My audio-technica ATH-A900s just came in. After listening to the Beyerdynamic DT770s and Sennheiser HD-280s, I came away with a good impression of how good quality headphones can sound. Now I come to my final resting place, the a900s. These headphones cost $120 more than the HD-280s, and the same as the DT770s, so my mentioning the HD-280s is not a direct comparison by any means.
The first thing I noticed about this headphones was their large size. The cups are circular and don't fold in to save space like the HD-280s do. The sound isolation wasn't as good as the HD-280s either. This suited me so I could actually hear things around me like people calling my name loudly, or that out of control 50mph car. When the music turns on, most of the sounds will get drowned out. The volume can also get very loud on an iPod, where my comfortable level of listening was 60 with the 280s, it was 50 with the a900s.
The cable is a 10ft long fiber beast. The 280s had a coiled cabled which was easier to use with my iPod when wearing it. However, when I had my iPod on my desk, the coiled cable had a tendency of snapping my iPod toward me if I ever moved away accidentally. With the uncoiled cable I had to loop and tie it, this worked great because I could lodge the loop behind something and hold it in place. If I pulled on it by accident, the loop took the stress instead of my iPod or connector. They were very comfortable, they just sit firmly on your head but don't press down like the senns. They can get kinda hot after a long time of wearing though, I don't mind, but you may feel uncomfortable. Also, if you are a bit concerned about looks and heat, any doubts will disappear when you put these on your head and listen to music.
There are few words I would like to mention about my break-in period. When I first listened to the headphones, the voices seemed very scratchy and and some of the guitar was weak. I let the headphones play overnight and used them at work + home for a lot of hours of use. Everything just came together over time it seems things fixed themselves
and became more detailed. Now the voices are clean and the guitar became more detailed than I have ever heard from any speaker device. The guitar came out and let me hear any nuances in the notes (more later). This review is based on the broken-in headphones.
I'll start off with my music testing material first...
Punk: Hawthorn Heights - The Silence in Black and White, Mae - Destination Beautiful, and My Chemical Romance -
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, The Used - In Love and Death
Rock: Tool - Aenima, Metallica - Master of Puppets, System of a Down - Toxicity, Lynyrd Skynyrd - Best of, 311
(Only had Love Song from 50 First Dates OST)
Dance/Trance/Techno: NYC Underground 3, Tranzworld, Prodigy - The Fat of the Land.
Somewhat Classical: Godspeed You Black Emperor (I only had Moya on my iPod, a lot of violin and string), Crouching
Tiger Hidden Dragon OST
The punk music was exactly what I was expecting from punk music. If I had to use a word to describe the music that came out, it would have to be "alive". It's like they calmed down during slower sections of music, then came back and exploded during faster more upbeat sections. But even with these explosions of sound, no type of sound ever
came out louder than the others. Unlike the 280s the sound didn't seem like it was separated in my head, the a900s seemed like they were separated in space. The bass came from everywhere (nice and present), the symbols were out front, the guitars were either left right, or somewhere in front. I loved hearing the music played like this. The
voices weren't too loud, but they seemed like they were closer than the rest of the music. The soft voice problem I had with the 280s was gone, and in its place were even more detailed voices. When someone takes a soft breath, you will hear it, when someone breaths too hard into the mic it also gets picked up. There was just so much detail
that it seemed to be different music I was listening to at times. Better than the Beyeres and Senns.
The rock music was equally, if not more enjoyable than the punk. Tool has a certain way of recording where the lyrics end up being a bit lower than the music on some songs. With the a900s I could hear the lyrics over the music and still have the same great instrumentals. Master of Puppets sounded just like the sound studio on the Senns with nicer bass. System of a Down was very detailed and didn't have the low voice problem. SOAD was even more detailed than the Senns, and with the much better bass sounded great. Lynyrd Skynyrd was amazingly lifelikethrough these cans, the bass was smaller and more real. Another good word to describe the sound is natural, things
sounded like they should in life. Finally 311 was the most interesting sound. The guitar sounded off at first glance, but when I listened to it some more, it was actually DEAD on. I could hear the guitar like a guitar actually sounds, not just one unified sound like before. Impressive to my ears.
With the Dance/Trance/Techno, the a900s again didn't disappoint. The bass was gigantic through these little headphones. The highs were high, and the voices were clear. Little things like echos sounded very real, and the bass got so low at time that I looked behind me to see if someone had walked up. Close your eyes and you feel like you are in a club at times. The weak mids I felt in Prodigy with the Senns were also a thing of the past.
When listening to music with classical instruments, you can close your eyes and feel like you are listening in an auditorium. With GSUBE, the music was so clean and real, you have to listen to believe. With CTHD, the slow violin music gets accented with slight bass and never gets out of control. It just sounded like it was in place.
