V-Moda M200 Headphone Review

[PeteL]

In terms of wireless headphones that I see it's mostly JBL (cheap), Sony (mix of cheap and the wh1000xm) and Bose. I spot a rare Apple headphone sometimes, but the three brands I mentioned earlier probably have 80% of the wireless headphone market.

In 2021, which I have numbers, In the US Apple alone had 59% of the headphone market, followed in second by Beats which is also Apple with 9% So that's 68% between the 2 apple brands. It does include earbuds tough. The Airpods dominates outrageously.
Sony 4%
JBL 1%
Bose 5%

 

[usern]

I like the sound of my M100 a lot. Sensitive, low distortion, no trouble playing bass at huge volume. Being dark suits this style, does not cut through ears at high volume. Used a big negative peak EQ at around 10 kHz. Stopped using them due to closed back (ears sweating) and semi on ear style (ears hurting). Optional deeper pads alleviate the latter issue until they lose firmness and ears start to touch the driver protection wall again. Perhaps Amir's sample response mis match could be uneven wear of the pads. You can see the inner foam not aligning with seams on one side.

 

[solderdude]

In 2021, which I have numbers, In the US Apple alone had 59% of the headphone market, followed in second by Beats which is also Apple with 9% So that's 68% between the 2 apple brands. It does include earbuds tough. The Airpods dominates outrageously.
Sony 4%
JBL 1%
Bose 5%

Little white 'sticks' poking out of ears everywhere I go. of course some of them will surely be cheap knock-offs.
(don't own any Apple stuff myself)

 

[peniku8]

Parametric EQ will be hard to do by eye but I did take a shot at it as you will see in listening test results.

I think you should take a more scientific approach to developing EQ for headphones. If you eyeball EQ for them, that simply means every listening test or comparison you do will be inherently flawed to begin with, as you point our yourself.
If the AP software has no EQ functionality, I'm sure you can export the measurements as text and quickly throw something together in REW, which you can export as txt into EQapo there. I personally think that would add value and cedibility to these tests.

 

[Koeitje]

In 2021, which I have numbers, In the US Apple alone had 59% of the headphone market, followed in second by Beats which is also Apple with 9% So that's 68% between the 2 apple brands. It does include earbuds tough. The Airpods dominates outrageously.
Sony 4%
JBL 1%
Bose 5%

AirPods or AirPod Max? Because AirPods are not headphones. I'm talking headphones.

 

[Yasuo]

Thanks for reviewing this, so dissapointed. Years ago this used to be one of my favorite headphones since there were no measurements back then.

 

[Aperiodic]

That's a big departure from the M100 and the crossfade II-wireless. The M100 was muddy and dark sounding, the crossfade II was decent sounding.

This is more of a 'technical look/fashion' brand than a serious headphone manufacturer in the sense of 'hifi'.

I was going to make largely the same point- this headphone, along with many others, is aimed at people who would make their buying decision by looking at it, not by listening to it. The pricing is so you can tell your friends it cost that much. It may disappoint the 'mo' bass' crowd but they'll probably meet their sales targets and thus don't really care. While the enshrinement of the Harman curve here as "proper" reproduction (as opposed to 'improper' I guess) is debatable IMO, this looks just plain bad.

 

[Nathan Raymond]

My view on V moda. They entered the market at the right time, with good marketing. Like 10 years or so ago there was maybe a bit more of a lifestyle vibe to them. It was just a cool thing for teens and young adults to walk around with bigger more visually loud cans. And a certain price tag to show off a bit. Dre’s Beats where everywhere but they where so damn boomy that V moda found somehow some love for the non basshead.You could drive them from anything. Senn’s and AKG still didn’t have this youth vibe, there was some seriousness to them and Sony was kind of representing the past gen with Walkmans and such, fundamentally not cool. Bose was somehow very adult, rich people stuff, overly techy. V moda where ok sounding but nobody really cared or knew about Harman’s back then. M50s where for the one that had an interest in fidelity somehow. Now that‘s an exemple of what lifestyle is about, they didn’t adapt, evolved and are completely irrelevant nowadays ans definitely slowly but surely heading to disappearance. But they definetly had their time where money was flowing.

When they entered the market, some of their headphones measured and reviewed well at the time, like the M-80/V-80:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/v-moda-crossfade-m-80-and-v-80-true-blood-headphones

The M-100 was considered a good "basshead" headphone:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/bassheads-delight-v-moda-crossfade-m-100

 

[F1308]

Once under my radar, I happened to land on AudioScienceReview.

Then I halted everything related to upgrading my music system and just went reading, and waiting.

Isn't it a bit discouraging to meet so many bad products ?

Even those aiming at professional people gives a lot to be desired.

 

[PeteL]

AirPods or AirPod Max? Because AirPods are not headphones. I'm talking headphones.

Airpods. I don't have separated Data by brands, for non In ear types, it included both types. beside the fact that In ear types is 80% Vs 20 % For headset, And Bluetooth Vs Wired was about 60% Vs 40%.

