Interestingly, this is about two different headphones that seem to have the same bass problem.
In both cases the question is what the headphones are capable of reproducing in the deep bass range.
Well, I say it depends on the recording quality.
I’ll give two examples in which both headphones reproduce the respective passages so cleanly, very deeply and grumblingly that you think you’re in the middle of a thunderstorm, with a corresponding grumbling in the stomach area.
Here from 0:28
Here from 0:08
While hip-hop, rave or dub-step recordings are often rather quickly produced and unbalanced recordings that, for whatever reason, actually no longer work properly with high-quality headphones.
I’ll give the following song as an example.
Here I’ll take the often praised Focal on board, which plays the recording hard as a hammer in the first two examples and starts clipping in the latter piece of music.
There is a good reason why I still have the following headphones in my possession, because they have the ability to wonderfully disguise such recording quality and give you back the joy of this music, right up to the desired trance.
I’ll try an analogy in the area of gastronomy. If you give a star chef lentils, potatoes and carrots, he won’t be able to make filet mignon with them, but only a usable lentil soup.
However, the street chef on the corner can most likely prepare a lentil soup dish more palatable because it is his daily business,
but with a filet mignon the street chef may lack the ability to prepare the dish to perfection.
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Unfortunately, in the modern music business it is often the case that everything is produced quickly and cheaply, especially in the pop sector, and the corresponding recordings sound miserable on high-quality systems, while they seem tolerable on the currently popular Bluetooth devices.
Dub-Step on a JBL boom box actually sounds catchier than on a high-quality B&W speaker.
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PS.:
A word about the often mentioned Hifiman Organic.
Yes it can do bass, not as clean and defined as the EmphyII and the E3, but yes it is capable of producing deep bass.
My personal problem with the Organic is:
He’s like that smart-as-nails student who always and everywhere wants to show that he can do it, even when there’s no need for it.
So I find its “intrusiveness” in the bass range of folk, jazz and blues a little excessive.
It simply overlays the subtleties of the remaining frequency range here and there.