Well, my HT890s arrived today, and I have some very early, first hour impressions. These listening impressions were generated by the gear seen in my sig, namely my Woo Audio WA6 tube amp and CIA VDA-2 DAC. Is plugging a $45 pair of headphones into a $620 amp silly? We'll see. My impressions are naturally going to be biased by my primary use headphone, the AKG K701 so do keep that in mind as well.
I was prepared to be disappointed by these, but they are in fact pretty nice sounding. The most obvious deficiency is a pretty pronounced lack of high frequency extension, but Panasonic almost seems to have done it at least partially on purpose. They have a clear midrange bias, right in the 500-1200hz range to my ears but it's implemented well enough that it doesn't sound too terribly unnaturally colored or nasal sounding. It definitely sounds out of place at times, depending upon the music in question, but without the top end presence the focus will naturally fall to the range below and that is what is happening here. They have better clarity than I expected for such a cheap phone, but the texture and detail to resolve instrument timbre isn't really there. Given it's price and mission I think Panasonic did a decent job in voicing these, they are smooth and non-fatiguing without sounding veiled.
One noteworthy fly in the ointment: I'm detecting a very pronounced resonance at a certain band in the upper midrange that seems to be caused a lack of enclosure damping. It turns those frequencies into a very hard edged and shouty affair and sounds quite bad. I'm only hearing it on certain types of material, often brought on by strong female vocals.
The bass is there, but I wasn't blown away by it. It does try to hit the notes themselves instead of falling back to the residual note next octave up like many cheap headphones have to do. I also don't hear much in the way of boominess or midbass bloat, again very nice for a $45 headphone. They do okay for transients and dynamics too. They're even comfortable and have very distinct ear positioning so you don't have to worry about experimenting with up/down and forward/back placement of the cups on your head to achieve the best sound.
On a final note, I'm not all that impressed by the build quality. They look great for their price, but feel a little cheesy when you hold them, and the headband is particularly so. They don't feel like they'll fall apart, but my expectations were not exceeded here at the very least. The cloth cable is kind of nice though, and doesn't transmit microphonics into the left earcup.
We shall see if these open up with some use. I certainly think they are worth the $45 I paid for them, perhaps a bit more. They are not an undiscovered treasure though, especially not with the midrange glare issue I'm hearing. I'm hoping break-in helps to tame that, otherwise their use for music listening is severely hampered by this one flaw. I can see these being great for late night movie watching though, the midrange should make dialogue very clear.
. It works fine for my purposes, and there are plenty of headphones I've used through it that don't sound dry and lifeless. Furthermore, I've tested headphones through both the Denon and the Fiio E9 I used to own, and I couldn't discern any appreciable sound quality differences (except with the noticeable hiss that's to be expected from the headphone out on a receiver). Maybe my ears aren't that good, but I'm satisfied with it. And my Boston HD5s sound gooooood from it (although that could just be the speakers themselves).
