Good, timely question, as I’ve just had a shootout between 6 pairs of headphones:
LSA HP-1
Meze Empyrean
Hifiman HE-1000 V2
Abyss Diana V2
ZMF Verite Open
Focal Utopia
The last two are dynamic, the others are planar. I have a feeling that with other amps the result might be different, but for me, the 2 dynamics just had a lot more synergy with the Quicksilver. All the headphones sounded good after break-in time, but to me the planars were all about details at the expense of blended, integrated sound - it’s easy to pick something to concentrate on, but not quite so easy to experience the music as an organic whole. Lotsa trees, but not enough forest. Whereas with the ZMF and Utopia, they were like my Harbeth speakers - plenty of detail if you want it, but presented as a big, full, integrated sound instead of that highly-detailed ‘audiophile’ sound that puts a lot of people off. Surprisingly, the Abyss came out the worst in this; it couldn’t even give me anything close to an integrated sound, though the separate sounds were awesome. And for their price, those LSA’s, made by Kennerton in Russia for Underwood Hi-fi, are very respectable sounding after about 150 hours of break-in time. Really nice mids, and bass can be pushed up via EQ, as they are lacking in that.
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