Some may experience problems with the wrong music player I fear. At a friends house where he uses media player, the bass was horrendously loud and the treble was piercing. I installed foobar for him and the sound went back to normal. His 280s benefited from the loud bass he had from mplayer, but my cans were unusable. Just a word of
caution.
I also tried the headphones on my laptop. The best part was that I could tell no difference between the iPod and the HP jack of my laptop. So Portable sounds very much like static. I tried them on my Altec Lansing 2.1 system jack, and what happened was insane. It was like I put the sound of the speakers into my headphones when I plugged
them in. I actually listened close to the speaker one time to see if sound came out (it really sounded that good).If you have a portable player, it seems like you aren't going to miss out on much.
For testing movies/tv I used: The Saint, Gattaca, Garden State, The Little Mermaid (encoded), 24(recorded)The movies were simply amazing. The headphones let you hear the slightest details and even faults of the sound. In Garden State for example, you can hear the microphone turn on when there are voices.
But then you can also almost hear the conversations of people around in a cafe if you wish. The cafe will surround you with people making it feel like surround. In The Saint actions scenes, the extra bass really makes the sound more realistic.
Explosions scare you, and the low rumble of an engine sounds like it is in front of you. In The Little Mermaid, the sound was lacking some bass and definition, and the volume had to be turned up all the way to hear it. Surprisingly, I didn't have to turn up the volume on the Senns. I can attribute the low sound quality to the compressed music, but I don't know about the volume. When watching 24, the voices seemed somewhat distant at
times, but the bass was amazing. Once again, I'm not sure if it is the recording or the headphones. This can of course this be corrected with an equalizer, so not a big deal.
One final thing I did with these headphones was play some CS:Source with them. I set the sound quality to high and first tried them with a 2 speaker setting. I could hear everyone around me, and the sound of grenades could be heard muffled through walls. For the first time, I knew how people could start shooting before they saw me. Even running at full speed, I still heard someone coming from behind doors. Surprisingly, with the sound set to headphones instead of 2 speaker, things sounded worse to me. Some of the usually defined individual footsteps got blended together, and I couldn't tell exactly where some explosions were coming from behind walls. If you use headphones for a game, I suggest you try out both settings.
This concludes my third and final thought piece on a set of headphones. If you can't already tell, I love my new a900s. In music, I can't possibly imagine something sounding better. And with a good quality sound source, they blew me away in movies. If you don't mind the lack of portability (or you carry a backpack on a plane like me)
, they are the best sounding headphones I've listened to.nes I've listened to.
Off to Ireland I go now, I'll come back and leave some details about the sound quality on the jet and more breaking in.
The first thing I noticed about this headphones was their large size. The cups are circular and don't fold in to save space like the HD-280s do. The sound isolation wasn't as good as the HD-280s either. This suited me so I could actually hear things around me like people calling my name loudly, or that out of control 50mph car. When the music turns on, most of the sounds will get drowned out. The volume can also get very loud on an iPod, where my comfortable level of listening was 60 with the 280s, it was 50 with the a900s.
The cable is a 10ft long fiber beast. The 280s had a coiled cabled which was easier to use with my iPod when wearing it. However, when I had my iPod on my desk, the coiled cable had a tendency of snapping my iPod toward me if I ever moved away accidentally. With the uncoiled cable I had to loop and tie it, this worked great because I could lodge the loop behind something and hold it in place. If I pulled on it by accident, the loop took the stress instead of my iPod or connector. They were very comfortable, they just sit firmly on your head but don't press down like the senns. They can get kinda hot after a long time of wearing though, I don't mind, but you may feel uncomfortable. Also, if you are a bit concerned about looks and heat, any doubts will disappear when you put these on your head and listen to music.
There are few words I would like to mention about my break-in period. When I first listened to the headphones, the voices seemed very scratchy and and some of the guitar was weak. I let the headphones play overnight and used them at work + home for a lot of hours of use. Everything just came together over time it seems things fixed themselves
and became more detailed. Now the voices are clean and the guitar became more detailed than I have ever heard from any speaker device. The guitar came out and let me hear any nuances in the notes (more later). This review is based on the broken-in headphones.
I'll start off with my music testing material first...
Punk: Hawthorn Heights - The Silence in Black and White, Mae - Destination Beautiful, and My Chemical Romance -
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, The Used - In Love and Death
Rock: Tool - Aenima, Metallica - Master of Puppets, System of a Down - Toxicity, Lynyrd Skynyrd - Best of, 311
(Only had Love Song from 50 First Dates OST)
Dance/Trance/Techno: NYC Underground 3, Tranzworld, Prodigy - The Fat of the Land.
