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Originally Posted by Faust2D /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I sold my bass heavy K340 after extensive comparisons to SR-Lambda and MB QP85. I like K340 a lot, but it has a few very annoying things about it's sound. It sounds slightly muddy and boomy in the mid bass and midrange is pushed forward. The final thing that put me off were strange echo and resonance things happening on some records. It sounded very very good with rock and electronic music. I listed to some Zappa recently and it sounded better than SR-Lambda, more involving and guitar was just incredibly rich and dynamic. The soundstage was also smallish and bass resolution was pretty bad, although it had a lot of impact. SR-Lambda somewhat sounded thin and brittle in direct comparison, but so much more resolving still.
I think I will still need a pair of headphones for rock similar to my bass heavy K340. But I need to find a pair without the resonance issues.
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My pair is bass-light, and sounds very different from what you describe. It has very slightly better detail than the SR-404, and much sharper, more precise imaging. In terms of tonal balance, it is a tad brighter overall but much more linear, without the SR-404's upper midrange peak; if anything, there is a slight lower-midrange emphasis that gives a bit more harmonic saturation to the sound. The bass is tight and punchy, but doesn't extend very deep, in fact, next to the SR-404, it is missing quite a bit of deep bass information. The treble isn't quite as extended either, but it is more linear without the SR-404's lower treble peak. It is also snappier and crisper; the cymbals sound harsher and less velvety than the SR-404, but at the same time more textured and realistic. Cymbals
should sound harsh and biting, at least on music that is properly recorded, but you should also hear the initial hit as well as the reverberation, together with any room reflections/interactions in the recording environment. This is evident on both systems, but on the SR-404 it feels insubstantial and lacking in impact; on the K340 it is harsher but more "right."
But most of all, it's the K340's midrange that wins it for me, or rather, it's the SR-404's midrange that loses it. The SR-404's midrange is peaky and uneven, the tone and tembre are unnatural and instruments are lacking body and presense. On the K340, tone and tembre are much more correct, tone color is much more saturated, and body and heft are much more present. It simply sounds more accurate and more live.
Let's put it another way: the SR-404 is like looking at a very detailed hologram; nice, but you can see that it is transparent. The K340 is like looking at the object when it is clearly and brightly lit (though not brightly lit in the sense that it desaturates colors); it is thrown into sharper relief than you would perhaps hear it live, but at the same time it is physically there and present.
Another comparison that I could make would be this: the SR-404 is like an image that is a bit out of focus; all of the detail is there but the edges are smudged, and minute detail is harder to see. The overall picture is softer, and while it still looks lifelike to some extent the last degree of realism is lost. The K340, on the other hand, snaps the picture clearly into focus, and it becomes lifelike enough that you can suspend disbelief and prentend that you're looking at the real thing, which you can't do as well with the SR-404. Also, the SR-404's tone color is clearly wrong, and is colder than it should be in real life; the K340's color is a bit oversaturated and a bit warmer, but both effects are pleasant and subtle colorations, unlike the SR-404's one, and don't detract from the realism, but add to the overall enjoyment.
As far as the soundstage goes, the SR-404 has a bigger one to be sure. However, its diffuse imaging hurts it in comparison to the K340, which manages to pack much more dimensional information into a somewhat smaller space.
Anyway, the important bit here is that different K340's don't sound alike, and I've heard one that has the tonal balance of an HD650 (while mine has a tonal balance that's more Grado-like if anything). It didn't have anywhere near the detail level of my pair, nor the treble extension, instrument separation, and imaging precision, and though many fundamental aspects of the sound were the same (it still sounded like a K340) it was a very different animal - full, bassy, overly warm, and impactful.
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Originally Posted by spritzer /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I could never live with the HEV90 in stock form. It takes a good headphone down a couple of notches just by bad engineering and parts quality. The sound is so diffused and it seemed like I was listening to a blob of sound with very few spatial cues. I believe the HEV90 has some promise in the Aristaeus form and I'm going to buy or build one and upgrade it.
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Interesting. I would have to say that spatial cues were in fact one of the biggest strengths of the system that I heard. Not only was it able to project instruments in space correctly relative to one another, but it was also able to correctly portray the size of the recording environment i.e. a concert hall. I could literally close my eyes and the illusion of being in a real concert hall was more complete than it was on any other system that I've heard before or since.
As far as the diffuse quality of the sound - that to me is a characteristic of electrostatic drivers in general, and I didn't hear an electrostatic system yet that didn't suffer from it to some degree. Stats can portray spatial cues well, and they can image well, but image crispness and specificity is not one of their strengths, at least compared to dynamics and strangely enough balanced armatures.
[Edit: I should, of course, add that I haven't heard anywhere near the scope of all the electrostatic headphones available, and if in fact there ARE stats that don't suffer from this problem, it will greatly elevate my opinion of electrostatic drivers. But, I'll believe it when I hear it (and hopefully "when", and not "if").]
