Most reviews say the closed backs are garbage even with EQ. What music are you testing them with?

Yes and no. Most people don't and won't EQ even if it's free sound quality and easy to start with presets. The tuning often explains like 90% of the sound and many cheaper headphones and IEMs can EQ'd to be very competitive with something good 10 x the price. Soundstage and macrodynamics are mostly separate from tuning, but detail, separation etc are usually highly correlated with the tuning.

DT770 sound clearly better than most cheap consumer headphones, but their strengths are price, usability for many things, durability and a far perhaps tenth sound quality with the stock tuning. With EQ like Oratory1990's preset the jump up quite a few steps and pretty decent. The cup design causes issues that EQ can't remedy, but they're fine. HD280 Pro and K 371 are far better in many ways.

No worries. I'll order an L70 or SA-1 today ;)

FUCK! Guess who just blew his 789 moments after making the comment. I accidently peaked the PC volume so the amp turned off and now I can only barely hear the music with max output on a sensitive headphone. The headphones are fine so I'm surprised the amp would die. Need to look into if it can be fixed. I repeat, FUCK!

Mine's been good since release. Any particular source of static in that space? I have a friend who fried quite a few things due to a carpet.

For me at least it's the opposite. The less I listen the more down I feel.

Those are price categories and not quality ones to begin with and they are not well defined. I'd say <200, 200-700, 700< and maybe some silly summit-fi on top. It makes sense to use them since usually people are coming with a budget in mind and even if in general price doesn't correlate with sound quality it is still true that the good options at a price level are most better than the good options in a lower level. There arr just so many bad ones in all price ranges that the correlation is broken.

Hifiman does have some issues, but tens of thousands have used their stuff for years without any issue as well. I have 5 Hifimans now snd had two more before and no problems whatsoever.

If these beat the Mobius then I'm getting one.

I know there are grainy garbage headphones like the MDR-7506, but when a decent one or an IEM is well EQ'd it can be a ridiculous improvement. Like say EarFun Free Pro 2 with Oluv's firmware EQ vs a Dusk doesn't show me anything more really. That said an LCD-5 impresses the hell out of me compared to the LCD-X's etc that I'm more used to. I don't think it's just about tuning, but when distortion etc are below audible levels then EQ can take you 99% there I'd say.

That said your ears are useless for EQ of that caliber so practically doesn't help much past a measured preset.

https://open.spotify.com/track/3hrIaFk5GErZFhn97EoAAm?si=AUwqsu0OQhCCqq5oAMv7Dw&utm_source=copy-link

6XX is a Drop product so no one else will have it. They're also getting these deals to push US sales and some of their versions of headphones by EU manufacturers can't even be shipped to Europe by Drop. Tricky business, literally.

HD600 is more neutral and don't have the added warmth and fullness of the HD6XX. Very similar though, but still splits people a lot. I highly suggest trying EQ (Oratory1990's preset) as, imo, that makes them so much better that it's ridiculous.

I can't find any information about the company. They've gathered apparently over 2,5M$ with a goal of $20 000 (on Kickstarter) and had some extremely sketchy clips with musicians and producers. It seems that Grell is a hired consultant "on the project" as he puts it, but it seems the overall design was finished long before him. The image shows graphs from Grell's video and they look rather horrific, but what else could it be besides basic measurements? Grell Audio TWS 1 were nothing special so is this just an industry legend trying to cash out with his name? How big a part did Grell have in the creation of the legendary Sennheisers or could it be he's got much less to offer outside the company (I'm not very familiar with his career)? Are there any good reasons to have two (small) bass-mid drivers and two mid-high drivers if it's a two-way system?

I'd love to be optimistic about these since closed back metal headphones are exactly what I'm looking for at the moment, but I suspect they're going to be garbage.

Here's Grell's video about them: https://youtu.be/VK17xvT-nwE

This is why I buy everything I care about on CD or at least try to find FLAC to download. I've seen some of my favourite albums being removed from Spotify during the last two years and I expect in a decade my playlists will show mainly gray. A lot wasn't available ever.

This could really be the future. EQ allows for much easier design and avoiding compromises. This said, then they need to start offering different targets for people to choose from.

A used LCD-2 Closed plugged into anything pretty much if that's an option. Otherwise Sundara with whatever amp/DAC that has the juice to do EQ.

Okay. I wonder if that's changed over time or something.

I doubt it's as bad as that. I know almost a dozen people who have them and no one has had any issue.

I can compare the two a bit later. Would you use EQ with XS and what do you like about the mids that's less good with something else? What song would be a good example of that?

>cum

With EQ I much prefer the HD280 Pro.

You just need to have better takes on Tidal, peoples headphone choices etc ;)

No worries, I didn't take it as such. Just realized that it is something worth mentioning. In general I don't mention comfort and build much since I have no idea what is the Harman target equivalent for comfort and very rarely do I have any issues worth mentioning anyway so I'm stuck in an extremely subjective point of view.

Well I'll go check when I get the chance. Headphones.com review compares the Stealth to V2 saying:

"Now, if the Arya Stealth pulls the short end of the stick here for any reason, it would be for its perception of ‘slam’ and ‘texture’ characteristics. Bass transients on the Arya Stealth are articulated somewhat...softly even with the aid of DSP from the iFi Micro Black Label’s XBass switch. Take for example the typically heavy, impactful drum machines of Apink's "My oh My" which are best described as sounding somewhat puffy and aloof on the Arya Stealth."

So I'm guessing my hunch is correct for my preferences at least.