Cosmopragma

Touch

I was focused on other hobbies for some time and I was just directed to this thread to illustrate that head-case has evolved into yet another place with a rather bad signal/noise ratio where personal experience isn't mandatory. Just like head-fi with the benefit of no ads .......... I hope these 3 pages of wasted time are an exception of the rule that unsubstantiated bla without any personal experience isn't what head-case is about. The look and feel has changed anyway since I was here last time and maybe such threads are marked now with a sign that indicates "thread contains no valuable information and certainly no first hand experience". Years ago I had bought postjack's Ed 9 but it turned out to be slightly defective so all impressions based on that specific exemplar are worthless.It wasn't that obvious without a faultless pair as reference. Ultrasone has exchanged the defective pair for a perfect one without any hassles so there's nothing to complain about the after sales service. In the end the bass heavy Ed. 9s weren't exactly my cup of tea so I had to sell them but nevertheless I think they were decent headphones if you need something closed that's (trans-)portable and quite easy to drive and don't want to stick something into your ears. When I think about it they were by far the best portable headphones I've owned so far. From my point of view this proves Ultrasone is capable of constructing decent headphones.It's just not that easy to engineer closed headphones fully competitive with open headphones. For me only the Stax SR-4070s do the trick but those are extremely bulky, heavy as stone and in no way portable. I guess I don't have to buy them for an audition. I do live quite central in the biggest german sprawl with lots of HiFi boutiques nearby.Should be no problem to test them out this way. I'd certainly prefer less expensive high-end headphones without the bling but there are probably way more rich fools than headphone afficionados willing to spend $$$$ on special headphones so I can understand the marketing decision.

That was probably before they adapted the price to the declining exchange rate. Maybe you missed it but the value of the US$ compared to the € did drop like a stone since the crisis began. The price of the earpads seems to be still the old one though.They do cost almost twice as much in Germany, and the original headpad wasn't available here at all when I asked last year.They did recommend to utilize the HD650 part instead.

It's not easy to comprehend what this hobby-Schr

Well, did anyone actually try the iPoop mod? I thought personal experience is mandatory here -- before you ridicule an idiotic modification. I'd like to try it since a similar cheap trick once did work well in transforming a L3000 from mediocre to quite good so a change of the HD800s to even better is not entirely impossible but I don't own T-shirts except two $70 boutique T-shirts ..... Oh wait, that would turn this cheap trick into a high end modification by utilizing selected boutique parts.

This is a lost case. The main target group of the music industry (at least as far as music for the masses is concerned) already grew up with overly compressed music.They are now used to it and even demand it. There's probably no way back. It's like mexican meals.Mexicans are used to it and call it "spicy", middle europeans swear loud and complain about the ruined taste quality.After having breathed fire for several minutes, naturally. Most mexicans wouldn't appreciate nouvelle cuisine because of the perceived lack of spice, and the average kid perceives prewar music as lame.

That's true, due to lacking distribution channels (except Grado) american amps engineered and sold by small businesses are quite rare in Europe.Also you can't buy them used from american headcasers or headfiers in order to keep the losses low in case of dislike due to the weird american voltage, and due to lacking service the resale value in Europe is quite questionable. I'm into headphones audio for almost ten years now and I've auditioned almost any headphones of past and present but although I have attended some huge meets and lots of mini meets and I've owned ~ 15 amps myself I can easily count the american amps I had the chance to audition. A lowly Singlepower, a somewhat pimped HeadRoom desktop amp, Headamp GS-1, GS-X and a KGSS , and a CMoy class amp called Grado RA-1, overprized to an extent - it's bordering on ripoff.The latter is by far the best selling american headphone amp in Europe and when a buyer later on realizes what he got for his hard earned it doesn't help to improve the image of american engineering. That's it if memory doesn't fail me. On top of the immanent hassles and risks of self importing some of those american small businesses do have a bad reputation for lacking responsiveness and even hazardous bad engineering/ built quality (Singlepower everyone?) to the point of speculations this side of the pond whether it might be just a case of a different culture. Personally I don't believe that americans are used to crappy engineering/craftmansship and beeing lied at again and again or no response for months, but nevertheless it puzzles me that american fanboys did aggressively defend e.g. Xin or even worse Singlepower for years and years. Could you imagine Meier Audio (Corda) or Lehmann Audio (BCL/Rhinelander) or Mr. Brocksieper (Earmax) or Audiovalves (RKV) or SPL (Phonitor/Auditor) or Beyerdynamic just to name a few internationally known german manufacturers of headphone amps to deliver a year after they had charged your CC or ignore you in case of a necessary repair or flat out lie at customers regularly?Not in your worst nightmare ..... They would be out of business within six months in central Europe, that's for sure. Most american manufacturers are surely competent engineers and honest businessmen, but the few black sheep have tainted the reputation as a whole.Justified or not it does make it less likely that europeans take the risks of importing american gear. Europe has as much or even more manufacturers of headphone amps as America, but despite of globalization the two huge markets are still divided because almost all manufacturers are small businesses without the capital/experience for international distribution on their own, and long term contracts with local distributors you don't know much about often don't work out as hoped for. Look for instance at the disaster regarding the american and german Stax distributors. Extreme mark up and lousy service.Nobody is happy with the situation but Stax is tied to them for many years. Well, I remember my long gone Stax SRX-Mk IIIs as sounding somewhat clinical but the 4070s certainly aren't.Soundwise my favorite Stax but unfortunately heavy as stone and the heat build-up in summertime - pfffhhhh. Your original impression post about your HD800 experience seemed to be somewhat defensive in advance. There's no need for that, and (as far as I understand this place) here even less than at head-fi. You've actually owned the headphones and auditioned them for many hours and you have any right to detest them. My verdict isn't as harsh as yours but to my ears they are certainly sounding more"analytical" than "musical" (whatever that means).An additional possible unfortunate HRTF incompatility could easily render the headphones unlistenable.That's just the way it is.

