Well, I finally got them today! I never received a tracking number or any email passed the "shipped" email, but I still got'em! I haven't used them long enough to say much about the sound or comfort, but here it goes.
First off, I owned a pair of turtle beach hpa2's like a year ago - I'm mentioning this because the fa-011's use the same headband and metal mesh on the back - and the fa-011's are WAY less comfortable, for me at least. The only headphones I currently own besides these are ad700's, and the fa-011's cups are also alot smaller by comparison. The top and bottom of my ears stick out a little, although this doesn't really bother me. The absolute worst part about the comfort is that they're super tight on my head. My head isn't even big in width, and these still hurt when I have them on. My ad700's barely fit me and these still hurt; these headphones are just really small. The hpa2's, although they did clamp pretty hard, the fa-011's clamp even harder somehow. I bet it's probably because the cups are wider. The pads on these are pretty firm too, which makes them even less comfortable. One thing people do with the hpa2 to help with the clamping force is to put them on your pc case or on something else of similar width. My pc case is about 7 1/2" wide, so maybe something like that. On a less relevant note, the cup is almost exactly 3" in diameter. Just thought I'd let you guys know. This method of stretching them out worked really well for the hpa2, so it should work with these. It takes a few weeks though.
I listened to a handful of songs in FLAC format through my pc which has an asus xonar d1, and I've got to say, I'm impressed. I was waiting for these to come in first before I ordered an amp, so I ordered my fiio e9 today, and it should be here by wednesday. Even without any amplification these sound much better than my ad700's in every way. The first thing I noticed was that the mids did not suck like they did with the ad700's. The vocals are not only much clearer, but they are louder and with NO sibilance. This really surprised me. I thought there would be at least some sibilance, because that's what a few people have said, but I've heard none thus far. The vocals seem too smooth on these to have much sibilance. Which is surprising because I don't even have a dedicated amp for them yet. Guitars were also worlds better with these. I'm not going to fully judge the bass, since everything I've said thus far are just my thoughts from about half an hour of use. The bass was obviously better than the ad700s right away, that's all I'll say. As for the highs, well, I guess I'm just too big of a noob to tell a difference in highs, it all sounds the same to me. I'm sorry about that. I don't just want to say something about the highs because I've talked about the other ranges. I don't really know how to listen for it.
A few last words: When I opened the box I noticed something right away, the wooden cups were REALLY dark. If I'd never seen other peoples pictures of them, I would assume that they were black. They're that dark on mine, much darker than LFF's. I can't even see the wood grains on these. Not even a hue of red on them. If I can get ahold of my friend who has a nice camera, I'll definitely take some pictures and show you guys. One more thing, that metal plate on the cup with the fischer logo fell off when I took it out of the box. I just put it back on though, no biggy.
That's all for now. I'll get back to you guys once I've put a decent amount of hours into them. Especially with an amp.
