Got a pair of HD660S2 on Amazon when they hit £370.
Initially I was underwhelmed. (Spoiler alert, these headphones are fantastic, I’m an idiot)
Bass was better than the HD6XX, imaging was very impressive, and they really brought out the micro detail of many songs. But they just sounded metallic and shrill or grainy on many tracks.They sounded like the HD6XX with cranked worse “broken” sounding treble, and better bass. Vocals sounded shittier, surprisingly bad at times. Did I get a faulty pair I thought to myself? Some songs sounded “bloomy” or honky like there was too much gain somewhere. At this point I was rating them 6.5/10. I kept changing songs and some things sounded kinda awesome but other music, even well mastered stuff just wasn’t sounding as good as it should. It sounded ever so slightly flawed. Is this what people meant by the timbre being a downgrade?
I checked settings. Apple Music wasn’t boosting or EQing. Sound enhancement was off. I’d recently got an m3 pro MacBook, so maybe the headphone amp is just a bad match? Is that really so much of a thing? I tried the one DAC I still have, creative g6. If anything it sounded worse. I tried my phone… eh, so quiet and I have to crank it so much I don’t spend much time here.
Then I returned to my MacBook Pro today, I check Apple Music settings again…oh… Streaming/download quality is on default… I guess I didn’t change this since I changed my laptop recently.
I flick it to lossless and immediately every issue I had with these headphones just melts away. They are immediately perfect.
I spend the next 3 hours re-listening to everything that sounded “broken” for the last 2 days and it was all not only fixed, it was better than I’d ever heard it.
I have never experienced or noticed such a difference between “decent” streaming quality and lossless in my life. It’s something I usually only set for piece of mind, but I’ve always assumed my ears are not critical enough to notice much of a difference. Until now, wow, these headphones are critical.