Thanks! You are right, they do already sound a bit more open now than the DT1770, more airy. How does the stage compare to the 1540?
Btw I found good offers for the Focal Elear and the 1540 at reduced prices (both opened B-Ware with full waranty and possibility to return them), so I told myself, heck why not. I will test them too and keep the winner, lol. Not buying a headphone very often. An open headphone is something I always considered but never tried. So let's see what the Elear has to offer. And the if the 1540 is really as good as everyone claims, at that price who knows, he might even take the crown
They both (Shure SRH1540 and Focal Elear) arrived this morning. Seems they are burned in already, at least both sound great. I think I'm in love, lol. Actually with both.
The 1540 has a tad too much bass, but that's not realy a problem. Especially at low volumes it sounds really nice. At higher volumes it can become too much, but I usually don't listen that loud anyway. In fact I think the 1540 is a bit better suited for me as an allround headphone, than the D7200. It is much more comfortable (I still have trouble with the Denon, it kinda bothers and I have to move the headband to a different spot regularely). And it seems that it does have a tad more snappy dynamics too, compared to the Denon. The Denon would be my first choice for Bossa Nova, Rock and similar, while the 1540 is ahead with EDM (at this point, dont know if the D7200 still changes. It has 50 hours now roughly.)
So the 1540 is my second favorite out of the bunch.
That brings me to the Focal Elear. Hell, I love it, lol. It's like a cross between the DT1770 and the D7200, combining the strength of both. Plus it's super comfortable, even more than the 1540. And to my taste it also looks and feels great. The sound is for my understanding simply amazing. Very balanced and powerful. I don't find anything that bothers me. It does make a strange sound when there is too much bass at high volume, but that seems to be normal. I took the 1540 to the maximum bass it could deliver and compared it to the Elear, and my ears started to tickle before the cracking sounds started. It can clearly deliver more bass than the 1540, if wanted.
I can't really say much about how much stage the Elear got, as I always had closed headphones or In-Ears. Definitely has more than the closed headphones. Obviously. I love it. And I was even able to convince my girlfriend that it is the best of the bunch, even though it is an open headphone
Yes, that's the plan. I am still amazed at the sound of those. Did not expect that an open headphone can sound like that. Always thought there must be a big penalty to impact.
I always prefered closed ones too, as my PC was quite noisy and I got the window open a lot. I compared though with music off, switching between the phones and the difference was not that big. My PC is quite silenced nowadays too. GPU still audible as the R9 390s produce a ton of heat, but planning to change that one too, when Vega comes out. With music turned on it was even less of a difference. It depens on how much noise there is I suppose, for me the open phone is fine. My girlfriend says there is more noise now coming from the phones, but she will survive
The isolation on those headphones seems to be quite a tad less than on my IE8 anyway. So if needed I can still use those at times.
Also, somehow I got the feeling as if open headphones do less harm to your ear, aside from the actual dB. Is that imagination or could there be some truth in it?
I did get some doubts (because of the price, never spent that much on a headphone before), so I did some more comparing and reasoning. The DT1770 which I compared again, suprisingly did not have that annoying tone around the 500Hz area anymore. Maybe due to burnin? I had it run some more. Still, when I compared it to the Elear, it utterly failed. It became extremely obvious listening to Infected Mushroom "Saeed". The part from 1:00 to 1:30 for example, even a half deaf person could not argue about it.
