I posted this in some other forum 
but I figured you guys might be interested in some impressions as well, so here it is, and if this is the first time you’re seeing it, it’s news to you!
I’m a little late to the party with impressions, but I’m ready to share! I was one of the lucky people who got one of the early batch 1 shipments, but my luck took a slight turn for the worse, as my unit had what I believe was a driver issue on the right side – like a crackle that would happen when low bass frequencies played. It sounded similar to several loudspeaker cones that I have had go bad over time, possibly a bad voice coil or some debris down inside the driver that couldn’t be removed with air duster. In any case, headphones.com handled it, and I received a replacement unit about a week ago with no charge for shipping and a spare set of the velour OG pads for the trouble. Glad that they are able to stand behind the project and provide a replacement with minimal effort. The new pair does not have the same issue. Incidentally, I’m pretty sure the red is a noticeably darker shade than the first one I had, but overall they look the same (maybe slightly more “grown up” or “premium” with the darker red, but still super quirky and fun looking overall).
This isn’t a review, as much of the testing was haphazard, and I did not take notes or listen to exactly the same tracks on different headphones for comparison. I just find the Omega’s sound fascinating, so I tried out a few different DACs and amps and a couple of pads with it and want to put the info out into the ether in case anyone is curious about some of the same things I was.
Off the bat, I really like this headphone. Writing about something like this requires a bit of focus on the idiosyncrasies and issues, so I want to be very clear from the top that my overall impression of it is strongly positive, and I can see myself using these quite a bit in the future.
The stated mission of this headphone is to make a daily driver for lovers of the HD 600 / 6XX / 650 that would add bass, maintain awesome timbre, and be light and comfortable just like those perennial favorites. I am a huge fan of the HD 600, but I really do not like the HD 6XX. I keep pulling the 6XX out and trying it whenever I get new electronics, but I just cannot get over what I hear as bloated mid bass that overwhelms the whole experience. I know plenty of people, including DMS, love the 6XX, but I consider it to be a big swing and a miss at the goals listed above. Because I know DMS loves the 6XX, I preordered the Omega with a bit of trepidation, but I was once again lured by the idea of an HD 600 with bass, and I figured headphones.com has a phenomenal return policy, so I rolled the dice.
I am happy to report that Project Omega achieves what it sets out to do, but there is no free lunch in headphones, so there are a few tradeoffs.
The bass is vastly stronger than either the HD 600 or 6XX on my head, and I hear no mid bass bloat at all. It feels very impactful, almost up to the level of the Focal Clear. It does, however, have a very odd effect on some tracks. I get a feeling with some low bass passages that I have been struggling to characterize. At first, I felt like it was similar to having a subwoofer that is out of phase or timing with loudspeakers, with almost a loss of attack or an infinitesimal delay of bass that was stealing immediacy / impact from things like kick drums. I think this first characterization only applied to a couple of tracks, and I now have a second theory / description that I think is more accurate. It feels similar to the pressure sensation I and others get when wearing certain active noise cancelling headphones, but only when certain bass frequencies hit hard. I wondered if it is related to the non-perforated pads, so I tried out a pair of ZMF Universe Suede, which are pretty perforated and have a smaller distance to the driver, but the material feels somewhat similar. It definitely took away the feeling I was getting with the bass notes, but along with it, I lost a lot of bass energy, and it borked the rest of the frequency response. I also tried out the OG velour pads that were thrown in with my replacement unit. They sacrifice a noticeable amount of treble detail and bass energy, but they also took away the issue with the pressure feeling I was having. I can see how they would be a reasonable tuning for the Omega, but would put it closer to HD 6XX territory and take away a lot of what makes it special. Ultimately, the original pads sound the best to me overall, and it seems that my ears / brain may be adjusting to this effect over time. I think the additional bass is a huge step toward addressing the issues with the HD 600 as a daily driver.