Recently I've spent about 60 listening hours with a Phonitor. I don't have much to add to Dreadheads concise and striking review. There's not much you can say about a "wire with gain" amp except that they are quite rare (in contrast to what members of team all-ss-amps-sound-the-same propagate ). The crossfeed is by far the best on the market, period. I've owned headroom and Meier crossfeed, the latter built-in and stand-alone, and I have tested several DSPs.The SPL crossfeed is the best .IMO, naturally. Nevertheless I did return the amp.(The amp came with a 30-days-no-questions-asked return policy). Why? There are 2 reasons. 1) The amp was primarily meant to drive the Sennheiser HD800s since most of my other cans I regularly use are electrostats. The Senns are already relatively bass weak, and everyone experienced with crossfeed knows that the crossfeed effect does psychoacoustically weaken the bass.All those switches and controls, and they forgot to add a bass boost in order to compensate for the perceived loss.The mids control didn't do the trick. Well, in my experience the Senns don't respond well to bass boost anyway so in this case the lack of bass boost doesn't make much of a difference. 2) I'm a seasoned lover of headphones audio.I'm listening through headphones several hours a day for ~ 10 years now and fortunately my brain has long adjusted to the "unnatural" separation of the stereo channels and , frankly, I dont need crossfeed except for weird hard panned stuff and the latter is mixed/mastered by idiots anyway so an inferior software based crossfeed wouldn't ruin the sound quality if there's no exceptional SQ to begin with. Any crossfeed (even the very good SPL) comes with a trade off.It does smear the finest details by nature.Some of us that are able to adjust to the strong channel separation are better off without crossfeed.At least I am. I had to realize that the Phonitor with activated crossfeed is a bad match for the Senns and without it's somewhat overqualified with all that features I rarely need, and so I decided consequently to return it. I've got the stripped down version called Auditor instead.It's the same amp without the special features, and it costs about 50% of the Phonitor. The only feature I miss is the adjustable gain.This is a relatively high gain amp, and for overly sensitive headphones it's certainly too much gain.Don't drive your IEMs with this amp or an uncontrolled move of the volume knob might turn your customs into plasma, and that's probably not good for your brain. On the other hand (and I think Dreadhead didn't mention it) the Phonitor and the Auditor either do provide serious oomph. These amps do drive the K340s without any effort, and they even drive the K1000s (my hot summer days headphones for obvious reasons) more than competently. Unfortunately my auditor does hum slightly (the Phonitor didn't) and I really hope it's defective (shit happens) and no design flaw.Through the HD800s it's hard to hear, only during very quiet passages and then faintly, but through a 30 Ohm higher sensitivity Grado it's easily audible and a noise revealer like a AT-H W5000 would hum like a swarm of hornets .That's not acceptable and I really hope the replacement amp will be flawless since I really really like it and would hate to part with it.

May I add a kind of a bonus CD (originally an EP containing 4 songs) to your list called "Voices in my Head" .These are songs that didn't make it onto "Out of Myself" "Voices in my Head" was originally a fan club CD not generally available but later on when the band had gained popularity it was sold in Poland to the public and nowadays it should be available everywhere since InsideOut has reissued it.It's now a CD with 5 studio songs and 3 songs from "Out of Myself" played live. My personal favorites are "Second Life Syndrome" and the newest "Anno Domini High Definition" so our taste does obviously differ but certainly all the CDs do provide great songs. To my ears the sound quality of all CDs isn't stellar . The early CDs seem to suffer a bit from relatively cheap means of production.The latest does sound more "expensive" but it's somewhat overproduced for my tastes. First class tube distortion, and the EQing/psychoacoustical effects/compressors etc. seem to be mostly expensive analogue gear (or digital did get much better during the last ten years), but in the end they've overdone it. Too much processing, and from my point of view prog rock definitely hasn't to take part in the loudness race. It's by far not as bad as many contemporary metal or mainstream hard rock though and at least they did manage to avoid to turn anything into a muddy screaming mess but still ...... Well, maybe in these modern times of heavily compressed sound the saying "if it's too loud you are too old" simply got a new meaning. ;-)

The LEDs on my ECD-1 are anything but bright.In fact they are almost invisible in daylight and they don't bother at night. I love it this way and I've praised the Electrocompaniet designers for their thoughtfulness but maybe the former owner has modded it.

