But the cups are not isolated from the drivers acoustically. At low enough frequencies, the plastic enclosure becomes irrelevant and any movement of the diaphragm would start affecting everything that is connected to the housing, including the ear cups. Also notice how the leather also protrudes slightly and into the part where the ear cups are connected to the plastic housing? That's your cue for damping the mechanical connection.
It looks pretty, but I don't think that's the only thing it does.
A good test would be to take one of Audio Technica's other headphones that have a similar structure and put leather where it matters and see if there is indeed a difference. I have tried just that with the ATH-W1000, and leather does improve its bass response appreciably. I lack the ability to make an aesthetically pleasing cover for the wood ear cups, but I wouldn't doubt that doing so would have had an even more pronounced effect since covering just the insides of the ear cups already makes so much of a difference.
But anyway, yeah, I'm interested in the Z7 as well. A 70mm driver won't need any acoustic trick to reproduce great bass, and then it's up to Sony to tune the rest of the other ranges. Knowing their previous products (CD3000, R10), I think we can expect greatness, but probably not at the level of the R10.
