I’m comparing these to my my old Sony WH-1000XM4 which I bought for the noise cancellation; They do sound clearer/better in the mids or just overall, I don’t have any negative to say about the sound per se. I’d like more bass though, and personally I like closed ones so I feel more isolated from the world.

But my point here is that honestly 600 dollars for this is already going into snake oil territory for me. They don’t sound that different. And the materials and construction is fucking simple, it’s plastic, foam, synthetic pads/polyester(?), very basic stuff. I could see these being sold for 30 bucks from china. And this is not a dig at these headphones specifically.

I’m very specific about image quality. Audio quality I can’t feel the same way about, it is somehow half snake oil and half legit quality differences. I think what it boils down to is people make too much of a fuss about tiny audio differences.