I've owned a pair for three days, now. My initial
reaction: Sounds expensive. Nice bass. A bit too bright
right out of the box, but maybe that will back down with
use. Maybe. I hope.
As far as needing an amp, I'd say that's a big "No." These
things are noticably louder at a given volume setting than
the Lil' Cheapie headphones that came with my Sony PCDP.
They're circumaural if you have small ears, but I don't, so
they're somewhere between circumaural and supraaural. With
my large ears, they were causing some pain in the cartilage
at the back of the outer ear if I wore them for more than
an hour or so. It turned out that I just had to learn the
right way to wear them. Wearing the ear cups farther down
and back a bit from where they seem to belong seems to have
solved the problem.
They do make my ears itch, but not where the headphones are
touching them. It's just the heat that's doing it.
Frankly, I've never had a pair of headphones that DIDN'T
make my ears itch if I wore them long enough, so this isn't
really a complaint.
They isolate very well. I have a pair of circumaural
industrial ear protectors against which to compare them,
and though the V6 doesn't block as much noise at those do,
they do block quite a bit, particularly treble. This is
bad you want to hear people talking to you while you wear
them, but great if you want to protect your hearing.
Perceived volume levels are largely based on the level of
background noise, so if you can knock the background noise
down by, say, 10dB, then the music, at the same volume
setting, will sound about 10dB louder to you, subjectively.
In other words, you're less likely to crank up the volume
to ear damaging levels with closed headphones, particularly
in noisy areas, like here in front of my computer.
Let me know if you have any specific questions I didn't
address.
