Hi all, here's my first serious attempt at a headphone first impressions. Please be kind
Background
I feel that to make use of my subjective opinions, it's good to know what my headphone use case is.
I've now owned the M-100 for five days and feel that's long enough to write the obvious stuff out of the way. I've listened to them mainly at work in a noisy office environment and that's also my use case. My sound sources have been Mac laptops and an iPhone 4S, all un-amped. Materials have been a few FLAC albums but mostly Spotify high rates and good quality podcasts. I mainly focus on various genres of EDM or music with electronic components in general.
My past headphones are in the cheaper spectrum with various 50-150€ headphones and in-ears. Mostly they end up breaking down and then I buy new ones (four pairs of Porta-Pros and counting…). From V-Moda I've previously owned/still own a Vibe Duo in-ear, Remix Remote in-ear and Crossfade LP (first one, Nero model). As you might notice this puts my sonic taste in the dark side with emphasis in sub-bass. I do love my dubstep.
As a further reference I use my Genelec 6010a + 5040a 2.1 active desktop monitors driven by a Cambridge Audio DACMagic. While not a headphone an thus not directly comparable, I feel that gives me some experience in what stuff should sound like. Also I've seen many Head-Fiers own Genelecs so maybe that a useful comparison for some.
Design & Build (design porn ahead, NSFW!)
My M-100 Shadow with dark purple custom shields on. / iPhone 4S + Snapseed
This has been covered so well that I don't want to iterate what everyone says more that this: it's very, very solid. It feels every bit as sturdy as the original Crossfade LP and that headphone has travelled with me for quite some time now to pretty much everywhere with less than careful treatment. I notice a few improvements in materials over the old model, tho. The one I want to highlight is the very good coating on metal parts that feels nice to touch and reflects light in just the right way to feel sturdy and luxurious at the same time.
Compared to the LPs the headband is more flexible sideways. That makes it easier to listen to only with one earcup on; something I do quite a lot while working and talking to others. Very unexpected and pleasant surprise there.
Overall this looks and feels like an Apple style product with clear design intent behind everything and a very nice eye for the smallest details. Since focusing on details is also what I do for a living, here's a few defects/minor design "bugs" that I've noticed. Sorry for the unideal pictures, I don't have a macro lens and these details are tiny!
What's that glue(?) doing in my volume selector?
The first thing I noticed before even opening the M100 package was this small defect in my boom mic cable volume selector. There seems to be some grey solid stuff in my volume selection wheel and parts of it are deformed like after a hit with some sharp tool. Picture aggressively sharpened to make it easier to see. Luckily it's only visual and doesn't affect function in any way. This extra glue(?) also forces the part to turn in a weird manner like a bent bike wheel and that mainly gives a cheap feel when looking at it. The is a very big contras to the quality of the headphones itself but something I would totally expect in a generic made-in-China plastic product.
Misaligned red stitching.
The red stitching is not completely straight. Normally I wouldn't care but since everything else about the headphones is very symmetrical and perfectly curved, this feels like it breaks the pattern. Definitely not something I'd expect anyone else I know to even notice but now I have a hard time ignoring it.
Custom shields closeup, normal exposure and processing.
Custom shields closeup, under exposed and extreme mid contrast.
I really love the shields, but with a drawback. I'm very anal about details in logos and there are two minuses in how the laser engraving turned out here:
Firstly, when looking reaaaally close the outlines are not perfectly even lines, but rather a bit jagged. You can't see it in the pictures above because I couldn't focus close enough. I'd expect this to be because of how the laser has engraved thin horisontal lines and each line is ever so subtly different in length. Nobody else has pointed this out yet, even the guys who designed this logo, so it's not too obvious. Still, I'd recommend shield designs with line art instead of solid surfaces for better results.
Second, and to me the bigger drawback, is how there are two stripes around the "W" but inside the white circle in my logo. You can see this in the heavily processed (darker) image above where I emphasized luminance differences. As you can see it is not visible to my 7D in the normal version of the same pic and thus not so easy to see in real life either. Under normal conditions the stripes can be clearly seen when looking at the shields in neutral uncolored light but become almost invisible to anything but the closest inspection in normal tungsten home lighting. I would assume these stripes come from bending the shield to the right curved shape.
To many this may sound completely alien nit picking, but some people may be interested in how accurately their designs are represented on the shields. I would personally give 4 out of 5 stars on these and rate good enough for anything except the most accurate requirements.
Also I mentioned earlier in this thread that I was asked to switch my red shields to another color because of shortages. Well, I actually ended up getting two extra sets, both red and the purple ones you see here! Some logistical problem that ended up in my benefit
Very small molding imperfection highlighted in the light reflection.
