Reading over this thread and the impressions thread on the Oppo HA-1, I came to some conclusions about the comparisons.
Once a set of phones hits about $600-800, and an amp and DAC combination hit the $1000 range, many people seem to forget the price and start comparing apples and oranges. The PM-1 is $1100 and the HA-1 is $1200 (amp and DAC on one chassis). So the pair is about $2300. That's a hefty chunk of change for many people. But others seem to forget price, for reasons I cannot fathom.
Many of the negative Head-Fi postings and some of the external reviews seem to fall into two camps. One camp treats the Oppo products as an all-out attack on the state-of-the-art, without regard for price. A second camp seems to focus on the Oppo products as not good enough to justify the higher price when going from lower-priced equipment. This is a very strange dichotomy. The positive postings seem to be far more cognizant of price.
For example, perhaps because the PM-1 is a planar, it gets compared to planars ranging from $600 (a point at which the Oppo PM-2 will compete) all the way up to almost $2000 for the LCD-3 and three times that for the Abyss. And then we see comparisons to the dynamic Senn HD800, which goes for $1500-1800, and needs a significant investment in an amp/dac to perform well; and even exotics such as the electrostatic Stax SR009, at $4100, which requires many thousands of dollars in associated electronics.
When you factor in the cost of an amp and DAC, or an all-in-one combination, the inconsistencies in the comparisons become even more pronounced, especially when many of the comparisons to the HA-1 are to front ends that range from 50% to more than 400% higher.
I just don't understand why the Oppo products are prompting such a strange reaction. Maybe it is because they're seen as a large company that is an "outsider" to the headphone community, although they're far from a huge audio company. Maybe it is because they've redefined one of the points of diminishing returns for a headphone/amp/DAC setup. Just not sure...
For me, what matters in a purchase like this is (1) how well the product lets me enjoy music, (2) the quality of the design and materials, and (3) how comfortable they are. The PM-1, like the other headphones from $600 to $4000 or more, makes compromises among those three factors (of course, all headphones do). I happen to like Oppo's balancing of these factors very much (and enough to change my avatar).
