[Randolph Duke]

I use the pro 900's at home.
Curious to the 15G's as a walk around pair.
I worry they might be a tad too thin sounding.
Anyone try them?

 

[captian73]

My favourite portable phone, even agains the competition. It's sounds very grounded and good, and thank goodness the S-logic doesn't casue half the problems that it does with the iCans and the dreadful zino's. As these are Ultrasone's a small amp (fiio) would be recommended.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f103/u...amused-447303/ - might find a few of my comments.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f103/a...ressed-422358/ - includes images with the competition.

I like them all, but the HFI-15G has becime my over favourite. Theu are 'The' most comfotable headphones I've ever had .... ever!

 

[nonsupremous]

Well, after 2 years (or perhaps longer) of staring at the HFI-15G on various sites, I finally decided to pull the trigger and buy them!!  The only thing that ever stopped me from jumping on these was the complete lack of interest and reviews and also the 9+ foot long cable.
 
But after a couple of years and seeing them still on the market for retail....color change and cord length change I decided, what the heck. 
 
They were delivered to my office this morning after spending most of last week lost somewhere in Memphis.  I have not actually put them on and listened to them yet.  But I can say they are far lighter than I was expecting.  I guess the pictures just made me feel like they were going to weigh more.  I was also happy to see that indeed the cable length is down to just over 3 feet.  You know....portable length! 

 
The pads seem to be a thin Grado size.  Perhaps slightly smaller in diameter. 
 
Tonight I will get a chance to put them on for a little bit to see why such little fuss over the years. 
 

 

[priest]

 
Quote:

Tonight I will get a chance to put them on for a little bit to see why such little fuss over the years. 
 

Congratz. I am sure I am not alone in looking forward to hearing what you think about the sound after you have tried them. I've been toying with buying them for a long time too. The 13 people who seem to have bought them mostly appear to love them dearly.
 

 

[DTSyX]

Well, I have one pair for some years now and I love them. But as I don't really have any high-end high-price phones to compare I rather keep my mouth shut than getting beaten up by the cracks here.
I listened to the HD 650 in a store. But it was only short listening and a bit noisy. So I couldn't really make a good decision. All I can say is that I was disappointed with the HD 650. I thought with that big price difference the difference in the sound was obvious.
So, as I don't like closed phones and the short listening didn't blow me away my decision was settled: If I ever spend a lot of money on phones it'll be custom IEMs. So it's either the plain JH13s or the JH-3A - JH16 combo.
I don't wanna spend tons of money just to have a big collection of phones when I can only listen to one at a time.
 
And for the comfort of the 15G. I like it. Even after hours of listening you don't really feel them. They never hurt me.
The long only one-sided cabel is annoying but one can get used to it.
 
But I guess, for the cracks here that's just a silly ridiculous toy, not worth mentioning and embarrassing to own.

 

[nonsupremous]

Thanks for that.  The other 13.  I don't know if that's an accurate count, but that might be close!  lol.  These have been really under the radar for many years. 
 
Quote:

 

Congratz. I am sure I am not alone in looking forward to hearing what you think about the sound after you have tried them. I've been toying with buying them for a long time too. The 13 people who seem to have bought them mostly appear to love them dearly.
 

First off, I would say that there really are some people on these forums that get quite grumpy over people views and opinions.  I would strongly suggest that you don't even worry about that stuff.  Unless you are quoting specs or pasting and reading graphs, then this whole forum is made up purely of opinion.  And these opinions have lots of factors involved.  Ie, type of equipment, listening environment, the damage or lack of damage done to your hearing during ones lifetime, age.  Frequencies naturally start to desappear as you get older.  Don't quote me on this, but I think men lose midrange first?  Not really sure.  But you should have fun with your little toy and feel free to express your thoughts on the way YOU hear them.  I have personally owned hundreds of headphones over the past 26 years and still don't hesitate for one minute to read every review I can and base a lot of my buying on those opinions and reviews.  Cheers!
 
Quote:

Well, I have one pair for some years now and I love them. But as I don't really have any high-end high-price phones to compare I rather keep my mouth shut than getting beaten up by the cracks here.

But I guess, for the cracks here that's just a silly ridiculous toy, not worth mentioning and embarrassing to own.

So, here's some quick out of the box thoughts on these.  I mentioned yesterday how light they are.  They are also quite possibly the most comfortable headphone I've ever worn.  Now I will qualify that statement with this:  you probably have to like a Grado style pad to really, really like these.  Some people don't like that full pad over the ear.  Now, the pad itself is just about the size of the Grado SR60/80i pads, just MUCH thinner.
  I had also read somewhere that someone said these headphones clamp too much and were uncomfortable.  Wow!!  I can't imagine.  You would have to have quite the large dome for these headphones to clamp hard. Think of the SR60i with 1/4 the clamping force.  I could probably wear this headphone for 12 hours and never realize it was on my head.  Of course the pads might start to itch after a while.
 
