I'm seriously considering the TH-610 because I don't need another open headphone (have HD800), and I haven't liked the planars I've heard (hifiman and audeze). I also have concerns about planar durability/longevity. I only wish the Fostex isolated a little better.
Got my 610s yesterday, and spent about 3 hours in the evening listening to my tunes. First impressions (coming from someone with no experience to equal or similiar cans):
-Wood looks awesome in person
-Very comfortable, ear pads get a little sticky after a while so might change them eventually.
-Cable is very nice but its relatively stiff which makes it harder to tangle. When it does though its harder to untangle...Very glad it has removable cable though.
-Never knew headphones could be so "balanced". There doesnt seem to be emphasis on anything. I like this.
-A lot say that these Fostexs have a good punchy low end, and without a doubt these do, but not in an overwhelming way that I was expecting. Cant believe how much low end I have been missing in some of my songs, its crazy!
-Mids seem slightly subdued but I wonder if they will open up a bit with some use down the road.
-One of my favorite songs, not necessarily for quality or an excellent recording but simply because I know it well, is Comfortably Numb performed by David Gilmour live in Gdansk. Im not good with describing my thoughts with words so not going to try but I thoroughly enjoyed every second of that song, and dang that guitar solo sounded nice.
Hope you didnt expect some in depth thoughts with fancy words but these are my first impressions, definitely happy with the purchase and look forward to burning them in a bit more.
i've done a search but couldn't find anything on comparing this new fostex 610 model to both the senn hd650 and sony mdr 7520 cans
...can anyone compare?
I'm surprised honestly, didn't find these to be grainy or harsh at all - at least compared to what else I own, of course.
As far as I know, the E-MUs have an unaltered driver, so the magic seems to be in the cup layout. Will be looking to do something more akin to that in the next revision of my DIY ones, so I suppose we'll be able to check on that in the coming weeks.
..really gotta start looking towards a measurement rig for future tweaking now that these results are in, hah.
Since I'm not that experienced in critical listening like Tyll is, I must say that I throughly enjoy my TH610s, my AH-D7000s and the music I use to listen at with them. Not bothered to know that at least for him the E-MUs are far superior (congrats to the owners), but I'll simply stick on to my cans for the simple reason that I fully enjoy them.
Unfortunately there are many people who will miss out on listening to the TH610 simply "because the review says it's bad".
That's how it has always been.
That doesn't mean you are not listening critically, or you should not be enjoying the TH610.
Sometimes it's hard to own a Fostex With so much love for just one brand We've had good times And now some bad times When Tyll says sh**t I don't understand
But since I love them, then I'll mod them To fix the skewed frequency band. And with new wood & damping, I'll be proud of them. Cause after all their gorgeous cans.
fwiw, i still love my th-600 for electronic music over any closed cans i've owned or auditioned (including the universally liked ether C flows) despite being deemed even more unlistenable than th900 to most LOL
The way headphones are described sometimes blows my mind. I've seen reviewers say that 2/3 of their music is unlistenable with HD800. I've had mine 8 months now (unmodified) and have yet to find a single song that is unlistenable. A poorly mastered song is going to be poorly mastered on any headphone. I've had a nice audition of the TH-610 and it sounded great to me. Really liked it on a jazz track. The thing with headphones is to figure out a way to listen to them. I do wish it were easier, but if you love how it sounds then it's a great headphone.
Wow, surprising Tyll no longer likes the D5000s. Although he is right about the distant sounding mids, in comparison with most headphones, it is something my ears adjust very well to and after a while it just sounds right and the D5000s will sound engaging and euphonic in their own way. I don't agree about the emphasized mid-treble, to my ears it would be the high mids and the low treble that have a peaky resonance.
I'm personally surprised from my personal listening impression (not too bass-heavy and not harsh) and headphone.com wrote:
"However, the Massdrop TH-X00 offers a much bigger low-end kick that adds a lot of slam to the bass response, but which can also be a bit over-exaggerated and almost verging on the boomy at times. Big bassheads may gravitate toward the TH-X00 but we feel the Fostex TH-610 is likely the better balanced, more evenly toned headphone."
i think in the end it's personal taste. I'm just surprised, that the impressions are so different
I'm personally surprised from my personal listening impression (not too bass-heavy and not harsh) and headphone.com wrote:
"However, the Massdrop TH-X00 offers a much bigger low-end kick that adds a lot of slam to the bass response, but which can also be a bit over-exaggerated and almost verging on the boomy at times. Big bassheads may gravitate toward the TH-X00 but we feel the Fostex TH-610 is likely the better balanced, more evenly toned headphone."
i think in the end it's personal taste. I'm just surprised, that the impressions are so different
These headphones seem quite.. polarizing in reviews and impressions so far, huh.
Heard everything from "bass anemic" to "boomy", from "full/smooth" to "grainy" - makes me wonder if there's production inconsistencies or something.
I really find these quite nicely balanced and full sounding, less harsh than anything else I own outside of the Momentums pretty much.
Maybe it's a problem with production. What's you production-number? I Have 00092 and i would call them balanced and slightly U-shaped. I compared them to the AKG K550 today and the AKG are much harsher and do have less mids. It remains a mistery to me, but hey, I love mine
I also heard from hifisound, that a whole delivery was called back for production errors and the new batch will arrive mid october.
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