First off, forget headphone reviews. Evvvvvery one's a studio engineer using headphones for mixing. Mixing what? Let me guess. . .rap. Never really did find a believable, qualified review for music listening. The manufacturer description was pretty basic as well, seemingly leaving an impression of that if you have to ask, these headphones are out of your league. As far as the "Pro" inclusion? So many products these days use it, including many budget products that aren't actually professional. Really confusing if previous models did not have the "Pro" association.
Biggest issue with these headphones for my use is, really sloppy bass. When running them thru the AVR, I had to turn the bass down as far as it would go (-6db) with the Denon if listening anything approaching what I consider loud. I don't get how these would be good for mixing, without accurate relative bass. Then again, I don't get mixing at all, if this is the tool it takes to figure it out. Why have a "V" shaped response? That seems so counterintuitive. I didn't exactly get that the response is V shaped. The highs didn't seem elevated to me, and I am typically sensitive to HF. Every speaker I have ever owned has typically been EQ'd to 0, or less, on anything from 4khz on up. That would tend to indicate these having an L shaped FR.
Upon further digging, supposedly the 32 Ohm and the 250 Ohm have a more similar FR. Weird. The reason I got the 80s in the first place was for not finding a detailed explanation of the actual differences, so basically I was hoping the middle ground would be kind of the average of all, and since I have multiple HPAs and sources for headphones. I really didn't want to have to do a course study on the differences of impedance effect on SQ.
These headphones have me avoiding them and second guessing whether I got some previously returned merchandise that some rap mixer or bass head has blown and sent back, and then were resold to me.
From here? Too many choices to be confident in choosing a HP that is right for me without trying a bunch of them first, and definitely not willing to risk a much higher price category based on reviews. Is this why you see people with 5 or more sets of headphones?
Sources tried: Denon AVR, Pioneer SA-8500, Starving Student HPA, Motorola phone thru Topping E30II DAC thru same, HP desktop PC, Apple iPhone stand alone and thru topping dac etc. All share same inherent bass distortion.
ETA: Am returning them for a refund. Not willing to chance an exact replacement, in the event it's part of the designed sound character of these particular headphones.