Somewhat Classical: Godspeed You Black Emperor (I only had Moya on my iPod, a lot of violin and string), Crouching
Tiger Hidden Dragon OST
The punk music was exactly what I was expecting from punk music. If I had to use a word to describe the music that came out, it would have to be "alive". It's like they calmed down during slower sections of music, then came back and exploded during faster more upbeat sections. But even with these explosions of sound, no type of sound ever
came out louder than the others. Unlike the 280s the sound didn't seem like it was separated in my head, the a900s seemed like they were separated in space. The bass came from everywhere (nice and present), the symbols were out front, the guitars were either left right, or somewhere in front. I loved hearing the music played like this. The
voices weren't too loud, but they seemed like they were closer than the rest of the music. The soft voice problem I had with the 280s was gone, and in its place were even more detailed voices. When someone takes a soft breath, you will hear it, when someone breaths too hard into the mic it also gets picked up. There was just so much detail
that it seemed to be different music I was listening to at times. Better than the Beyeres and Senns.
The rock music was equally, if not more enjoyable than the punk. Tool has a certain way of recording where the lyrics end up being a bit lower than the music on some songs. With the a900s I could hear the lyrics over the music and still have the same great instrumentals. Master of Puppets sounded just like the sound studio on the Senns with nicer bass. System of a Down was very detailed and didn't have the low voice problem. SOAD was even more detailed than the Senns, and with the much better bass sounded great. Lynyrd Skynyrd was amazingly lifelikethrough these cans, the bass was smaller and more real. Another good word to describe the sound is natural, things
sounded like they should in life. Finally 311 was the most interesting sound. The guitar sounded off at first glance, but when I listened to it some more, it was actually DEAD on. I could hear the guitar like a guitar actually sounds, not just one unified sound like before. Impressive to my ears.
With the Dance/Trance/Techno, the a900s again didn't disappoint. The bass was gigantic through these little headphones. The highs were high, and the voices were clear. Little things like echos sounded very real, and the bass got so low at time that I looked behind me to see if someone had walked up. Close your eyes and you feel like you are in a club at times. The weak mids I felt in Prodigy with the Senns were also a thing of the past.
When listening to music with classical instruments, you can close your eyes and feel like you are listening in an auditorium. With GSUBE, the music was so clean and real, you have to listen to believe. With CTHD, the slow violin music gets accented with slight bass and never gets out of control. It just sounded like it was in place.
Some may experience problems with the wrong music player I fear. At a friends house where he uses media player, the bass was horrendously loud and the treble was piercing. I installed foobar for him and the sound went back to normal. His 280s benefited from the loud bass he had from mplayer, but my cans were unusable. Just a word of
caution.
I also tried the headphones on my laptop. The best part was that I could tell no difference between the iPod and the HP jack of my laptop. So Portable sounds very much like static. I tried them on my Altec Lansing 2.1 system jack, and what happened was insane. It was like I put the sound of the speakers into my headphones when I plugged
them in. I actually listened close to the speaker one time to see if sound came out (it really sounded that good).If you have a portable player, it seems like you aren't going to miss out on much.
For testing movies/tv I used: The Saint, Gattaca, Garden State, The Little Mermaid (encoded), 24(recorded)The movies were simply amazing. The headphones let you hear the slightest details and even faults of the sound. In Garden State for example, you can hear the microphone turn on when there are voices.
But then you can also almost hear the conversations of people around in a cafe if you wish. The cafe will surround you with people making it feel like surround. In The Saint actions scenes, the extra bass really makes the sound more realistic.
Explosions scare you, and the low rumble of an engine sounds like it is in front of you. In The Little Mermaid, the sound was lacking some bass and definition, and the volume had to be turned up all the way to hear it. Surprisingly, I didn't have to turn up the volume on the Senns. I can attribute the low sound quality to the compressed music, but I don't know about the volume. When watching 24, the voices seemed somewhat distant at
times, but the bass was amazing. Once again, I'm not sure if it is the recording or the headphones. This can of course this be corrected with an equalizer, so not a big deal.
One final thing I did with these headphones was play some CS:Source with them. I set the sound quality to high and first tried them with a 2 speaker setting. I could hear everyone around me, and the sound of grenades could be heard muffled through walls. For the first time, I knew how people could start shooting before they saw me. Even running at full speed, I still heard someone coming from behind doors. Surprisingly, with the sound set to headphones instead of 2 speaker, things sounded worse to me. Some of the usually defined individual footsteps got blended together, and I couldn't tell exactly where some explosions were coming from behind walls. If you use headphones for a game, I suggest you try out both settings.
This concludes my third and final thought piece on a set of headphones. If you can't already tell, I love my new a900s. In music, I can't possibly imagine something sounding better. And with a good quality sound source, they blew me away in movies. If you don't mind the lack of portability (or you carry a backpack on a plane like me)
, they are the best sounding headphones I've listened to.nes I've listened to.
Off to Ireland I go now, I'll come back and leave some details about the sound quality on the jet and more breaking in.