There are those who are “purists” and deviating from how the headphone was tuned by the manufacturer is going against the point of listening to the headphone they created. That said, I’m not one that finds the harman tuning cater to my preference so I adjust my EQ differently than what Auto EQ has recommended. However, AutoEQ does have the baseline starting point that I work with when using EQ.

What I have narrowed it down to, essentially, is the HE1000SE, Focal Clear MG, Arya Stealth Magnet… If I purchase one of these, will I ever be truly satisfied with just the one pair? Or will I long for an experience that other pair’s of headphones have to offer?

None in this sub can probably tell since every person is different with their preferences. You can be the type of person that would already close the book in your headphone journey after one big purchase, or you could be wanting to explore all the different sounds offered by the different headphone companies. If you have the option to visit a headphone store which has some of those headphones available to demo, you can give those a try and see which you’d like best.

On a personal note, out of all the above you mentioned, I really only tried the Focal Clear and they’re perfectly fine headphones for all types of genre, although they have a slightly sizzling treble for certain tracks, you can do some mods or EQ them out.

It’s my end game if paired with EQ and an iFi with good XBass Boost. Stock tone though, far from end game.

So I should buy…

A new personal room at best, a closed-back headphone at worst

The bass is very pillowy and weird, and it’s just not clear. The treble and mids sound fine. I’ve narrowed it down to 2 possible reasons.

That sounds about similar to my experience with using the HD650 at least. However, I found the treble more subdued (probably cause the ones I got had already well used pads and aren’t close to new). Bass doesn’t have a lot of excursion and doesn’t go below I believe 75 Hz or something lower if my memory serves me right. These aren’t really known for having great bass impact and quality, especially if you’re listening to a lot of modern music that uses a lot of synthesized bass sounds.

Either I got a bad unit (I have yet to hear another unit, so it’s highly likely that it’s not), or my source is the issue

Kinda doubt you’d get a bad unit. It’s just the tuning is what you’re not used to. I haven’t tried the two headphones you mentioned, but it just seems based on your experience that you’re well used to a sound signature that has better bass extension and the HD650/6XX just doesn’t have that.

If you wanted better bass quality, you could probably try the other offerings such as the Focal line up or even Beyerdynamic (but would suggest EQ’ing out the treble region that is prominent).

I recall Resolve from headphones.com making a post about the differences in frequency response between the different pads applied to the old Focal Clear, but can’t say if the measurements would return the same with the Clear MG.

Leather pads to my knowledge would be elevating certain treble and bass frequencies, so it likely won’t sound similar to the stock pads they currently have.

TIL that the Sony MDR-V6 can also be endgame