The timbre for most instruments and vocals is fantastic. I haven’t listened back to back with the HD 600, but it is definitely playing in the same league. Interestingly, I haven’t been able to identify a specific kind of sound / instrument / singer where the timbre falters. The one situation where I have noticed significant issues is on very busy, high energy recordings with very low dynamic range. One example I can point to is “Push” on the newly remastered SACD version of Matchbox 20’s Yourself or Someone Like You from Analogue Productions. I also frequently use Somebody’s Talking from Blue Planet Eyes by The Preatures as a test track, and it happens to be one of my favorite albums. In both of these tracks, some breakup was evident and the timbre became noticeably metallic. I have heard other headphones handle The Preatures without this issue. The Matchbox 20 disc is new, so I’ll have to check it out with some other headphones to see if they do a bit better, so take this impression with a grain of salt at least for that track. I still think it is a widespread issue with this headphone across multiple tracks, DACs, and amps, but it really seems specific to the most extreme busy and highly compressed passages, and I wonder if it represents some distortion. I only describe it in this much detail to try to help people understand exactly what it sounds like, but it does not detract much from the overall listening experience, and I wouldn’t consider it a major flaw as it only shows up in specific situations that are already highly prone to breakup. Still, it is a relative weakness for this headphone compared to its ~$1000 competition IMHO.
The comfort and build have been generating some snark online and in reviews, but after an initial knee-jerk reaction of shock to how light the Omega is and how mobile the ear cups are, I am an enormous fan of the build and comfort. It is absolutely stunning how light these are when picking them up. They are actually very slightly heavier than the HD 600, but the mismatch between how heavy they look like they would be and how heavy they actually are stopped me in my tracks the first several times I put them on. They feel very solid and strong for a product of this weight, and they are highly adjustable. I have the huge head syndrome, and they are totally comfortable at the maximum extension of the adjustment rods. For reference, I wear the Focal Clear and Celeste at one notch short of max on both sides, so it’s very similar. It’s also nice to have plenty of room for the ears due to the deep pads, as my ear touching the driver is one of the main reasons I no longer own the Audeze LCD-X. They also feel less clampy to me than the HD 600, which I think is a big plus, as that’s one of my most notable complaints about the HD 600.
One other sound quality advantage that I was not expecting or really even looking for was sound stage. I struggle to perceive front to back depth in sound stage to any great degree, and these are no exception – they are as good as any I have heard at doing this, but my brain just seems not to get this effect to a strong degree unless I’m listening to binaural recordings. The Omega has an extremely wide soundstage to me, and, interestingly, listening to it with the Denafrips Ares 12th + Iris 12th on the Woo Audio WA22, it did seem to have some depth, and oddly some sounds seemed to come from slightly behind my head. Not sure what to make of that, but even with non-perforated pads, I would say that these sound extremely open and spacious. My wife also tells me that sound leaking is lower than some of my other open-backs, but they definitely have some. They aren’t expected to isolate, and they don’t to any appreciable degree. Also, I found them extremely compelling for gaming. I’m not sure if they would be useful for competitive gaming, but I recently finished Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut, and these sounded phenomenal with natural timbre and excellent cinematic quality of the music. Overall, just for convenience and because they also sound wonderful, I don’t think these will replace the Audeze Maxwell as my primary gaming set, but they could if one didn’t care about wireless and a built in mic.
