[Brooko]

You guys are in for a treat.  They are wonderful headphones IMO.

 

[d marc0]

The HD630 vb has landed. These are really cool looking! Thanks Jensy.

Impressions coming soon.

 

[emptymt]

May I join the tour?

 

[d marc0]

May I join the tour?

Send a PM to @White Lotus, you can use me as reference...

 

[tlink]

Oh well.

 

[White Lotus]

May I join the tour?

 
There is still time if you're interested mate. Send me a PM if you're still interested. 
 

Oh well.

 
PM me if you would like to discuss! Thanks mate. 

 

[White Lotus]

Applications still open! 

 

[svyr]

first off, I'd like to thank White Lotus and Sennheisser Australia for giving us the opportunity to demo these for a few weeks
My appologies for the delay in the impressions - been a rought couple of weeks.

Build:
-solid, smooth edges - Metal (steel headband, alu cups?) +pleather headband + pleather pads + rubber headband edges + plastic trims on cups. Looks sturdy , perhaps the only potential issues I can forsee would be with the pivot mounts for the cups that look to be plastic. Everything feels very nice to the touch and there's no nasty flex or creaking anywhere or cheap nasty textures or sharp edges.
-comfortable pads , headband padding a bit lacking - start feeling the headband after 30m . While the pads are comfortable in 10-20 degree melbourne winter, I'm guessing like with any other closed cans - above 25 you'll start feeling it. At home they get a bit warm after say 30m
- nice to see replaceable pads and headband padding.
like inline mic/remote (on one of the cups)


Regarding portability/comfort:
probably not really portable.
I did sprint in them after the train a few times.
There is quite a bit of clamping pressure and isolation. (not Denon dn2k).
They're very large to store or carry around, if used with the supplied case (it's enormous). The case is definitely not portable unless that means 'needs its own suitcase'

Heavy - I started feeling it in the neck after about an hour, but not too bad. This will particularly show if you're not sitting with your neck straight.

While they do look Stax 007 nice, to be honest I felt a bit self concious wearing these outside. They are quite large and far from understated, and make me look overly committed to audio (which is of course true).
The non removable cable is obviously far from ideal.

They also lose seal a lot if you wear glasses and you can't wear them laying down or reclining. (not that you can plug it into your receiver without an extension cord )

The cable itself is a bit bothersome without a shirt clip or tucking it away into a pocket.

pairing with amps/sources:
overall, I'd probably suggest not matching them to cold sources or sources losing bass definition.
to my ear, some of the sources also accentuated the mids resonance

note 3 - good
clip+ - good (happier with the way mids sounded and bass definition on this vs note 3 and X3) - does accentuate the upper mids issues I had (see below).
Xduoo x3 - average - sounds a bit boring - X3 has its own cold sound that doesn't go well with the 630VB. Had a bit of trouble with the same EQ as on the clip+
ak10 - didn't like the pairing at all. Almost unlistenable (sound dull and have odd shrill mids, bass balance is accentuated unpleasantly)

sound ...
Overall, they feel V-shaped and I do think the mids are a little under-represented and keep finding myself reaching for volume to bring them up to match FCL8s.
They're certainly fun for pop/rock/dubstep however I would prefer more forward (0.7k-1.5kish) mids, and less forward mid-bass.
I also had a problem with the 3-5k in the mids where that area sounded sharp to me in many tracks, but not sure if that's specific to me as an issue. If you listen to music loudly , you will probably find it more of an issue as well.

highs
I do like the highs . Crisp, not fatiguing. Not as detailed as FLC8s [with gold , grey, red filters and a bit of eqing down of the peak] but still good detail. (amazingly these are the only headphones or earphones in the past .... 2 years I haven't EQed the highs on)

for the soundstage and imaging
for note3 and clips
for closed HP - the imaging and soundstage are quite good. (better than say Thinksound one)

mids:
Vocals details are good as well, but as per above, I do like mine a bit more prominent around 0.7-1.5k. On a few tracks the V-shapedness does show up for me. It's definitely less detailed or promiment for the mids and highs, compared to FLC8s (compared to the grey + red + gold filter with a bit of EQ on FLC8)

I found there to be a resonance/ringing problem around 3-5k - until I started eqing that down I found 630VB puzzling as the mids sounded both recessed and fatiguing/sharp. (basically, if the begining of this track with the violin solo sounds nasty and sharp /blurred/ too loud, you can fell it too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHjpOzsQ9YI ). I know Brooko and Jude said the measurements around that area don't really reflect in a spike but ummm... Perhaps it's my inner or outer ear shape or positioning but the problem I had was as bad as I heard in Lear BD4.2 universal a few years ago.


Lows:
regarding the bass tuning wheel (physical port adjustment!?)
what's curious is - for most tracks if you're willing to play with the bass tuning knob for a bit, I can make myself happy in say 2/3 of the cases per track .

Interestingly: -
b) on low port settings - too much sub-bass roll-off
b) at higher settings - bit bleeding into lower mids.
on most settings what i don't like is the roughly equal loudness for the 120hz vs say 60hz...

personally, I find this fatiguing long term for closed can at high volumes and prefer 120hz toned down favouring sub-bass instead.

I eqed them this way for what I thought matched FLC8s bit more closely - roughly +5db @ 40hz, q=2 , 120hz -2.5db

suspect this is not for the faint hearted and will blow the ears off some people.
for taking the edge off the upper mids - -3db@ 4k , q=1.5

so to sum up:
I'm not quite what I feel about these given the weight, need for myself to EQ them and overall portability and the $500 USD price. Personally I would probably not buy or recommend them. That said if you have a chance to demo them in store and loved them =)...