Now to some initial thoughts on sound.  When I first plugged them into my Walkman, unamped, I was shocked!  And NOT in a good way.  They sounded very muffled, distant a tad bass heavy and recessed in all other areas.  Talk about buyers remorse. 

 
 
So, I took them off to give them a looking at.  I noticed that there is a dime to nickle size hole in the center of the pad.  Call it a Dim Mod if you will....sorry, little laugh for myself on that one.  It was not easily detectable at first because the pad and the hole are underneath the fabric cover. 
 
So, I put them back on and double checked to make sure that the cutout was squarely over the opening of my ears.  Yep, that was it.  I had them sitting a little too far forward on my head.  Getting them squarely over the earhole made them far less muffled and opened up the highs a bit.
 
The 4 songs I listened to were Comfortably Numb, Pink Floyd.  When the Levee Breaks, London Phillharmonic Orchestra.  The Rain Song, Page and Plant Unledded.  Soap on a Rope, Chickenfoot.
 
Playing Comfortably Numb was ok in my opinion.  It was nothing really special.  It was not as detailed and crisp as I would prefer.
 
When the Levee Breaks was my least favorite.  The subtle details of the orchestra were not as present as I would like.  Hooking them up to an amp really helped though.
 
The Rain Song was the best here.  Plant's voice sounded great and the backing orchestra sounded great.  Some of the more subtle details like Pages fingers sliding across the strings were a little recessed and his deep breathing in between strums at the outset of the song were lost.  But again, putting them on an amp cured the problem. 
 
Soap on a Rope was good.  All the notes hit hard and it was fairly engaging. 
 
Initial conclusion:  I will need more time to make more accurate accounts for these.  They have that Ultrasone scratch your head sound sig.  Makes you sit for a second and double take what's happening with the music.  They are not nearly as agressive or forward as any other Ultrasone I have heard or read about.  But I do like them.  Right now I would say they are a notch below my SR60i.  But I have lots of hours on those also. 
 
More later. 

 

[priest]

thanks, ns. i am going to stick up for the headphones i have never heard and say that to be fairly compared against an industry classic like the sr60i, they need more time, as you clearly intend to give them.
 
i am not surprised about the placement issue you mention. i noticed the exact same phenomenon on the HD228 when i first got them. little earpad headphone effect.
 
and DTSyX, no one thinks these are a silly little toy, embarassing to own.

 headphones in this price range get a ton of attention and affection on head-fi, and your input on them is appreciated.

 

[ljokerl]

Subscribed. Looking forward to further impressions, nonsupremous.
 
@DTSyX: Noone will jump on you for discussing a headphone that you like without any context. Some people (including myself) take issue with people saying "X is the greatest head(ear)phone EVER" without backing up that conclusion but aside from that this forum is pretty friendly towards the less and more experienced alike.
 

 

[DTSyX]

Thanks for your appreciation.
 
 
nonsupremous is right. When you think you're wearing them exactly centrally you have to pull them a bit backwards to get a clearer sound (treble is much better that way). I guess that's because the entrance to the ear canal faces more to the back than exactly to the side.
 
Well, I had a Koss TNT-55 once which broke one day after years and years of usage. So I had to get new headphones. As you can go always higher and higher with the price and get probably a better headphone I decided to limit the price range and try to find the best within. I liked the small diameter of earpieces of the TNT-55 and of course the fact that they're "on ears". So I looked out for a similar one. I had other Koss phones in mind and also the iGrado. But when I read about the HFI-15G and found an ebay offer that I couldn't deny I jumped for it. And what can I say. For about 50 bucks I'm very content with this buy. The best thing is, the company is just some 40km from my home. So it's even nicer to think I'm listening to a regional product.
 
The first thing I did was listening to the Ultrasone CD and I was blown. I never heard something like headroom or sound stage with headphones before. At least not that obvious. With the TNT-55 there was a nice frequency response (I like it linear), but it was plain, like a wall of sound compared to the HFI-15G. With the very first track of the Ultrasone CD (Sileypud (excerpt)) I literally thought there was some sax playing in the neighbors' room or behind me, so I automatically turned my head. And everyone that I put on the phones and played that song to did the same. This was a very amazing experience.
 
That's why I sometimes can't believe how headphones that cheap can sound that good. But I guess I should test some other phones (especially from that price range) to see what others can do for that kind of money.
 
