, especially from headphones, having the bass levels in the track equal to everything else sounds anemic when it's played back from neutral gear. To solve this the end user adds bass emphasis (often by purchasing a headphone with bass emphasis).
 
After some time passes most people listening to popular music are doing so on bass (and frequently also treble) emphasized headphones, so now it just makes sense to produce tracks specifically for this type of gear if you're making a "mainstream" album. This means even flatter songs (we've all seen the big log of sound you get when you open these tracks in an editor) which basically demand bass and/or treble emphasis to sound like anything other than an incoherent mess. The end result is that if you listen to anything modern and mainstream you're going to need a "bass-head" output just to get back to something that sounds relatively natural.
 
It's a really messed up situation because it essentially forces the listener to own one set of headphones for modern over-compressed music and another more neutral set for tracks that have actually been recorded/produced correctly. Maybe for some it's reasonable to just drop the compressed tracks from rotation, but for others that may not be acceptable (you may really a like style of music which is only ever produced in the form of a sound brick).
 
The point of this rant is that I think a headphone like the HP50 is a huge step forward. If the portable/closed market swings back this way over time we might someday see a return to frequency emphasis in the track, not the gear, which would be a big win for absolutely everyone. It seems so stupidly obvious (and in fact probably is to most here), but with relatively neutral gear at the user's end artists are free to produce whatever sound they actually want; Massive bass for EDM, natural sounding records for acoustic music, etc.
 
With digital distribution now the primary method it's not even unreasonable to imagine multiple versions of an album released; One for "mainstream" and another for those with relatively neutral gear. I can't seriously believe that musicians are producing these tracks deliberately so much as they're bullied into it by labels and producers (and the very real fact that quieter music doesn't sell as well).

 

[Kendoji]

Wow great post!

 

[Za Warudo]

Excellent post! I agree with your point in the dynamic range compression and headphone tuning relationship in modern music. However there's no chance the HP50 or its other relatively neutral portable HPs marketed towards the audiophile crowd would swing the market in anyway. The only headphones I see on the streets are either Apple earphones or Beats, basically the people who don't care to spend on decent HPs or don't care about quality HPs. Nothing about the ugly design of the HP50 would appeal to the average consumer who cares to spend $300 on a pair of headphones.

I was really interested in getting these after all the good reviews on them. Unfortunately the ugly headband and the conflicting reports on its comfort held me back from getting it, and I have no stores near me where I could demo them. I was really considering the P7 after trying them and loving the treble and soundstage in addition to its design. It's too pricy though and everyone who had heard the HP50 claim it's better. I was also considering the Focal Spirit Pro/Classic, but it seems that the pads are too small and it's more of an on-ear HP.

 

[s0ckpupp3t]

I returned my HP50s.  They sounded awesome but I returned them principally because the right ear cup would "click" each time I tilted my head to the right.  I would have just gotten a replacement pair if this defect were the only issue but the headband design was a deal breaker.
 
The headband is really goofy looking but I could have gotten past the looks but for the fact that the headband also resulted in a very uncomfortable pressure point at the top of my head after about an hour of use.
 
I would get the Viso HP50s again in a heartbeat if they come up with an updated headband.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

I was convinced these would be my portable headphones, but this thread has put me off somewhat.
 
What other options are there for portable headphones with an over the ear design earcup that isn't tiny like the Momentums?

 

[BucketInABucket]

  I was convinced these would be my portable headphones, but this thread has put me off somewhat.
 
What other options are there for portable headphones with an over the ear design earcup that isn't tiny like the Momentums?

Sony MDR-7520 - Hard to get in the EU but someone's currently listing it for 200 pounds on the classifieds.
Focal Spirit Classic/Professional - Small-ish cups so beware.
AKG K545 - large-ish cups.
Soundmagic HP100 - a neutralhead's budget option.
M-Audio Q40 - a basshead's budget option; someone's selling it on ebay.com for $52 with no cable and pads but a cable and pad swap are recommended anyways.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

The Sony MDR-1R, I wonder whether they're the successor to the 7520's.
 
