Ouch, those look like even bigger “treble eaters” than my simple flat leather ones. Looking at those, I’m not ready to bet you’ve ever heard the maximum treble detail these are capable of.
On mine I may have made things a bit worse for treble energy by lining their inner wall with cable-organizer fabric tape, but I wanted to get rid of what seemed to be comb filtering in the first listening test after they arrived. I assumed the “flat empty walls” were doing the same thing they do for speaker sound in listening rooms, but now that so much ‘air’ is gone I’m no longer sure if I want to keep using them this way. I’ll either look for something wrinkled(?) to reproduce the original surface of the 950-style pads (which was what I got with my 95X from the eBay guy for whatever reason), or I’ll have to up the budget yet again *sigh* and buy some other thinner wrinkly pair that imitates the originals as closely as possible.
Same, most of the time, except when they warm up just right or just enough (still investigating what that means) - then they suddenly have punch and can put an ear-to-ear smile on my face.
Maybe but the stock 95X pads are velour so quite the opposite vs stock. I’d be interested in trying something closer to the 950 stock pads if you find it though.
Got the magic again today. So based on their behavior for the last month or so, they seem to need 10+ hours of cumulative playback since the last plug-in, before they get surprisingly realistic/holographic and develop satisfying punch (within expectations for an open-back).
One other thing I need to check - the latest couple of warm-up sessions have been at the highest volume I’ve ever used (I’d never turn them up this loud while wearing them, i.e. something like 60% digital volume and 60-ish% on the energizer knob). I’ll unpower them for a few days, then in the next power cycle I’ll have to try the first 2-3 hours of warm-up at this high volume and see if I can skip ahead straight to the ‘magic’ performance.
Wrt. EQ, I still haven’t developed a personalized “Griesinger tuning” but I found I get better treble with Crinacle’s 95X correction from Neutron Player’s “Frequency Response Correction” options. Was using Oratory’s before, but with the new pads Crinacle’s sounds a tad better to me.
I recently bought the new Audio-Technica ATH-S300BT.
40mm drivers, pretty good ANC and more than 60~90 hours of continuous use, inc. multipoint pairing & low latency mode, sleek design, comfortable fit, tactile & intuitive controls, perfect for daily use. (no app support tho)
$99 only - Best bang for buck 2024 imo.
Good for pop, R&B, and hip-hop music,
It would be great if someone can measure it properly.
Nope, can’t skip ahead. They do get holographic for mids/highs but their absolute best bass is not realized until about 8h of cumulative playback. They go something like this, starting at plug-in/power-on:
1h - they’re no better than the HE-400i
3h - much better dynamics and detail of mids and highs than the 400i, realistic/holographic presentation of the stage-central vocals/instruments, but none of the bass depth or punch I’ve come to expect
4.5h - bass is filling in now in terms of extension but still has no punch
7.5-8h - bass is extended and punchy now.
So with this I think I’ve settled on my “recipe” for using the ESP/95X at their best, which is to always warm them up with 8h of playback everytime I’ve had to unplug them for whatever reason (like when there’s a violent thunderstorm nearby I like to turn off everything that has a slow shutdown routine and then cut power to everything right from the fuse box).
While I do think the Hifiman HE400SE is the best deal overall - the Philips Fidelio X2HR regularly go on sale in Amazon (at least in Europe) for about $70
And for those who have never graphed them - they have a pretty good FR:
