AmanGeorge

Justin - I think I"m going to head over to your place in a few hours to drop off my 404LE while I'm out of town this week, so you should get a chance to hear it sooner than you think. I think the 404LE is terrific - probably my most musical pair of headphones with much fatter and harder-hitting bass than the pair of normal-bias Lambdas I have (which I also love). I expect to have an ESP950 on hand next week as well... although I don't think I'll be able to justify keeping all these 'stats in my stable in the long term.

Heh - you shouldn't have waited until after he got his HF-2

I'm in the same boat Edit - on HF it says he sold out before 3pm ET

The guy claims I haven't been scammed - they were held up at the post office and he's sending them UPS this week. We'll see...

I hope to have both of these within a week (I have the 404LE right now, and am waiting on the 950). Hopefully I'll get a chance to lend one or both of them to mypasswordis soon as well, and he can share some thoughts.

I'll have to check out the Sigmas sometime. The Lambdas to my ear have outstanding soundstage depth, but they're not quite as wide or airy as, say, an HD800 or a K701 (or even my CD3K).

Heh, it's true - many thanks, Justin, for the conversion. The Sennheiser is on the selling block now. I'm going to miss the phenomenal soundstage, which I don't get with the Lambdas, but I'm spending so much more time with the Lambdas these days that I can't justify hanging onto the Senns. I think I'm going to see if I can get my hands on one of the last few 404LEs with some of the HD800 money.

Reminds me of the guy in the infamous Jecklin float picture... but sadder

Marketing involving a guy standing around with them + lots of talk about fine Italian leather = Geared towards the mainstream iPod crowd who don't know anything = Most likely shitty headphones

Any more thoughts before you send them on to their next owner?

I really like the DLIII, although I haven't compared it to much - just the Monica3, Devilsound, and Music Streamer+. Of those, the DLIII (mine is stock) is definitely my favorite. IIRC, Larry has/had been using a stock DLIII in one of his rigs for a while, and his rigs are much higher-end than mine. I'd be interested to see how it stacks up against one of the other well-regarded USB DACs with presumably superior technology like the Music Hall 25.2 (asynchronous) or a Gamma 2 (USB -> I2S). Fill me in on the PS Audio sketchiness

In general, I haven't been too impressed with the NOS DACs I have listened to (Monica3, which I used to own, Devilsound) relative to my PS Audio DLIII - they didn't sound as transparent, dynamic, or snappy. They sound a little artificially warm/smooth to my ears.

Listening to Brubek through my pair now (after having set them aside for a week in favor of my CD3K), and continuing to be impressed by the spatial presentation. They really put you in the room with the band.

No headphone is going to be all things to all people, and the K701's strengths and weaknesses are perfectly straightforward. The K701 does well-recorded acoustic, vocal, and instrumental or orchestral music very well (when it's well-driven, it does these things better than anything I've heard in its price class). It does not rock. Even with well-recorded rock, it doesn't sound great, and it sounds like crap with bad recordings or other things that have been really heavily produced.

I love my K701 - its presentation always draws me back. To my ears, from brief exposure at meets and at RMAF, the HD800 does sound a lot like a K701 on steroids, but I'm getting one in this week and will have a better sense after that. I think the Senns are the only in-production headphone that have (and actually better) the K701 sense of air and space. which I can really find myself getting lost in with the right music.

Love these cans. Incredibly colored midrange (maybe the most colored I've heard...) but colored in a way that is very musical depending on what you're listening to. Also reasonably aggressive and forward with a very nice and large soundstage for a closed can. The main problem with them is brightness with the wrong setup - to the extent that you can find an amp that smooths out (and maybe even rolls off) the highs, you'll be happy with them. I think that my recabled pair is more detailed (or at least more obviously detailed) than my K701.

I don't know what the Ultrasone hype is all about. One explanation I've read is that because of the driver positioning, people can actually hear them differently - I don't know how much credence to give that or whether it's just marketing bs. But I am struck by how terrible the Ed. 8 sounded to my ears relative to the praise that gets heaped on them by some.

I like the RS-2 idea. I think Ultrasones sound genuinely bad, including the Ed. 8. Odd graininess in the upper mids and highs. If you enjoyed the Grado sound, makes sense to me to buy the best version of it you can afford.

I got distracted by the multiplayer and haven't finished the single player yet. My feelings on the game are mixed... given that they didn't use a new graphics engine, the magnitude of graphics improvement between COD4 and MW2 is really impressive - the game is stunning. But the multiplayer to me is a mixed bag. I think the level design is excellent, but they have definitely made it a little more arcade-y - I can't stand dying 4 times in a row because some guy picked up an AC130 killstreak. The balance is a little off and the pace is more frenetic than in COD4.

The biggest differences to my ears between the LCD-1 and 2 from when I heard them a while back was the bass and soundstage - both were dramatically improved in the 2. It's not worth resisting... but it's saddening that the production schedule keeps getting pushed back.

Still no word on a firm release date (besides soon)?

The one thing I'm worried about is that the HE-5 seemed much more difficult to drive at RMAF - if nothing has changed since then, they probably won't survive the shootout for me - my amp wasn't totally up to the task in Denver.

Have been on the list since RMAF and anxiously waiting for the release. If I can work up the $$ and gumption, I'll pick up one of the next run of HE-5 too and keep whichever I like best. But we'll see...

Yeah. Pretty psyched.