I've had the SR1a and Jot R for a few weeks and have really struggled with them. I wanted to love them because they cost so much, even used, but the sound was exceedingly bright and bass was non-existent. Any attempts at EQing in some bass sounded great, but only at extremely low volumes. Anything that was getting close to even just a normal indoor speaking level caused horrible distortion in the lower registers. The sound stage was very claustrophobic and cluttered/congested. I was hearing far less detail than my ESP/95X. Imaging was a flat, 2D plane, and the sterile, biting brightness grew extremely fatiguing quickly. So I put them on the shelf for about 10 days while I strongly contemplated cutting my losses and selling them at a major discount to recoup some of the losses and buy something I'd like because I was clearly missing something with these.
I decided to give them one more chance today and since I've had massive success with preamping the SRM-353X with a GS-X mini for driving the ESP/95X, I figured I'd give it a shot with the SR1a, too.
I'm glad I did.
The GS-X mini preamping the Jot R combined with reading through a lot of this thread and taking the advice of some here in regards to parametric EQ settings in Roon, not using the Jot R's baffle compensation at all, as well as trying different placements and baffle angles, everything finally clicked late in the afternoon. Bass was present and surprising in quantity (though I will always want more), the biting harshness was gone and they were finally imaging realistically, though still behind the ESP/95X setup mentioned earlier.
Up to this point, my chain had been:
Roon Core (2014 MacBook Pro) -> X-SPDIF 2 AES -> Topping D90 XLR -> GS-X mini XLR -> Jotunheim R
I kid you not, that same chain but with the SRM-353X and ESP/95X is absolutely insane. Using a Harmon target PEQ profile (oratory1990) in Roon, the bass is extremely tight and slams almost as hard as the HD800. It is so holographic, detailed, and well-separated...it's truly incredible. Music is presented in such a beautiful way. I have a Metrum Onyx and it's so dull and lifeless with that stack. There is something truly special about the AK4499 and the ESP/95X. The Ether 2 sound incredible through that stack as well.
But the SR1a just wasn't impressing me with the D90. The Onyx had been relegated to living room 2-channel duties but I decided to try it out here just to see, not expecting much at all given its synergy with the ESP/95X.
Holy crap. Everything clicked and the SR1a totally came to life in a way that was so shocking in its realism and detail.
Suddenly, the music was incredibly precise, 3D/holographic, deep, wide, well-separated, and insanely detailed coming out of these earspeakers. It's an incredible synergy that the D90 just does not have with the SR1a. I'm hearing little textures on violins and violas that were previously impossible to detect and I'm noticing a lot more detail in bass synthesizers and overdriven bass guitars. Distorted guitars have this lovely bite and edge to them that sounds like it's coming straight from the amp. Lots of little backing tracks that are soft and subdued but following the main melody that were just kind of...noise...in other headphones but here are perfectly audible and suddenly give another dimension to songs already heard hundreds of times. Music legitimately seems like it's encircling my head and like some of it is inside of my head.
The sense of realism in reproduction of instruments is unlike anything I've ever heard. Dynamics are often shocking--two examples are in the track "With Teeth" by Nine Inch Nails which is a noisy song until the bridge where it gets extremely quiet until suddenly exploding into the main, noisy riff again to end the song. And I legitimately mean "explode." I got so caught up in how incredible the song was sounding I forgot that there was a major shift coming up and I jumped and my heart started racing due to how powerful the transition was.
Another example when I was just queuing up random tracks in Roon. I can't remember what I put on before it, but "Test the Limits" by The Ghost Inside came on after the previous song had faded out and had a second or two or trailing silence. The opening crack of the snare drum was like a gunshot. My ears hurt ever so slightly and I was once again so caught off guard by how loud, dynamic, and powerful the song was, my heart was racing.
I'm continually impressed with how well these handle metal and hard rock. I thought for sure they'd struggle but my music has never, ever sounded so good.
I am so glad I gave these another chance.
(edits for poor grammar, missing words, and hopefully clearing up some complex/confusing passages as well as adding a few anecdotal impressions)