Just looked at your sig. How in the name of all that is holy do you have so many headphones?time to have an update to my ranking (after getting 3 new sets in 2024!). my desire get new headphones is subsiding and properly won't looking to buy any new one for a while as i think i already getting too many but spent too little time in enjoying music
my preference of my current collection (purely subjective and i don't wish to put product from same brand name twice in this list so some are skipped even I might actually like them better then the other in the list e.g. he1000se) are:
- Susvara - still no doubt the best. beautifully musical and could handle most music genres wonderfully and never sounds offensive.
- ATH-L5000 - really great, luxurious leather cladded outlook, fun tunning, hard hitting and tunned for ACG music and female vocal i loved! and it's very easy to drive to adequate listening volume (something SUS and 1266 notoriously known for on the opposite side)
- Abyss 1266 phi tc - great fun, second to none bass, spacious sound, probably the most sturdy built of all, just the wearing comfort is the worst possible. it's a torture to wear this. even extending to the max, there's still not enough width to accommodate my big head. i can't help but downgrading it.
- T+A solitaire P-SE - surprisingly good and enjoyable. very much an improved version of HD800s except the soundstage is substantially reduced but still enjoyable. very well built, comfortable to wear and a very hard to fault choice.
- Victor HA-WM90b - fun, very good bass and warm tuning also well suited for pop music. the leather storage case and 100yrs water submerged wooden cup are both very well made.
- Austrian Audio Composer - new toys syndrome. sounds really fun and exceptionally easy to drive for overears. light weight and comfortable. i bought the heddphone 2 first which was much lower priced. but i kept itching to get the composer and finally bought it too (another painful lesson not to save a few bucks for the 2nd best you like!!!). even it got dynamic driver, there's more treble and details than the heddphone 2. wearing comfort also far better.
- DCA expanses - i bought several mr. speakers/DCA headphones (expanses, stealth, ether2, aeon open, ether cx ) and this is easily their best for me and the only one i really like! everytime i listened to other headphones and switch back to the expanses, i was amazed by how clean the sound is. this is also supplemented with a tasteful boast of bass and really enjoyable.
- YH-5000SE - from the look alone, this should be on the favourite list of most people of my era! it just looks like the headphone for darth vader. very light weight and built quality is second to none. sound is good but not the best strength of these attractive headphones. i also bought utopia OG & SG as well as stellia. sound quality is comparable but just the look and construction quality of yh-5000se are far, far better!
- Pioneer SE-master1 - very well built and i got mine brand new at a heavily discounted price last year. the marketing seems hinting this is a studio monitor type thing and carried the air studio collaboration mark. i personally found it bass boasted and more of a fun tuning for the public.
- HD800s - from my own perspective, the original hd800 is the one headphone that shaped the headfi landscape into what we know now. i bought my hd580 new for less than us$100 and yet after the very successful hd600 family, sennheiser released this landmark product at us$1500 (i bought the contemporary k812 at just us$600)!!! the industrial design and built quality are second to none. despite adopting a futuristic design approach, it is still one of the best design after 14 years. except for hair yanking, there's also no complaint at all for the comfort. i wish for a bit more bass, but otherwise there's nothing i'm unhappy about the sound of this excellent product.
- ZMF Bokeh - i got the VO then VC and frankly not very impressed by both. this much lower priced little brother, however, is another story. the wooden cup still looks like from small workshop and not really impressively well made. but the tuning is much more lively and fun than both VC/VO! I prefer this to the bigger brothers despite the price depairity.
- D8000 - i bought d8kpro in silver first but got a 2nd hand d8k in black at an very attractive price afterwards. the d8k has better bass and sounds a bit more spacious. this is another headphones which the industrial design is top notch! the headphone stand also are very cleverly design. btw, i demoed the D7k too twice in tokyo. i like D7k better and might thinking to get one in the future.
- ML no. 5099 - this is really a gem! such convenience of being wireless (and also true passive mode available if you care to drive it by headphone amp) with truly decent sound quality (tuned to harman target curve - so you could guess if you'd like it). the convenience of being wireless is so great this is my daily headphones. it also got the best wireless stability/range for all wireless headphones/tws earbuds i got. it sounds noticeably better than bathys and solitaire T to me. sorry that it seems never get the attention it deserves (as most headfi products from harman recently)
- adx5000 - the effort went into package is excessive (also true for most high-end ATH cans). i think it aims squarely at hd800s but sadly it sounds less attractive to me and priced a bit higher than hd800s which makes this seemingly not a good choice to most people
- Focal Utopia SG - slightly warmer than the OG. sounds great in many metrics but not soundstage. it's good but just the price is ridiculously high for what it offers, even this set is built with high quality material. btw, many cans use carbon fibre but none was looking as good and felt as high quality as the SG's carbon yoke (still couldn't justify the asking price to me though).
I'd love to have just a couple more for giggles, but man.
I absolutely love my HE1000 Stealth, but it doesn't surprise me at all to hear people say this. I'd hate these headphones on brighter, more clinical source gear, like SABRE DACs and ChiFi amps. They walk that line for me, of being too bright, and it won't take much to push them over that edge. But on a warmer DAC and Amp, these things absolutely bask in such pairings, and become wonderfully musical, while still maintaining phenomenal levels of detail, air, and transparency.
