Ben Gramain

I've had the A900, A1000, W1000, W2002, W5000 and more - many at the same time - and I have to admit that the above makes very little sense to me in terms of correlating what's been said so far. So are we talking about a diffuse yet reasonably extended treble in the manner of an upper-end Sennheiser, without going into the W1000's partially lean-bass-induced-perception of peaky treble?

He's telling me that the opinion of someone who has had likely thirty seconds of experience with it in a completely uncontrolled environment is authoritative enough. Sounds like a Head-Fi'er. I don't blame the guy who posted at all, but Monkey seemingly wades in because I twisted his knickers somehow. I thought you guys liked to do stuff differently here, no? Or is it business as usual, but with added 'miaow'? One of the things that tends to get really on my wick is discussing consumer-targeted wares on enthusiast boards. On the one hand, it's probably the best place to find someone who's used one and can articulate their opinions beyond 'it's got great bass'. On the other hand... well, this thread is Exhibit A.

The dorkiest I've actually gone in public beyond as a one-time lark is a pair of 010's (which, by the way, offers more usable isolation than the ES series). Hopefully that establishes my dork-tolerance level. It just pains me that there aren't that many socially acceptable phones which are decent and offer up actually usable isolation. As much as I dislike the mindless bashing on brands which aren't deemed 'audiophile', the Triports are not exactly the best sounding of closed phones to put it mildly, but it's a better compromise than many supposedly superior options.

... either the Droid, iPhone, Nokia N900 or the HTC HD2? The gear4 Blueye is the closest thing out there I've been able to find but it doesn't multipair. What I'm looking for probably doesnt exist, but I'm throwing it out there to see if anyone can recommend a way to do this. - Wired remote. i.e. connects to headset socket or dock, and allows for play/pause, track skip and track fwd/rwd functions. - Jacked Bluetooth headset. i.e. built-in mic, 3.5mm jack. - Multi-pair: The ability to pair with multiple phones (>2), stay connected as headsets and take incoming calls from any of them on a first come, first served basis. In a nutshell, I want a wired jacked remote I can take calls on ALL of my phones, which ideally works on something other than an iPhone. I'm not averse to buying another decent phone and replacing e.g. the Droid if that has the capability to support such a remote / mode of operation.

Who are you? My mom? I guess it's a matter of degree in terms of personal tolerance to dorkiness. Unless you have a tiny head and therefore don't need to extend the wide-shouldered headband, it's dorky to me.

Just stumbling along this thread but oh holy effin' jeezus this morning i accidentally opened my neighbour's trashcan by mistake prior to wheeling them out... the horror. Why doesn't she seal her trash bags, and why she rarely puts out the trash unless I do it for her is a mystery. I wasn't fully awake but that woke me up in a hurry.

Just amuses me what people read into quality when only the flavour has changed. Amazed thread is still up on front page just when I come back, but yeah - consider my interest in these waned. T1 bound now, who knows thereafter.

Either that or only a crazily flavoured system will bend them to your liking.

Thanks for your generosity in allowing me my opinion. They may look like the V6's on a webpage but I assure you that they look rather different on the head. Think of them like 7509's with head-mounted spoiler on a fairly large head.

As I said, audiowise they're great especially given the isolation at hand and comfort is decent, but they look moronic when worn. Probably caused the bigest teeth-gnashing so far: If they didn't look the way they do when worn they'd have been perfect.

The 840's are excellent for the price/performance/isolation/comfort but have to be the stupidest looking halfway portable headphone on the head out there. No way I'm walking around with one. And there are two Triports, the AE's and OE's. The AE's are definitely circumaural. The biggest problem with the obvious phone of choice in this scenario for the typical peer-driven Head-Fier, i.e. those who automatically bash 'consumer' brands now they think they're above them, the Audio-Technica ESW's (aka Beats for snobophiles who don't have a pair of MDR-V700DJ's handy to smell the coffee with) is the lack of usable isolation. Well, that and the fact that from a distance you actually look like you have two chocolate mini cakes strapped to your head. I use IEM's most of the time, but I tend to revert to the Triports during late autumn <-> early spring. Hasn't snapped or otherwise developed any issues, and apart from the closed-phone honk I think they do the job very well. And the thing is, I moved to the Triports after I'd had pretty much everything that the Head-Fi type would recommend given the task, because after consideration they do a better job of balancing comfort, isolation, acceptable mobile sound and counter-dork. It's not like I don't have the money for a step-up... I'm definitely redy for one in terms of better sound quality, but I've yet to actually find that step-up which doesn't fatally compromise one of the other requirements. I kept the HD25's around for the longest time because they were the only other viable balance (i.e. good sound, superior isolation and not massively dorky, but poor comfort), but I realised that I was hardly wearing them anymore because of the comfort issues. And after the ESW9/10 and the SRH840, I've decided to be a little more discerning and not to piss my money away buying everything new without doing more research. Well, apart from the T1 that I've just bought on impulse...<cough> @jinp6301: From my POV, opinions gained from Apple Store trials (and Meets, although lets not go there) are kind of worthless from a sound aspect, but pretty useful from a handling point of view. Any plans to go back there? If so, I'd appreciate an isolation comparison between the Triport AE's (around-ears) which are probably out for demo as well.

