Here we are, 8 hours later.
I ordered these for
17USD~ from MP4 Nation on the 4th of January and they arrived on the 18th. Taiwan -> Finland in 14 days, not too shabby considering they sat in a mailroom here for 4 days -
frustrating! I personally found the original pads quite itchy and incapable of expelling heat, which led me to needing a break every 45 minutes or so. There are 3 main reasons I chose the HM5s over the "Bass Plus" (eBay) pads:
- HM5 were half the price of the BP ($17 vs $35)
- HM5 can be used on a wide variety of headphones, while the BP are designed to only fit the X2
- There is speculation that the BP pads are made in the same factory as the original pads
Fitting the pads to the X2 took me about 30 minutes. It's quite difficult for one person to do it as you need to hold several places around the stretchable lip while inching it on.
@cute said it best a year ago - it's
"like putting a condom on a horse". I'd like to add that the horse is bat crazy and flipping and flopping all over the place.
I think my ears aren't particularly well tuned, so I'll keep SQ comments to a minimum. I feel there's a small increase in midbass and small decrease in sub-bass. I keep thinking the bass doesn't sound quite as tight, but then listen to something like "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore and Lewis and hear some nice tight bass. Midrange and treble sound approximately the same, soundstage at least as good as it was before (Amadito Valdés' "La Fiesta de Amadito" used for testing). I think if any of the above is true, it's to a very small degree because the toe-tapping factor is still at 11.
These pads do have some obvious benefits which should be highlighted. They
hide any peeling aluminium ring issue you may suffer from, as well as making
gluegate redundant (neither of these facts is true for the BP). For me, they also feel more "over-ear" than the original pads, which I always found a tad "on-earish". I probably have huge ears, but there's somewhat more room in these. They are also considerably softer, better stitched, less itchy, and I have been wearing them for almost 4 hours without any heat issues. The few negatives that I've found so far are the obvious covering of the audio jack port and any lint they accumulate is much harder to brush off than with the originals.
Finally, I have come to realize a lot of users don't read further back than the current page/use search, and I found myself repeating the same (seemingly negative) things every day. It's my nature to try and help people, and my goal was simply for everyone to fully enjoy their headphones. So, having said that, I will try to be more positive moving forwards.
The X2 can be a fine headphone, and it's about time I start enjoying mine.
The last photo features a very complicated (stuff-it-in) "foam mod" which I did to stop my ear touching the driver cover (this also happened with the originals). It was done after my mini-review above.
Tagged for interest:
@limyueshing and super X2 modder
@ThurstonX 
