I feel it may be appropriate to share my musical experience and perspective here for readers of my positive initial impressions:
I’m a musician, I’ve been playing guitar for 20 years. I was very serious for a decade or so. I’ve spent countless hours around real instruments and studios. I worked at a guitar center for 5 years and was exposed to extensive formal training in that time. I’m an incredibly ambitious individual & can confidently say that my learning during that time came equally from the networking and community I met along with my day to day. I’ve spent time as a live music “Audio Engineer” but I’m close enough to truly trained engineers to not qualify myself on that spectrum.
I have been exposed, nonetheless, to countless real world experiences that inform my approach to evaluating audio that often is diametrically opposed to the narrative from the audiophile community.
One of my “tone mentors” used to tech for EVH himself, as a point of reference. I really believe that while I lack formal audio engineering training that I have had enough feedback-rich experiences and specifically contrasting feedback that I have well informed opinion of sound reproduction; From end to end, not just as a consumer. From mic selection and mic placement to rooms & pre-amp coloring, to board and mixing and how monitors affect the final mix.
IMHO, sound reproduction is a very complex and interesting topic. Ultimately, we will never be able to truly hear what(musician) sounded like in a room on a particular day. We just have whatever is left from the capture & post process. Which, anecdotally, is often like photoshop. For musicians.
I found the “audiophile community” right around when I began my journey into exploring electronic music. To my ears, much of the feedback and options is “uncalibrated.”
While I’m no Bob Katz, I feel he and I have a similar take on the LCD4/Utopia comparison. Inn my opinion, For the Ora, this matters; most of “the community” prefers the Utopia over the LCD4. At the same price. This is purely an impression from reading countless impressions and real world experiences interacting with audiophiles and comparing the two in real life, right there in-person.
My current takeaway somewhat mirrors that of Sean Olive: most headphones simply lack Sufficient bass (
https://twitter.com/seanolive/status/1223707631824424960?s=21) and that the conversation has spun out of control without real world support. It’s an echo chamber of sorts; terminology that’s developed to ascribe and prescribe performance values in a self-referential manner.
This is not to put Mr Olive on a pedistal. My Roomate is a highly accomplished musician, much more than I. We both felt the AKG N5005 didn’t live up to expectations on paper. Though we both agree that the Audeze isine series and Bose Soundsport (yes) strike closer to the truth in our ears. And we also agree that these “sound great in excess of internet expectations”
Given the above and my early experience with these headphones, it really does make me question where I fit in the audiophile spectrum... if that’s a thing.
We should also consider
@robert-Eric’s background:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/regaskell as a world class expert here. Sean Olive may be more accomplished in headphone response research but they have enough overlap to qualify as more similar to each other than the average listener. Experience or no.
This is where Josh Valour’s review comes back into the conversation. He is a very likable person and seems to be a clear thinker. My read is that his opinion of sound is largely compromised of reference experience within “the hobby” and may lack the real world experiences reflected in my narrative.
A point of clarification I’d like to make: mids are the center & soul of music. While they are not the focus in this tuning, they are far from lacking. Many popular headphones place emphasis on mids yet sacrifice low/high performance.
All of this is to point back to my current impressions: these are too bass heavy for someone who went through the traditional audiophile journey. I have a personal hypothesis that most headphone enthusiasts are seeking something more like bookshelves or towers that start rolling off significantly earlier than 20hz.
These are certainly not perfect. The best headphone sound I’ve heard is an LCD4 with Reveal. But for the price of admission and what I’m hearing acoustically out of my phone, these are mighty impressive.
