[bigheadhifi]

Hey Guys,
 
I need some advice from all of you guys, so I'm going to buy myself a new headphone... and realized and decided that those two or three rather, are the strongest candidates from all of the other options... what I wanted to ask is, given that they are roughly at the same price range (at least here where I live) what are the strengths and weaknesses of each of them?
 
I will use them to listen to mostly vocal jazz, movie musical score, acoustics and such..
 
my setup are: Foobar2000 > wasapi > NuForce Udac2 > some old sherwood analog eq > Little Dot 1+
 
cheers,

 

[bigheadhifi]

anyone can help?

 

[manveru]

FA-003/HM5 is very laid back and has softer attack/dynamics. Relatively neutral-ish, but can sound just a little dark depending on what you compare them to. Decent sized soundstage, but imaging is a little wonky. Vocals or other instruments that are in the center sound kind of recessed, although I suppose somebody else might call that depth. Slightly muddled bass, but the treble is smooth and produces very realistic sounding cymbals.
 
Sorry, haven't heard the 558s.

 

[GigaFi]

Quote:

FA-003/HM5 is very laid back and has softer attack/dynamics. Relatively neutral-ish, but can sound just a little dark depending on what you compare them to. Decent sized soundstage, but imaging is a little wonky. Vocals or other instruments that are in the center sound kind of recessed, although I suppose somebody else might call that depth. Slightly muddled bass, but the treble is smooth and produces very realistic sounding cymbals.
 
Sorry, haven't heard the 558s.

Never heard the FA-003 but the 558s is pretty much the exact opposite of this.
 
So based on that, you can probably figure out which is right for you.

 

[bigheadhifi]

Quote:

Never heard the FA-003 but the 558s is pretty much the exact opposite of this.
 
So based on that, you can probably figure out which is right for you.

 
so they are brighter, more forward and colored.. better imaging, especially the center image and has better vocal reproduction?
correct me if I defined it wrong

 

[GigaFi]

Quote:

 
so they are brighter, more forward and colored.. better imaging, especially the center image and has better vocal reproduction?
correct me if I defined it wrong

 
I can't say that it is better in that way relatively because I haven't heard the FA-003 but...
 
- The 558/598 are bright headphones
- The midrange is definitely very forward (check out the FR graph)
- It has good imaging and fantastic soundstage
- The mids/vocals is probably the main strong suit of the 558/598