EQ is the one thing that I've found makes truly "night and day" differences on a single headphone. I'm also glad you tweaked the EQ preset to your liking.

I once compared my EQed KSC75 to my EQed SR-L700mk2, and the Koss was really good. I did not expect it to be that good vs the Stax, because the stock KSC75 is difficult for me to listen to thanks to some sort of ringing at around 5K (ringing as in I hear something similar to microphone feedback at the trailing ends of some tones in that region). That went away with EQ and resulted in a very open and capable sound from a $15 pair of earphones.

That knowledge and experience did not prevent me from buying an even more expensive headphone later, so there's probably no hope for me anyways. But yeah, EQ is great!

For a moment I thought Sony had announced a new open back headphone :( But this looks interesting too. It's a bit like a cross between a wireless KSC75 and the old Sony MDR-F1, or like a shrunken version of the MDR-F1. Like the LinkBuds, but without the issue of needing to fit inside the ear. I don't think I exercise outdoors alone enough (I usually go on walks with my wife) to really take full advantage of its intended use case, but I'm still mildly curious about it.

I often browse Reddit or Head-Fi, or just the Internet in general. Other times, I open a real-time spectrum analyzer (e.g. Voxengo SPAN) and watch the spectrum of the music I'm listening to. It's quite mesmerizing to see the lines rise and fall with the music.

For headphones, I think it's almost entirely irrelevant. Theoretically, if you're playing high-res music files and your DAC's low pass filter isn't chopping off everything above 20K in the first place, it could mean that the Sundara could reproduce some of the highest harmonics of instruments (there is cited research from Boyk showing that many instruments naturally produce harmonics above 20KHz, and sometimes up to 100 KHz), however, the level of those ultrasonic harmonics is extremely low, at most 2% on trumpets and usually under 1% of the total energy of the note being played. Thus, it's of generally no use.

If you want to see how well-extended the treble reproduction is on a headphone, the FR graph is a better representation even though the treble is where the rigs generally aren't that accurate, and treble perception will vary greatly with differences in the shape of the ear. The FR ranges provided by the manufacturer are practically worthless.

Since we're on the topic of ultrasonic perception, the ability to perceive "sound-like" sensations isn't limited to hearing. There's research from Lenhardt et al. that people can understand speech through bone conduction via an ultrasonic carrier wave. So even though all of the frequencies being sent to the person are ultrasonic, the person perceives speech, rather than high-frequency noise. Some hearing aids work like this. So we can't "hear" in the normal sense beyond 20KHz, but somehow our brains can glean data from ultrasonic frequencies. That's not relevant to headphones, at least none that are on the market, but it's an interesting tidbit of info.

If you have a receipt from an authorized dealer, they'll help you. Not sure about Drop collabs though, I think support goes through Drop on those.

Most DAC/amp differences are very subtle with most headphones. The main differences in DACs from what I've experienced are differences in the low-pass filter (and those differences become less important the higher the sample rate), and I've read about differences in DACs stemming from how they handle intersample overs in the music (which you can avoid by setting a negative digital preamp gain).

You experience is not unusual, there's like a post every week about how some person can't hear a difference in DACs that they have. Now that you have experience, you can make choices accordingly. Since you know that you don't hear any difference in DACs, you don't need to spend more money on them unless they have some feature that you want!

As someone with highly protruding ears, I agree that angled drivers can be good for comfort (though again, not a strict rule that angled is better for comfort) because they naturally make more space at the back, which means that my ears are not pressed as hard against the driver.

Maybe. I didn't notice the weird imaging on the Elex to the extent that my friend did. I also wasn't impressed with the soundstage on the Sennheiser HD800S: it was the widest I'd heard by a small margin, but the increase in frontal depth didn't match the increase in width. I thought that many Hifiman headphones have a better soundstage presentation despite having flat drivers.

One interesting example would be the Ultrasone headphones and their S-Logic system. The drivers are not only angled, but placed lower and fire upwards at the ear. For some people, this produces a much wider soundstage. But other people's ears just don't work with S-Logic, so all they hear is a screechy mess.

Not all Beyers have flat drivers. The T1 line uses an angled driver inside the ear cup. Focal, Audio Technica, Sony, and some other brands also have models with angled drivers.

From what I've heard, the difference is not as pronounced as audiophiles think it is. Yes, it changes how the sonic wavefront interacts with your ears, but that does not intrinsically produce better soundstage or imaging. I've also seen cases where an angled driver actually hurts imaging accuracy by over-focusing frontal sounds and creating a dead zone to the sides (the Stax SR-L700mk2 has this, and my friend reported the same effect on the Focal Elex).

In headphones, you rarely can say that X feature always makes B property better. Feature X can improve that property if used in conjuction with other features that also help produce that property, but you can't take any feature in isolation and make claims about a headphone's performance from that.

I generally allocate my headphones to different rooms, with that allocation occasionally changing. I find that moving headphones between rooms is too much of a hassle, so I just have different setups in each room, and choose which room I want to be in. It works both ways: if I want to listen in the living room where my wife usually is, then I'm listening to either the Hifiman R7DX or the Sennheiser HD6xx, because that's where they live, and if I want to listen to a specific headphone, then I'll go to where that headphone is. In the home office, I have my SR-L700mk2, Aeon 2 Closed, and Sundara. In my computer room, I have the Shangri-La Jr and a second R7DX.

