Nah, Jacob, I don't know if you just listened to them or you made some serious comparisons. I had those here on loan from an acquaintance , fed them with Gilmore Reference, Beta22, Luxman... and with none of them the poor thing stood a chance against the HD600, K701 which are cheaper. Compared to the HD800 or any Stax the difference was huge, they sounded like broken, like comparing Ultrasone to anything else. If you don't do any direct comparison and just "listen to the beautiful music" then it's acceptable, nothing is really awful, but when you A-B them with anything decent, then you realise how poor and limited is the treble and all the nasty resonances the poor thing has in the bass.