The AKG K545's, I was very interested in those, but someone measured the inner earcup size for me and it was something like 51mm. For comparison, the HP50's are 65mm and my ears are around 68mm at the furthest point. Maybe something is amiss there, though, because 51mm seems awfully small for circumaural headphones.

 

[BucketInABucket]

  The Sony MDR-1R, I wonder whether they're the successor to the 7520's.
 
The AKG K545's, I was very interested in those, but someone measured the inner earcup size for me and it was something like 51mm. For comparison, the HP50's are 65mm and my ears are around 68mm at the furthest point. Maybe something is amiss there, though, because 51mm seems awfully small for circumaural headphones.

I thought the K545s had large ear-cups. Maybe it was just a trick of the pictures or something.

 

[AtomicWalrus]

Excellent post! I agree with your point in the dynamic range compression and headphone tuning relationship in modern music. However there's no chance the HP50 or its other relatively neutral portable HPs marketed towards the audiophile crowd would swing the market in anyway. The only headphones I see on the streets are either Apple earphones or Beats, basically the people who don't care to spend on decent HPs or don't care about quality HPs. Nothing about the ugly design of the HP50 would appeal to the average consumer who cares to spend $300 on a pair of headphones.

I was really interested in getting these after all the good reviews on them. Unfortunately the ugly headband and the conflicting reports on its comfort held me back from getting it, and I have no stores near me where I could demo them. I was really considering the P7 after trying them and loving the treble and soundstage in addition to its design. It's too pricy though and everyone who had heard the HP50 claim it's better. I was also considering the Focal Spirit Pro/Classic, but it seems that the pads are too small and it's more of an on-ear HP.

 
Thanks. I almost didn't post it after I saw how long it got, but in retrospect I'm glad I did because I think this headphone is worth discussing even if it's not a unanimous recommendation. If this fit like (and maybe looked more like) the M-100, or maybe the MDR-1R, or even a big studio can I'd recommend it without hesitation to everyone except people who only listen to ultra-compressed tracks.
 
I was definitely being unrealistically in talking about the trends. More what I wish could happen than what realistically could. I guess what I meant was that until now there haven't been any quality neutral-sounding headphones in this market sector at all (closed, portable, ~$300) so seeing a couple appear at once (PSB M4U 1, HP50, Spirit Pro according to many reports and graphs) made me optimistic that we could continue to see more of these in the future. Maybe that would never have a major impact, but I can imagine a few more artists in the future doing what NIN did and releasing an alternative "audiophile" version of an album or something.
 
As far as the comfort I'd honestly say they're extremely comfortable, but clearly others disagree. It's just the low clamp at the bottom that gets me because you can break the seal with too much head movement (hasn't been a problem at my desk so far though, which is my primary usage for these). If I could grab the Focals from someplace local or off Amazon I'd already have them here to compare. There was a picture a while back comparing the pads to the M-100 and they looked really close to me, but it's really going to be hard to tell how it's going to work unless you can put them on.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

  I thought the K545s had large ear-cups. Maybe it was just a trick of the pictures or something.

 
I thought that too based on this picture:
 

 
But unless this guy...
 

   
Dimensions, measured by D, d, and δ where D is the outer diameter, d is inner diameter, and δ is the depth:

1. D: 90-91 mm
2. d: 51 mm
3. δ: 18 mm

 
Please note that these pads have slight warping due to use (all pads will warp with use).  So the δ reading may be slightly low.

 
... was wrong in some way, they are smaller than they appear.

 

[serafko]

   
I thought that too based on this picture:
 

 
But unless this guy...
 
 
... was wrong in some way, they are smaller than they appear.

I have both, and HP50 have bigger pads as k545. But on my K545 i have HM5 pads, they are oval, so the seal is much better with HM5 pads. After all my HP50 have much more listening time, because of soooo pleasing sound.