They definitely scale and change with different DACs and amps, and I was somewhat surprised by my findings here. I have been loving the Chord Mojo 2 with all my other headphones, but with these, it sounds good, but the metallic effect on compressed / busy passages seems very pronounced, and overall I was surprised to say that it has the worst synergy of the feasible options I tried. I say feasible there because I did try it with the Woo Audio WA 2 (an OTL tube amp that I love with other headphones) with NOS Siemens drivers and Mullard rectifiers and power tubes (6080), and it sounded flat out broken. I saw the recommendation that tube amps with higher output impedance could give a bit of a sub-bass boost, but the mismatch must be too high, or maybe I’m just sensitive to the effect, but I would say it’s not usable on the WA 2. The WA 22 is another story. It sounded great with GEC 6080 power tubes, Sophia Electric rectifier, and LinLai 6SN7 (GF special edition globe) drivers. I am excited to tube roll with this headphone, as I expect it will show great variation and there may be some exciting combos to be found. For DACs, both the Ares 12th / Iris 12th combo and the Chord Qutest sounded great with the WA 22. I also briefly tried the Geshelli Dayzee with the Violectric V222, and this combo had a different coloration to it, but was also solid. All of the above were tested with Audiophile Ninja cables using 4-pin XLR where possible and 3.5 mm for the Mojo 2. Finally, the Woo Audio Tube Mini w/ base through the balanced 4.4 output w/ Null Audio Epsilon cable was a great match for this headphone – I’m not sure why, but it always surprises me how good it sounds, but the Omega is the first headphone I’ve tried it with where I would give it a clear win over the Mojo 2.
A couple of other brief comparisons with my currently owned headphones without specific side by side critical listening. Focal Clear has better handling of distortion and slightly more intense bass with no pressure sensation, but is slightly more fatiguing, notably less comfortable, and has mildly-moderately less natural timbre. The ZMF Atrium is in a different league in sound quality. There are diminishing returns the higher you go in cost in this hobby, however, I would caution that the Omega is not like getting an Atrium for less than half the price. The timbre and handling of difficult passages are better on the Atrium, bass is more impactful and better defined and there is no weird sensation as described above with it. I do like the Omega’s handling of 2.5 kHz better, and it is much lighter, so it is more conducive for popping it on and leaving it on for longer periods of time. I don’t plan on getting rid of the Atrium any time soon, but the Omega is also a great option for a big fan of the Atrium. I would not expect the Omega to compete with the Atrium for the price. I think it is best considered as a significant upgrade to the HD 600 (or 6XX if you like it) with a few quirks. I am not sure it punches above its price range, but I do think it can beat headphones costing the same or a bit more depending on one’s taste. For example, I think it’s much better out of the box than the HD 800S or the Audeze LCD-X (just on sound, not even counting weight or comfort), but I know that others will disagree, and reasonably so. We’re firmly in preference territory here (and really in this whole hobby).
With all of my little nitpicks laid out above, I think the biggest praise I can give this headphone is that it has an extremely high “just one more track” factor. Even when I was sitting down with multiple sources to compare, I didn’t want to pause to switch them out. In the short time I have had them, they have made me late on multiple occasions and have cut into my sleep, but the listening bliss is real. I think I’m finally ready to give up on the 6XX, as these seem to deliver on their promise with minimal compromise.
TL;DR the pros and cons:
Pros:
· Very pleasant treble presentation – present and clear without harshness
· Strong bass (with roll-off that is expected for dynamic drivers) – especially relative to the HD 600 / 6XX without mid bass bloat
· Extremely light and comfortable
· Scales with gear if you’re into trying different combos
· The “just one more track” factor is extremely high
Cons:
· Mild distortion / metallic timbre on very busy passages with high energy and low dynamic range
· Odd pressure sensation with passages with heavy low bass
· May not play well with very high output impedance tube amps (WA 2 sounded very bad for me, but YMMV)
· Price relative to HD 600. Still, these seem at home sitting alongside the Focal Clear and Audeze LCD-X.
Congrats to DMS on the release of this exciting headphone! I can’t wait to see what the community will do with it, and if anyone has recommendations on mods / pads for the bass issue mentioned above, please let me know!
Update for the past week since I wrote this - I did some side by side listening with the Focal Clear, and I think the Omega actually has more overall bass, but the bass is tighter and hits a little harder in the Clear, while it’s more lush in the Omega. I’m not sure if my brain or the drivers or both are burning in, but overall, I have only grown to love the Omega more, and I’m no longer really noticing anything so unusual about the bass. I have listened to more music in the past week than in a long time, which I attribute directly to the Omega. I really think it is something special!