congrats on your new mentor!
please do post the impression from the mentor + sony A pairing, I consider to trade my Legend R with mentor in coming weeks, so I'm interested in some input
cheers!
Well, it is been a while, and I finally got my Mentor.
As a new person in headfi (less than 4 years), here are some of my impressions.
I will try to be as subjective as possible, but music is a very objective thing, therefore I cannot block out what my HD800 and HE6 have already planted in my head.
First of all, Mentor is not an upgrade of my old Miracle, it just been tuned in a different way. The added drivers on both bass and treble side just made the sound more extended on both end. And the new mid driver brings the vocal much forwarded compare to the miracle. If you do not like the sound , you might even consider it a downgrade.
Personally, I like the sound. The added treble brings more details to the high end which leads to a higher sound stage in some of my classical music. The added low end really add some punch and rhyme to most of my jazz collections. The bass also extends lower than the Miracle with very tight controls. The mid range is the biggest difference. It sounds much "louder" than Miracle because it is more forward. This makes most of the vocal stands out and some may say more "emotional".
The very strange thing about those pros I have mentioned above is that they also leads to the cons I am about to mention. Because of the added treble, may pop songs I have will suffer issues with sibilance which I will never need to worry about on Miracle. So, even with a much more powerful bass, Miracle is still the "darker" and "warmer" sounding one. Although the added treble driver makes the sound stage bigger, the forwardness of the mid driver makes it less correct. Some instruments are just more "visible" than others, makes the location of them harder to ping point. Hence, even though Mentor contains a larger sound, Miracle is still more accurate in terms of imaging.
For me, Miracle is closer to my HD800 while Mentor is to HE6. It is hard to claim which phone is better without the music. To be honest, as much as I have enjoy the Miracle, Mentor is definitely used more often by me. It just makes most of my music easier to enjoy due to its more "musical" tuning. However, every once a while, I will start to miss the old fashion plain and flat sound of my Miracle.
Source used:
Ibasso DX100, Sennheiser HDVD800, Benchmark DAC1, Sony A17
Song Used:
Wild follower - Sheryl Crow
Only With you - Olivia Ong
Symphony No.9 in D minor, OP. 125 -"Choral:4 finale" - Daniel Barenboim & West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Suit for Cello Solo No.1 in G. BWV 1007 Prelude - Janos Starker
Adagio in G minor - Gary Karr
射光の丘 - Lia
Sing for the Moment - Marshall Mathers
P)
