We're dancing around the elephant in the room here -
even with the reviews and clearly world-class build quality, how many of us would seriously consider the Abyss even if the price was 50% less than it is now ?
Here we have a headphone which *might* remove the need to sit in a queue at Headamp for ~6 months but most of us would agree that it's got to be one of the nastiest looking contraptions ever devised - that headband is straight out of the 1940s but clearly the designers needed it to be some sort of Steampunk nightmare. I rarely wear headphones outside the confines of my current abode, and then only IEMs, but I just cant reconcile the cost of the Abyss with the aesthetics - if that means I've lost on a world-class product then so be it. I just dont know how tragic the HE560 would have to be to have the same dollars-to-ugliness ratio as the Abyss, but no amount of leather manbags could salvage the latter for me. Happy to hear from Abyss owners who feel I've thrown the baby out with the bathwater here.