But for now I would say, you can't go wrong with the HFI-15G if you want a relatively cheap and good sounding pair of headphones. At least give them a try!
 
 
 
btw: I don't have/use any headphone amplifier. I just plug the HFI-15G directly into the source, which can be the cd player's phones-out, the pc's line-out, the iriver h140 or the cowon G3.
 
 
 
[Edit (besides correcting some embarrassing typos above)]:
 
Maybe I should add that I'm probably the exact opposite of a bass head. When I was younger I also used loudness and other fancy sound altering options on my then very cheap and therefore limited sound system or walkman to get an acceptable sound out of the speakers or the headphones. But later on I realized that turning the bass and low midrange up was just covering up the fact, that at least one part of the sound system is crap. Sometimes it's also the music or at least the recording.
That was the time when I completely turned and began to hate all sound altering settings. I just want(ed) to hear the music as is was intended to sound. But of course that's easy to say but in the end also subjective. For now, the HFI-15G to me has a very clean and linear (also open, airy and sparkling) sound. At least that's what I think at the moment. Always subject to change.

 

[nonsupremous]

Well, after spending a great deal of time listening to these I think it's fair to say that they now have a permanent spot on my wall of keepers. 
 
I have never had the opportunity to listen to the Zino, so I could not make any comparisons there.  But overall I think they still fall just a notch below the SR60i for me personally.  Perhaps taste has a bit to do with that statement.  Once you listen to these for a while and they are amped, they do a great job picking up details of music.  The Grado is much more of an upfront headphone than the 15-G.  You get the feeling of a bigger sound in the Grado.
 
The Ultrasones are kind of hard to describe really.  They are not laid back and dark, nor are they forward and in your face.  Due to the sensitivity however, you would do best to use some sort of a small amp with these if you're really going to bring out the most detail. 
 
The S Logic works good and I say this with a bit of surprise considering the small size of the cutout in the pads.  One night I was sitting on the couch listening to these out of my walkman and I was on the computer doing some work.  I can't remember what song I was listening to, but I kept thinking there was noise coming out of the speakers of my computer, when I knew there shouldn't be.  I actually had to take off the headphone to see.  It was the S Logic playing mind games with me. 
 
I think these headphones might be better suited for a more casual music.  The bass doesn't seem to be able to keep up with some songs.  When I listen to Boston's Peace of Mind, the bass notes tend to get sloppy.  The song has some great bass lines in it.  When I listen to a headphone like the HD251 you can pick up every single bass note with ease.  Not quite as easy with the 15G. 
 
When I listened to Grace Potter and the Nocturnals Live at the Fillmore, I had a big smile on my face.  Bass might have been a little overpowering but the rest sounded pretty solid. 
 
My biggest complaint in the sound of these is that the mids are slightly tucked behind everything else.  Not enough to really grumble over, but if you like mids that are clearly out front, these won't suit you.  There's nothing about the sound that I find great and nothing I find poor.  They are just pretty solid all the way around.
 
To steal a line from one of Joker's reviews, might have been on the Zino.  One of the 15-G's strongest points is also one of it's weakest.  They are so comfortable but have such little clamp that they would not be good at all for any type of activity.  I had them on and bent over to tie my shoe and they slid forward on my head.  And that's a bigger problem because positioning these properly is make or break for the sound.
 
I would really hope that Joker picks these up later this year or 1Q next year and adds them to his shootout.  I think they deserve a spot on the epic thread.  And they probably deserve more praise than they have gotten. 
 
PS.  If you have never been a fan of Ultrasone's because they reach out and slap you around and they tend to lean on harsh with some recordings, you might take a stab at these.  Other than the S Logic and the focus towards a bit bass heavy sound, they really are quite different from other Ultrasone's I have tried.  If you have 75 bucks to toss at some new portables, these might be worth a listen. 

 

[hondo]

Hi there!
I'm thinking about getting the Ultrasone 15G.
Apparently sound and comfort are sort of matter of personal taste.
So I'll have to see for myself if I like em in that concerns.
However, there is one thing I was wondering about.
Ultrasone offers replacement covers for some of their headphones.
But they don't offer any replacement ear covers for the 15G.
What's up with that?
Since there are some 15G users here, what's your take on it, any experience with that?
Are the covers replaceable at all, at least with some other brands' covers if not the originals?
I think someone in a german forum wrote that the covers can be replaced with Sennheiser HD 25 pads, but even if that worked, for one those are kinda expensive, and second they don't sit on the ear but are enclosing the ear.
 
Regards
Hondo

 

[ekolite]

+1