Okay and finally a super small imperfection on both sides of both audio jacks. Again in this heavily processed pic you can see an uneven shape inside the light reflection. That's some uneven plastic that is very hard to see but easy to feel. Again nothing to even mention to normal people, but I always end up noticing this when handling the headphones and "feeling" the design. Breaks what are otherwise perfect shapes.
There are a few other extremely small details that I could mention as odd ones, but I can't get a decent photo of them so let's just wrap up saying that I only find more perfect industrial design and manufacturing in selected Apple and Genelec products.
Fit / Isolation / Leakage
Physically I've always had a problem with the LPs not being deep enough for my ears. The outer edge of my ear touches the driver housing and irritates pretty badly after some hours of listening. This hasn't been a critical issue for me so far because, as Val pointed out, that's when you should take a break anyway. Doesn't help in planes, tho. I can already feel the headband forming to fit my head and I'd expect them to become very comfortable soon, like the LPs did before.
Sound isolation feels very similar to LPs, so good. I can hear loud sounds as very muted and non-distracting while listening on normal volume (~6% volume on a Mac, so very easy to drive!). I can still identify if someone walks right next to me and starts talking to me, but only barely. This, to me, is excellent.
Similarly listening on volume is dead silent for others as far as leakage goes. If I crank it up to unpleasantly loud, people within a meter from me in a silent room can hear something, but not identify a song. Definitely a non-issue anywhere with any background noise.
Sound
The first thing I did with the headphones was use the share play cable to plug both the original LP and M-100 to my work MBA at the same time. Before doing this I had on purpose spent a few hours listening to some of my favorite trance podcasts (Trance Around the World) to soak up the LP sound sig. With that in my mind, switching to the M-100 directly out of the box was… very good! Immediately the same music felt much more articulating, and very bright in comparison.
At this point it's good to mention that I don't actually like bright headphones. Open cans like Sennheiser's upper range actually physically hurt my ears with their highs. It feels like thin needles piercing my head. So with this context I was actually feeling a bit worried after the first few seconds of listening. I switched away from trance and whipped up
Daft Punk – The Grid. I was immediately and positively blown away by the quality! Excellent separation in the low bass line, vocals and main synth and really good dynamics with quiet background strings being clearly audible with the strong melody in front.
I had very similar results with other movie soundtracks and songs with great mixing. Already after some minutes of listening the LPs felt very dark, confined and dull in comparison. I'm not going to even talk about the Remix Remote that has similar results comparing to the LP.
It's not all perfect, tho. As mentioned earlier, I'm a basshead by heart and spoiled by V-Moda's earlier products. I noticed that some tracks are simply not as much fun with the M-100. As an example
Skrillex – First Of The Year - Equinox sounds very sharp and bright with the M-100. For sure the mix is far from perfect and feels confined and compressed in dynamics but when listened to with the LPs, the sheer amount and pressure of bass washes your brains away. Similarly
Deadmau5 – Superliminal actually sounds kind of annoying with the M-100 and causes listening fatigue for me after only a minute or so. With the LPs I remember being completely floored by the same track because it felt like the bass line was trying to violently rape my brain and then charge money for it.
At the moment I don't have an easy access to an amp but I'm very curious to evaluate some in case they could strengthen the bass for me to enjoy those very prolific tracks.
I still want to emphasize that I'm extremely pleased with the sound of these headphones. For what they lack in my usage in EDM sub-bass, they clearly win multiple times over in other genres. I'm absolutely amazed at how good the Borderlands 2 OST sounds, specifically tracks like Hyperion and Lynchwood (no links, sorry). I had a religious moment while listening to The Dark Knight Rises OST by Hans Zimmer because of what kind of strength the M-100 can portray in sounds across the spectrum simultaneously.
Out of all things I'm the most surprised by how in the past few days I've already picked new details in songs I thought I know very well. The slow intro in
Stromae – Silence has more nuanced reverb modulation than I've previously noticed.
Infected Mushroom – Poquito Mas has similar very delicate modulation and reverbs that I now appreciate even more than before and can listen to again with fresh ears. Lighthearted Finnish jamming music like
Reino & The Rhinos – Kuivaa sun kyyneleet sounds suddenly almost twice as good because of the extremely accurate stereo imaging that previously went largely unnoticed. I could continue for a long time!
tl;dr
As the bottom line these headphones make me feel like acoustically treating our rooms to try and tune my Genelecs to have the same awesome sound. It's that good. I'm going to keep my eye on mobile friendly DACs that could have a tweakable bass boost for certain genres. The upcoming VAMP maybe?
If blue-ray movies+hardware is worth your money, then so are these for the same reason.
I haven't yet had the chance to do gaming and VOIP with the boom mic in action. I'll post some experiences if there's anything noteworthy there, but not expecting anything extra special.
Thanks Val & team for an amazing product!
