Got my MDR-1A's and E10K dac / amp
First impressions are difficult for music. The other day I was going on bit of a music binge on my home theatre, and even though my Onkyo TXSR707 is no musical genius, my speakers are really laid back. They dont attack highs, they never produce anything close to sibilance and my towers and sub are enclosed units (Earthquake Platinee Noiree and Paradigm Seismic 110), so they have no overhang in the lower frequencies; so these are what I am largely comparing music too.
One thing about these speakers being enclosed is that they need power, and I dont feel they are getting enough of it through my Onkyo. But its what I have to compare with.
Now my headset I just put an hour into, and I usually expect them to open up a bit as the diaprahgm or spider loosen up.
First thing I noticed is that compared to my speakers is that they are definitely more forward in the high and midrange. Its not something I am used to. I used to work in high end hifi so I have heard it before but it usually takes me some time to adjust. My speakers are laid back, they round off the sounds and produce a sound that might lack in a bit of detail by comparison to what a lot of people like, but it makes them super easy to listen to even at any volume and very smooth and clean. I played Chris Isaak - Wicken Game for some comparison. The headphones definitely have more detail, you can hear there is more going on in the track and the headphones definitely produce everything from the bottom end to the top with detail and an openness my speakers don't have. It was definitely a detailed performance, but I did find after awhile that it was a little draining to my ears. As I said, my speakers are very laid back and make no attempt to assult your ears with detail, they are detailed but no aggressively so, just very smooth sounds, so while I really appreciated the detail of the headphones I did find them a little tiring to listen to after a certain period.
Its largely something I'll likely adjust too or freeing up the drivers might settle them some more and relax them abit.
I played a lot of different stuff, some Metallica, Till Lindemann, Slipknot, Adele, Lorde; and I definitely enjoyed listening to all of them more on the headphones than the speakers. My speakers being laid back makes them, to my ears anyway, exceptional but really only in a small window of genres and sounds. If the music is relaxed with deep lows and mellow highs they just reproduce the sounds in such a clean, easy to listen to way, but they just dont quite push the mid range as openly and that can push the mid range back behind the smooth highs and deep bass. I don't know how much of that is the speaker and how much is the amplifier because like I mentioned they need power and I have had them hooked up to a proper 100watt per channel Rotel power amp before and that really brought the full range out, but I am finding on my setup that the MDR-1As are a far more consistent performer across a number of genres with great sound through out where my speakers have that narrow range where I am so incredibly impressed with in some musical genres and then left wondering where the magic went with some others.
So I went to something I know my speakers can dominate; Katy Perry ft Kanye West - ET. i tend to find this a fairly 'big' sounding song in the lower ranges. Essentially Katy Perrys vocals over a very deep bass track. On the headphones, I found that the headphones can definitely produce some very reasonable bass, to the point I could 'feel' the headphones shaking on my head yet they never hit distortion anywhere. It was quite impressive for what I expected,moarticularly as I expected the bass to perhaps get a little boomy, but to their credit they held their own. They couldn't match my speaker and sub though. This is a song that will shake the ever living shit out of my room easily with its bass. The speakers and sub are simply able to perform this with really tight deep bass; it never sounds muddy or boomy, but you can just feel the low frequencies dominating the room, particularly where the alien crafts propulsion system in the video passes off into the distance, you can feel the rumble of the low frequencies as it disappears. Impressive bass for the headphones, but this is the sort of thing my home theatre really kills it at.
So as far as music goes, I found it interesting. There are definitely certain types of music I still prefer from my big system; acoustics with male voices for their smooth, relaxing performances that don't ever get fatiguing, jazz with smoky female voices where the speakers and sub again round out any aggressive details but produce rich deep bass, deep house (obvious silky smooth tight bass reasons) and some very bass heavy pop songs; but otherwise anything outside of that the headphones are going to be the goto as they are simply the more well rounded performer.
Gaming - I've been lazy lately and just using my shitty old logitechs a lot, needless to say, these piss all over them. More detail, far more exciting, distinct, positional and able to produce a level of bass that is more powerful. Not quite on the same level as my home theatre system. If I were to want fire up a movie or a game and get that big impact, the speakers are still where its at, but the headphones, similar to the music, produce more detail but in a way that I don't dont quite as comfortable.
All in all, super happy to have a set of headphones where I can actually enjoy my PC audio in a way that is actually exciting as opposed to just 'there' for when I am too lazy to play games over my home theatre and a more well rounded music experience.
Oh I forgot to mention on build quality of the headphones. Super solid and so much nicer than a lot of the other headphones I have picked up and had a play of. The sliders to pull the cups down are metal (usually what breaks on a lot of headphones in my experience) and the cups of the headphone I am pretty sure are also metal, what plastic is used it very solid and feels chunky despite the headphones being really light over all. A very sleek design over all.
On comfort; barely felt like they were there. I have no idea what are are using for the cushions but seriously i didn't realise there was any substance that was both solid and that soft at the same time. They just perfectly mold themselves around your ears.
