theangelboy
500+ Head-Fier
My set arrived a few minutes ago. Thankfully I was home since it required a signature. I have been refreshing the tracking all day and would have been mad if I had to wait until tomorrow to get them!
Ultra-first impressions:
Build: The box is well designed and holds the headphones well with custom-moulded plastic pieces that snap together with slots for the cable and accessories. Everything is held in very well so nothing was loose despite being shipped. One unfortunate side effect of the box design is that it causes some kinks in the cable. Hopefully I can get them out.
Picking up the headphones they feel... cheap. Definitely not what I was expecting for a $400 MSRP headphone. It's not necessarily the materials that feel cheap but fit and finish of them. The pad pivot and slider mechanism rattle and it has less resistance than I like while adjusting (thankfully they go big enough; they almost didn't fit!). It's not heavy in the hand. The pads are velour, but the rough/scratchy kind and not very deep so my ears touch the plastic that covers the driver. Maybe I have been spoiled by other companies and maybe my expectations were a little too high in this department.
The cable is odd, flat, and enormously long and comes out the front of the cups instead of the middle or angling out the bottom. It looks a little silly but it does keep the cable out of the way of my shoulders so I guess function over form. I can live with that. I will probably try to get/build a replacement cable that's shorter and has a 3.5mm instead of the 6.35mm since they are easy to drive. Not that I'm planning taking them out of the house or anything, but I like to listen on my LG G7 when I don't want to be tethered in one room.
Sound:
"Okay, that's all well and good," you are thinking, "but what about the sound?"
Well, let me try to sum up.
WOW!
That's the most succinct description I can think of. I was blown away at first listen. They are clear, dynamic, punchy, and wide. Literally one of, if not the best sounding headphones I have ever heard out of the box. Excellent timbre, too! Everything sounds like it should, but almost hyper-real in some way. It reminds me of whenever I get new glasses and I put them on and I can see everything so clearly, it seems like someone cranked up the sharpening filter IRL. If I had one niggle, it would be that the treble seems to be slightly on the hot side.
They remind me of my Elear (with Elex pads, so essentially, a different colored Elex), but with more bass, which I prefer. I always felt my modded Elear was little on the bass-lite side. Both headphones are very clear, dynamic, punchy, with excellent imaging and great timbre. I would have to do some A/B listening tests to be more detailed than that. The fact that the A800 trades blows with the Focal is high praise for the A800, indeed. More listening is in order, I think.
So, to sum up. Build: meh. Sound: Fantastic! They are my favorite (sound-wise) dynamic driver headphone I have, hands down. They are winners, for sure, so I'm honestly wondering why in the world more headphones aren't tuned like this? It's a crying shame these were discontinued. But I'm so, so, so glad I took a chance and pulled the trigger on these!
Ultra-first impressions:
Build: The box is well designed and holds the headphones well with custom-moulded plastic pieces that snap together with slots for the cable and accessories. Everything is held in very well so nothing was loose despite being shipped. One unfortunate side effect of the box design is that it causes some kinks in the cable. Hopefully I can get them out.
Picking up the headphones they feel... cheap. Definitely not what I was expecting for a $400 MSRP headphone. It's not necessarily the materials that feel cheap but fit and finish of them. The pad pivot and slider mechanism rattle and it has less resistance than I like while adjusting (thankfully they go big enough; they almost didn't fit!). It's not heavy in the hand. The pads are velour, but the rough/scratchy kind and not very deep so my ears touch the plastic that covers the driver. Maybe I have been spoiled by other companies and maybe my expectations were a little too high in this department.
The cable is odd, flat, and enormously long and comes out the front of the cups instead of the middle or angling out the bottom. It looks a little silly but it does keep the cable out of the way of my shoulders so I guess function over form. I can live with that. I will probably try to get/build a replacement cable that's shorter and has a 3.5mm instead of the 6.35mm since they are easy to drive. Not that I'm planning taking them out of the house or anything, but I like to listen on my LG G7 when I don't want to be tethered in one room.
Sound:
"Okay, that's all well and good," you are thinking, "but what about the sound?"
Well, let me try to sum up.
WOW!
That's the most succinct description I can think of. I was blown away at first listen. They are clear, dynamic, punchy, and wide. Literally one of, if not the best sounding headphones I have ever heard out of the box. Excellent timbre, too! Everything sounds like it should, but almost hyper-real in some way. It reminds me of whenever I get new glasses and I put them on and I can see everything so clearly, it seems like someone cranked up the sharpening filter IRL. If I had one niggle, it would be that the treble seems to be slightly on the hot side.
They remind me of my Elear (with Elex pads, so essentially, a different colored Elex), but with more bass, which I prefer. I always felt my modded Elear was little on the bass-lite side. Both headphones are very clear, dynamic, punchy, with excellent imaging and great timbre. I would have to do some A/B listening tests to be more detailed than that. The fact that the A800 trades blows with the Focal is high praise for the A800, indeed. More listening is in order, I think.
So, to sum up. Build: meh. Sound: Fantastic! They are my favorite (sound-wise) dynamic driver headphone I have, hands down. They are winners, for sure, so I'm honestly wondering why in the world more headphones aren't tuned like this? It's a crying shame these were discontinued. But I'm so, so, so glad I took a chance and pulled the trigger on these!