Not a problem in my case... and I bought my Triports over three years ago. I don't stretch them like some sort of reverse thighmaster for the arms to put them on (which is what causes snappage, in much the same way as it does on A-T's). All I want is a comfortable, lightweight circumaural portable phone which sounds decent, offers up actually usable isolation, and doesn't make you look like a dork. That hard? Apparently so. How does the B&W fare in those respects?

These have kind of drifted in and out of my sight for a few months. Still looking for a replacement for the Triports. Could these be it?

Belated RIP. Anyone read the obit on the senn website and came away with the impression the guy who wrote it was basically muttering "those British pigdogs" under his breath?

<Imagine W1000s with more treble> Holy frack. If that's for real, do not want. I was hovering over the buy button only a few hours ago. Plus that wood finish looks like something that would be lurking at the bottom of the toilet pan after a Prawn Dhansak & Chicken Tikka Massala induced case of the runs. The photo for the model I was hovering over looked a lot darker than that, more like halfway between the W1000 and the W2002. Is that colour for real?

As I said, the review is on it's way. Which is more than I can STFU.

Oh, but I'm afraid you did.

It is. The question is, have you listened to an ATH-ESW9?

Hey, how much of a jackass that you look to me right now - wading into a thread with opinions expressed that you're defending / attacking that you have no experience of yourself - is entirely up to you. A link to the review will be posted when it's up.

I guess he who laughs last, etc. Tell you what - buy yourself the much-crapped-over (by all at Head-Fi and probably here) Triport, take a comparative listen with the ESW9 and we'll see who's the jackass after the sequence and tone of posts, shall we Meanwhile, the review might actually have started. It's 2 years since I reviewed the ES7 too. Seems like yesterday.

Since when did all of you turn into easily injured petals? I'll keep it purely to the point if it makes you happy. Jeez.

"Supporting evidence"? *slips into a suit, tweaks tie, shuffles papers and stands up* It seems apparent to me that in order to prevent the dilution of threads beyond on-topic chit-chat with overlong disputes over the technical validity of a member's post, queries as to whether they are hard of thinking or a member of the ungulate family and other such distractions that I will have to be a little more specific. The posting was a result of correlating commonly voiced opinions on many headphones considered 'mid-fi' and perhaps even panned as such on audio forums, and comparing the relative capabilities of those headphones with the particular phone under discussion. The earclip comparison was, as previously indicated, intended to highlight in a far more directly comparable manner the evaluation by various parties of a good looking and a particularly average-performing phone against one where looks are not a deciding factor. However, misspelling the model number undoubtedly contributed to unnecessarily inflaming the matter at hand, the fault for that being entirely mine. Also the earclip reference, while it was initially intended to clarify the matter using - as previously indicated, directly comparable items instead of those having a slightly different purpose or utility in terms of fit type or design type - was also in hindsight a misjudgement as it may have had the opposite effect to clarification among those I judged able to understand the parallels involved. It is also possible that the naming of you and referring to your opinion may be interpreted as a claim that you specifically have fallen prey to 'hearing with your eyes'. This is not the case, and I make no such accusations. The post was essentially self contained and although it points to your evaluation, was a relative opinion given my experience of a wide range of phones in this general category, mixed with a minor degree of incredulity regarding the implied positioning of the phones on the headphone ladder, as it were. As I have stated on a number of occasions on another popular headphone forum, I do not usually make comments on a phone unless I am in possession of it, and indeed with the exception of the RP-DJ1210W - which was a fictional product intended to invoke a certain degree of jest at the nature of the parallels made in my first post on this matter in this thread - I possess, or have possessed all of the headphones which has been mentioned in relation to the occurrence of this particular minor dispute - and where relative opinions are given between two or more phones, they are usually given by having them on hand at the same time. In reference to the later post mentioning that I may elect to post a relative opinion in detail, it would seem that such an exposition is in fact an ideal way to highlight what the prospective user of the ATH-ESW9 might expect in terms of where the phone sits in terms of more generally well-known articles, be they well or poorly reviewed on headphone forums. However as I mentioned, due to time and other reasons I am notoriously bad at holding myself to a writing deadline and therefore I must decline at giving a definitive date that such a posting might appear. Until then, might I suggest that this matter be done and over with, with my apologies given as above for the errors of spelling and content judgment - both parties opinions have been presented and hopefully the approach of both parties to arrive at the content of their respective posts is now clear to most third parties, until such time as a further post as indicated above is made.

Do I have to preface every post with an exact 'level of jest' smiley? If so we'll need a lot more of'em. Has someone taken a cheesegrater to Head-case's motto? Is irony 'like iron' to you? If it's a practical reason you want, poring over a multi-page thread using a UMPC over a BGAN link takes a lot of work. That, and yeah, if I'm interested in a product I would like to go somewhere simple for it.

And on looking back, it would seem I misspelled the EW9 as ES9. Oops. Apart from that, I fail to see how it was condescending.