This is quite expensive and there's a customs border in the way that will probably further add substantially to the costs ...........

41,95 Euros + 6 Euros shipping costs (4 Euros inside Germany) to adresses in The EU from H

What a drama to keep a moniker with a post count of 9. I thought half of the populace here is banned over at head-fi Anyway, I guess it's time for a new incarnation ........ Not exactly. Expecting someone on the internet to tell the truth is a weird concept anyway, milady. Getting caught at it is certainly bad for the reputation though so into the trash can with the "HardHead" screenname.

You are all wrong. The man is a genius. His client asked him to destroy JenaLab's reputation. His approach is way more successful than any direct attack could ever be. Admirable .......

Really. The Ed9 you've sold to me didn't sound as good as regular Ed9s, that's for sure. Several listeners were able to detect the difference, and head-fi member RichterDi even did have two other Ed9s at his disposal at the time of the comparative test.The other ones sounded the same, no. 357 did sound different.Even RichterDi's wife was easily able to to tell them apart, and she's not interested in the headphones hobby at all. I'm glad Ultrasone did repair no.357 for free although it is a reimported Ed9 without german warranty. I feel responsible for what I sell even when I didn't know about the flaw. In this case it was tricky since no.357 didn't sound clearly broken and without comparison there's no way to know.It happened to me before that some listeners rave about new headphones and to my ears they sound really crappy.MDR-SA5000 for instance. We don't know.The current owner SRVBlues has sent them to Ultrasone Germany.They agreed that it doesn't sound as it should and replaced the drivers.Maybe they didn't even bother to look closer since labour is extremely expensive in Germany and the drivers are dirt cheap.

Indeed. All impressions based on no.357 are invalid. In the meantime I did have the opportunity to listen to other Ed9s. Still not exactly my cup of tea but way better than no.357. We even organized a direct comparison and this way it was revealed without any doubt that no.357 is (respectively was) a dud. In the meantime no.357 has been repaired by Ultrasone (new drivers) for free. I wonder if they might be a bad batch out there.That might explain some of the extremely differing opinions about them.

I've got some flak as well for being moderately sceptical, mostly via PM. Seems you don't have to worry that much about long term durability when quite a few of these thingies are defective after a few hours of use or right out of the box. $1000 for the privilege of being a beta tester is probably not what most of the customers are looking for.I guess the FOTM craze is over.

It's no flaw, it's a feature. The HA5000 doubles as heater, that's normal.

I've tried this with my HD600s and my HD650s some time ago when I heard that driving the Senns balanced makes quite a difference. The amp was a balanced 2x60W C.E.C. Amp3300. When I reported the results of my listening tests at a german forum mostly populated by hardcore sceptics (the "all digital sources and all decent amps sound the same" crowd).Everyone tried to convince me that I'm fooling myself since there is no technical reason for the major changes I was hearing. It was amusing.I'm sort of a sceptic myself and the difference wasn't subtle, but theory told them I'm wrong and they are right and when I insisted on what I heard my reputation was seriously damaged. In the end it was not practicable though.The loudspeaker amp did have too much gain for the headphones.I had to be very careful with the volume knob and the pot behaved quite crappy between 07:30 and 08:30. Balanced operation made a significant difference, but at least my speaker amp didn't turn the Senns into a giant killer.Better, yes, but still not in the same league as my Stax SR-007s.

I've owned no. 357 we were talking about here for a few weeks.I'm quite confident in my ability to recognize a major difference, and it would have to be major to justify the price tag.

Most probably not but next week I'll know for sure.We'll have a local mini meet and the main purpose is to compare some expensive bass heavy headphones, especially the Ed.9, the L3000 and the Stax Omega II.This way I'll have the opportunity to audition another pair.

who sold to SRVBlues ........ Ultrasone Edition 9 -- Around the world in 80 days ............

I've just dumped the Edition 9 I had recently purchased from postjack. This was the hardest headphone sale so far. The european Ultrasonistas do certainly crave for the Editions, but they don't have the money.I've spent quite a few hours answering questions via PM mostly asked by potential buyers from Australia and South Korea. In the end a fellow German did buy them.He has got them today and his first impression is that these thingies do even sound worse than the headband looks and feels. I guess No. 357 will soon be on the market again ......

I'm familar with the amp since I did have one on loan for two months this summer.I do like it with most low Z cans I've tried so far.ATs naturally, but also Grados, Denons and the Sony CD3000s. Suck with HD 650s though so I originally thought it's generally a mismatch to high Z cans but to my own surprise it did drive the monstrous high Z low sensitivity cans AKG K340s quite well.It was a brief test and I have to try it again more critically but I remember having been totally flabbergasted. It doesn't have the power to drive my K1000s though.

I'm joining team AT again. No headphones though this time. A HA2002. It's my favorite SS amp and totally underrated IMO. The look does certainly add to the appeal Everyone that doesn't agree is unexperienced, has no clue and is blessed with bad taste. The former owner is located in the US, and I really hope it will make it in one piece across the pond.