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This was my reaction, too. Lost way too much bass for my taste, and I'm not a bass head. Seemed to lose some staging in the bass end, too. Amazing how much difference pads can make. The ATH's are way more comfortable, though.
What's the physics behind such a difference?
All the headphone types ( around the ear, in ear, on ear - in exactly this order, from the lowest to the highest ) suffer from the distortion of the natural hearing to some degree , depending on the size and shape of one's ears - therefore it varies from person to person. There is an envelope ( far from linear ) within which limits should the response fall - but the tolerance gets ever larger with increasing frequency, reaching 5 to 10 dB by 20 kHz !
There are no headphones capable of reproduction without this inherent distortion. Historically, it was Jecklin Float electrostatic from Swiss' Juerg Jecklin
that got it about right for the first time in the mid 70s - creating world's first HEAD LOUDSPEAKER or EAR SPEAKER. Followed by the "next to perfect"
design of the AKG K 1000 in 1989 - also termed EAR SPEAKER. These two ( along much lesser known and next to impossible to get MB electrostatics, variation on the Jecklin theme , and a Sony dynamic driver attempt from a couple of years ago) form a very exclusive club of correctly termed EAR SPEAKERS. Stax also refers to its HEADPHONES as Ear Speakers - they want to suggest the headphones are producing the same ( or very similar )
sound as loudspeakers in a room - but no Stax product to date can be qualified into the ear speaker category.
Ear Speaker by my definition is any sound device that is worn on head and producing sound without anything touching or encircling your ears - allowing you to hear exactly the same as you would be able without the device on your head. By far, second to none, closest to this goal comes AKG K 1000.
Make a simple test. Listen to your enviroment with your ears only - than try to just slightly press the outer ears with a single finger per ear, followed by 2, 3, 4... finges - next you can place some earpads ( we in this thread will be all swimming in them in no time flat ) on your ears, etc - and listen how these modification to your natural hearing affect the sound. Got the idea ?
On ears are the most affected, simply because they press on our outer ear parts thus modifying our natural hearing the most. I will never say any headphone/earpad/tip is the best in universal terms because of all things mentioned above - only what has best results for me. It is perfectly possible that a say $20 headphone (that is at least reasonably well done) will outperform your TOTL model at a hundred times the price - simply because of the
next to perfect match between your $20 phones and your ears and slight (or not so slight ) mismatch in the TOTL case. No review or reviewer can tell you EXACTLY how any given headphone will sound to you - only gross and general observations hold true from person to person.
Even AKG K 1000 need personal equalization for proper results - imagine how gross and crude are the deviations in "anything" else in real life situations with your ears.
JVC HA-S500 suffers from all of the above - badly so ( just check the multitude of responses as measured by Tyll, confirming the descriptions of sound with slight deviations in positioning of HA-S500s on your ears ) .
But the driver has such great potential I thought opening this can of worms might lead to something useful in the end - lowering the price of admission for truly great sound within the reach of most music lovers and audiophiles alike. With the portability thrown in as a bonus. Being able to listen to a good impersonation of the best sound posible in absolute terms while on the go - priceless, and worth any effort to get there.
