In short: the treble of the hifiman edition xs is hella piercing, especially for edm track. Is this a feature of the headphones or defective?
So i just got the hifiman edition xs yesterday, and damn, it is such a surreal experience compared to the dt 770pro i had. Everything sounds way too clear - i can even listen to the bass player in a well recorded metal song. I didnt even plug it into an amp, yet the bass rumbled much lower than the dt 770 pro. It seems that edition xs is only a bit harder to drive than the dt 770 pro, so i suppose i dont need an amp. However, when it comes to high notes in edm track like a future bass song, the edition xs just sounds so harsh that i just cant stand it. Well, it doesnt really sound crackly to me, its just overly peaky. Is it a common thing for the edition xs? And the wire it provided sucks.
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Listen to it for 20 hours minimum. You need to get used to it. That’s all it is
Everything sounds way too clear - i can even listen to the bass player in a well recorded metal song.
I like to imagine that the moment you wrote this sentence, Lars Ulrich woke up in a cold sweat.
Having owned other egg-shaped Hifimen but not the XS, I agree with others that their sound signature may just not be to your taste. Your choice of amp shouldn’t affect the tuning. That said, I wouldn’t expect the XS to be peaky. It’s bright, but the treble elevation is pretty even.
If there’s still time re: return policies or such, you might give your brain time to adjust. Or you might try bringing the treble down with EQ.
Ye i can replace another one since i bought it directly at the shop. But it might be that i am too used to dt 770, so the edition xs is peaky. I think i should give myself a week to adjust to the sound signature of the edition xs
Have you tried EQ?
That’s kinda the Hifiman house sound. Try listening to it until you get used to it I guess.
Can confirm
I also had the XS for a week and instantly sold it again. The treble just was unbearable. Was the same with the Dan Clark Aeon 2 Noire for me.
…and I already am a longtime Beyerdynamic user
This is so confusing to me. Some people cant even stand the beyerdynamic treble, yet they dont seem to complain about treble of edition xs? Well, i hope my opinion would change after adjusting to the edition xs in a week somehow
The treble attack on hifiman is harsh and bright to cover the crappy mids and make them seem more detailed and analytical. To me they are just overall torture devices and unpleasant in pretty much all possible ways.
There is also a problem that planar headphones lack impact, so you want to turn up the volume to get the same impact as dynamic driver headphones at lower volumes but when you turn them up all you hear is the harsh treble because the mids are poor and overall recessed. If you EQ to tone down the treble the headphones will just sound even more lifeless and dull.
Honestly, the bass impact isnt my problem bc i prefer the bass of the edition xs than the dt 770 pro. It simply hits deeper, tho ofc there isnt as much bass as the dt 770 pro. Anyways, do you have any recommendation at around edition xs price that you think it is better?
You need to eq. The headphones are amazing with eq
Just tried eq it. And it was amazing. Since i am very used to the dt 770 pro, i just eq it to the dt 770 pro, and now it becomes a way way better dt 770 pro
Why eq it to that? You can do better than that
Well, ye i can use oratory 1990 eq, but like this hifiman edition xs seems to take eq very well. So i kinda want to try to eq into other headphones’ signatures.
True but it will most likely sound the best with ora’s eq
There is a risk that 18 ohm edition xs shows bad behavior with some amplifier outputs. If you have been using DT 770 Pro with 250 ohm impedance, there’s a good chance that the same headset amplifier, especially if it’s just some random laptop output jack, does not necessarily play as well against this much lower impedance headset. I recommend getting a low-cost amplifier like the 3.5 mm Apple usb-c headphone jack adapter which is decent amplifier with a known-good behavior, and in particular it has low output impedance, just to confirm that it still sounds the same. Sometimes, these headset jacks in laptops or computer monitors are just poor, for instance they might have some kind of DC voltage offset elimination capacitor that have too low values, or whatever, which could definitely create treble-heavy presentation if an unusually low impedance headset were plugged in them.
Compared to Harman target, Edition XS should be overall closer than 770 Pro, from what I can see. I think there are only two tonality issues: there is not enough bass to sound natural, and there’s no 1-2 kHz region boost, which are fairly common features on open-back planar headsets from what I’ve seen, whether made by Audeze or Hifiman. I think you need to engineer some kind of acoustic resonance or resistance to alter the sound, or you just get the default, and open-backs are in poor position to manipulate the sound as the technology is very simple, basically a straight wire through a thin membrane with linear movement characteristic as function of voltage and no back-pressure given by a cup. I’ve heard that Dan Clarke has some kind of complex metamaterial providing a sort of analog equalization for his open back headsets, as an example.
Finally, when looking at headset measurements, I encourage disregarding any measured performance at about 8 kHz and above. The data simply isn’t reliable, as frequencies so short are similar to the distance between headset’s cup and the artificial head, so there will be distortion in the measurements for that reason. My guess is that this is also why sometimes changing the pads help, as pad thickness might vary, and that could well change the distance between the headset and the head, and perhaps changes the resonances experienced by user.
I did get alternative cable for Edition XS. I agree that its default cable is surprisingly crappy for what is a fairly premium headset.
Give them more time
get the velour earpads from smartwatchedstore on ali express (they’re actually hybrid), trust me bruv
It is a very bright headphone. You can use this 5128 frequency response graph to help EQ.
https://ibb.co/LS4GmR9Yeah going from the dark and muddy DT770 to the bright XS is going to be a shock to the brain.
If you’re playing it from a computer, you can equalize the treble using Peace GUI
If you’re on your laptop just use PEQ and smooth out the 7.5kHz and 12kHz peaks.