As for picking which headphone in a room to use, it's sometimes based on practicality (like how much noise is there in the background), often it's based on preference (my SGL Jr gets the vast majority of listening time at my computer desk because I like it the best), and sometimes it's based on laziness, like sometimes I'll use my R7DX simply because I don't feel like waiting for my estat amp to warm up. And other times it's just for variety, like I want to feel a different flavor today. I don't divide up my time based on music or genre, all of my music is played on all of my headphones, and I enjoy the different flavors that each headphone imparts upon the music. As an analogy, I love eggs, and fried eggs are my favorite, but sometimes I like them poached, and occasionally I'll have them scrambled; I usually season them with salt and pepper, but sometimes I like them with soy sauce or hot sauce too.

Brent Butterworth at SoundstageSolo thought they sounded fine with good instrument separation; you can read his review to see the music he liked it with. When he measured it after writing the review, he noted that they measured really weirdly, so he said that even though he liked it a lot, it's something that the prospective buyer should try before putting down cash.

It's very curious, because I've also heard impressions that they sound muddy and dull. I briefly followed the Head-Fi thread, and the opinions there were also very polarized; people either thought it was garbage, or it was quite good.

I just noticed the 1266 laying on its side in the background. It looks ridiculous, especially with that cable hanging off of its earcup.

Anyways, I am quite interested in the X9000, though with a move mostly likely coming up in the next year, I don't want to buy anything yet to avoid the hassle of moving it. I've read that it's a tangible upgrade from what I have, but that its softer presentation isn't for everyone. It appears it's perfect for you though, so that's good news! I'll just have to find a place to demo it myself.

They're divisive. I haven't heard them myself, but some reviewers think they sound horrible, while others think they sound nice. It's a "try before you buy" case.

Oh, you're not supposed to try to get perceived flatness on a sine sweep. The brain expects certain frequency ranges to be louder, so if you get a flat sine sweep response, you're naturally going to have a really muffled and dead sound. Don't do that.

The sine sweep method can be helpful for identifying sudden peaks, but it should not be overused to try to make it sound flat the entire way.

There are several authorized retailers. Staxaudio.com is a storefront for Woo Audio. There's also Audio46, HeadAmp, and The Source AV.

That top hat is super cute!

You asked what hollow meant. I tried to provide a definition. If you didn't want this hollow sound, then yeah, you would use EQ to reduce or remove it, or get a different pair of headphones.

It usually means that there's a lack of the lower midrange while the upper midrange is boosted. This recesses the fundamental tone and emphasizes the harmonics, resulting in the sound lacking weight or body.

Try tightening your throat while speaking. You should find that your voice will be higher pitched and thinner in sound. That's a bit like having a hollow sound. It's something that is an intuitive description once you hear it, but is hard to describe otherwise.

That particular user always seems to stir up shit in every thread that has a higher-end headphone. The same breed of Reddit-informed "hardcore objectivist tough guy" persona that appears on here every few months.

You need to try them out for yourself rather than going solely off of other people's impressions, because your ears are not our ears, so our impressions will differ from yours.

I've tried them twice, and they sound very weird, but I don't think it's as bad as some people make it out to be. It's always going to sound "thin", like vocals don't have much weight or body to them. If the vocals require the lower midrange (e.g. many male vocals), it can start to sound hollow, like sound is coming from a very echo-ey chamber. The way I would put it, for male vocals, is that it makes every vocalist go up one pitch, like bass becomes baritone, baritone becomes tenor, and tenor becomes basically falsetto. It immediately sounds weird for male vocalists. I think female vocalists are less affected, especially if they already have a higher-pitched or thinner voice.

The treble can be a bit grainy and uneven, but not harsh. It's not a fatiguing sound. The bass sounded pretty good to my ears, with decent quantity and quality. And the soundstage is one of the widest I've heard, not just amongst closed-backs, but in general. But the midrange is one of the strangest I've heard, and it's a dealbreaker for a lot of people.

Definitely one to try before you buy. I'm guessing a lot of people bought it blind because it was the top model in Sennheiser's lineup and were immediately put off by the bizarre midrange and wanted to sell it. The 820 is the headphone I most want to listen to more, to fully understand its weirdness, but I don't feel like spending $1800 on weird right now.

If that rising tone suddenly gets louder and then softer again, that's a peak. In general, it's easier to hear peaks than troughs. Tuning by ear isn't going to give you extreme accuracy (and you shouldn't try to EQ everything to the same level anyways), but it can help identify big peaks or valleys in the response.

I hate that effect (IIRC it's called the occlusion effect), and thus I'm not a fan of IEMs. I would rather have earbuds (the kind that don't have a sealing tip) than IEMs if I can't wear over-ear headphones. Sure, those earbuds lack the seal and thus the bass suffers, but in headphones/earphones, comfort is king, and I'd rather live with less bass than live underwater. I've heard that foam tips rather than silicone tips lessen the effect.

I thought you got past your Stax phase?

Are you talking about those flat ribbon cables? Those are designed like that for a reason: the shape keeps the distance between the wires constant, which reduces variability in the capacitance of the cables. Capacitance is one of the variables that's important in estats (high capacitance makes it difficult for the amp to drive the high frequencies) and keeping capacitance low in the cables is more important in estats than on regular headphones.

Not all estats use those flat cables. IIRC, the DCA Voce uses a cylindrical cable that's more similar to regular headphone cables. The Hifiman estats use a thinner nylon mesh cable, though it's still roughly flat. The Warwick ones also use a round cable. I think the Audeze CRBN also doesn't use a flat ribbon cable either. It's mainly Stax that does it, but for good reason IMO. Personally, I don't like the handling of those ribbons either, but there's a valid reason for it.

And regarding voltages, most modern estats have standardized on the Stax Pro bias voltage (580V DC). Only a few estats use other voltages (Warwick and Sennheiser), and Koss uses a weird connector, but their estat is decades-old.

No, just disable SBX effects. I have Equalizer APO on my G6 without using Direct Mode, and the equalization effects work fine. I don't use any EQ options on the G6 itself.