You are saying that you have habituated to the HD 650 and it’s as ‘comfortable as an old pair of shoes or jeans.’ We all do this over time, and we all notice differences with rapid swaps. Every time I get a new set of headphones my ears light up in a different fashion, and it sometimes takes me a week or a month to adapt. Sometimes I never adapt…errr Audeze LCD-2…because they just don’t work with my personal hearing and/or weight tolerance.
When you’ve habituated your body knows what songs and notes will sound like and whatever you hear will be predictable. That can’t happen with a new product, as the new product is new. When I first bought the Focal Elex (now sold), I regularly used the HD 600. The Elex sounded as if it ‘decomposed’ music into each instrument. Piano here, voice there, drum back there, etc. Volume differences sounded way too soft or too loud, and female voices sounded as if they were sung through a metal trumpet.
All of that went away after 20-30 hours of listening. I kept the Elex for a couple years but it’s treble intensity drove me away and upgraded to the Focal Clear (and then upgraded further…). BTW, I also find the much more expensive Focal Utopia to be too intense and bright. Of all Focal products, the mid-priced Clear works best for my hearing.
Headphones are highly personal. The fit and feel is personal. Hearing is personal. Preferred tone is personal. Many of us try a lot of stuff, and sometimes our opinions change over time. Sometimes not. We never know in advance.
The HD 650 was my first “real” headphone, which I happily used with a Headroom Micro DAC/amp combination for many years.
When the bug for better gear bit me later on, I got a Sundara after reading so many glowing reviews of it. It does a number of things very well, and I gave it lots of listening time, wanting to love it. I never did.
Fast forward a number of years, I have much better gear and lots more listening experience, and knowledge of what I like.
I’ve tried out both Arya and Ananda as well, and have come to the conclusion that the tuning of Hifiman is just not for me.
It’s just a case of YMMV and personal preference, and I mention all the above because the “showdown” between the 650/6xx and Sundara has no clear “winner”. They are headphones that have different qualities, and you may prefer one over the other…
Yes this is a headphone blog, but yes a number of us like and even prefer speakers. Even those of us who have spent considerable funds on either or both. If’ @Torq is watching, he seems to prefer his Linn speakers to rather high-end headphones, and Ian (Torq) has an exceedingly educated ear. Provably better than mine, he resolves a good 18 db beyond my capacity.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say about speakers vs headphones. Maybe the speakers you’ve listened to are not either capable or nuanced enough to compare, but I assure you that mine and Torq’s and many others are. Linn, Harbeth, EgglestonWorks, Wilson Audio, Vandersteen, Magnepan, Quad (their e-stats) are ones that come to mind.
But maybe you have been listening to remixes. Those can be a bane or a godsend. If you use ROON, it’s fairly easy to select the mix you want. I’m sure others can suggest other player software that helps with the selection also. I find that the native interface of Qobuz makes it kind of hard to choose.
I might think about listening to the Miles track. I have it on vinyl from the early 70s, on CD, and a remastered CD. But I’m lazy about digging out physical media, and I usually play records through my vintage modified Rectilinear III speakers, which while good, are not in the class of the better speakers listed above.
And a final thought - about this forum. I’m pleased to see that even an unintentionally brash initial post has resulted in a rather interesting discussion, and subsequent thoughtfulness. My ears tend to agree with @generic most of the time, which by the theory of congruency means they also should be similar to @hottyson’s (even though we have tangential opinions).
Yes, thank you. I meant to add a comparison of the RAD-0 to the monitor-like sound of my EgglestonWorks or maybe a Harbeth. But given your ear prefs, have you tried the Audeze LCDi4? I enjoyed the iSine20 enough to upgrade to LCDi3, then had a moment of weakness during the last Audeze “B-Stock” sale. I really think the LCDi4 is my favorite IEM (sorta) ever. And I’m also glad that Audeze “B-Stock” are those and not Birkenstocks.