 

[Robbo99999]

What makes it one of the worst measured headpones? Because to me FR graph does not look very different to that of LCD-X 2021 for example, other than obviously disastrorus LR mismatch. If anything, it has much lower distortion than many other headphones so looking at the FR I'd think it should be salvagable but sounds like it is not. Why is that?

View attachment 261480 View attachment 261482

Actually, it looks more like the pre 2021 version:

Audeze LCD-X (pre 2021).pdf

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

The 2021 version is a lot more EQ'able as in not such sharp dips:

Audeze LCD-X (2021 revision).pdf

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

However, I don't like the look of either of those too, ha! (But I'd certainly rather have the 2021 version of that than the V-moda reviewed in this thread!)

For the V-moda, problem is you can't EQ all parts accurately to the Harman Target Curve, it's dip is too sharp at 4khz & followed by a sharp peak, which means if you EQ up the sharp dip then you also EQ up the sharp peak, so you end up having to do a really sharp & narrow cut on that peak, and it's possible the position of that peak might not be at exactly the same place for everyone (due to anatomy variation and maybe some unit to unit variation of the headphone too), so a good chance that narrow cut would miss that peak in which case you'd be left with a massive peak somewhere in the frequency response....plus it's not really possible to EQ up that sharp dip at 4kHz all the way to the Harman Curve anyway - so it's a really awful frequency response to EQ, it's pretty much a broken headphone in my eyes.

 

[Robbo99999]

I think you should take a more scientific approach to developing EQ for headphones. If you eyeball EQ for them, that simply means every listening test or comparison you do will be inherently flawed to begin with, as you point our yourself.
If the AP software has no EQ functionality, I'm sure you can export the measurements as text and quickly throw something together in REW, which you can export as txt into EQapo there. I personally think that would add value and cedibility to these tests.

Although @Maiky76 does an accurate graphical EQ in almost every headphone thread, so we've got that covered anyway; however, the drawback for that is that it's only based off one measurement, but we know that. It could add some greater value to the listening test though I suppose as you indeed mention. (Amir could use Maiky's EQ in his listening tests although it would make it harder for Amir to sanity check the effect of the various filters through listening as all the filters influence each other greatly, it's not like you can just remove one filter and it remains valid, it doesn't, so it would be harder for Amir to sanity check the usefulness of various filters which is his chosen process)......(I'm not fussed by that side of it though). Oratory EQ's should be more reliable in theory.

(Your method you mention is how I would do it though, for EQ'ing any headphones I measure, and is indeed how I do it for a few of my headphones I've measured on my miniDSP EARS rig or if I'm doing EQ's from other people's measurements on their GRAS rigs)

 

[SuicideSquid]

I'd expect these kinds of measurements from a $30 set of cans, not a $300 set. Absolutely brutal - not just the poor compliance to target but the mismatch between channels is just awful.

 

[JaMaSt]

Why waste valuable time on V-Moda?

I think it's really important to review products like V-Moda. I find products like V-Moda to be more off putting than outright snake oil cables, etc., - since this is exactly the type of $300 headphone someone will purchase at BestBuy thinking that they are stepping up their game. Most likely the person who buys this will never have spent $300 on a headphone and did no basic research prior to purchasing. It turns out to be nothing but a $300 "teachable moment".

 

[usern]

I don't understand the absolute hate for V-Moda. Do you not see how low distortion they have? It's top tier performance in this category. I liked my V-Modas a lot and used them for 3 years thinking I do not need anything else. But I had to look for something new not because of sound, but because open back headphone are a lot easier on ears.

 

[renaudrenaud]

I don't understand the absolute hate for V-Moda. Do you not see how low distortion they have? It's top tier performance in this category. I liked my V-Modas a lot and used them for 3 years thinking I do not need anything else. But I had to look for something new not because of sound, but because open back headphone are a lot easier on ears.

This is not subjective hate. The product has objective defaults. There is no hate in this fact.

 

[usern]

But we've arrived at a point where a single sample measurement makes people think V-Moda is worse than snake oil cable company. That's a little hyperbolic, no? There's probably good effort gone into making the drivers efficient and play loud without distortion. That is infinitely better than what snake oil cable companies do. You can get more clean decibels with little effort (phone, laptop, etc) with V-Moda M100 or M200 than with more expensive headphones that also need amps.

 

[Tks]

Not kidding when I say this, but this is how I imagine the majority of "studio" or "mastering" pieces of audio gear to perform. I've been told multiple times by people that professionals simply do not care about fidelity, and performance out of their devices, all they would like is perhaps consistency - but primarily something that lasts, and warranty/support whenever the professional picks up the phone to call the company with requests for a certain service or information.

Professionals seem batshit insane to me if this is indeed the case. But it keeps ringing more true the more I see things like this advertised the way they are, yet the company not have gone bankrupt in the first two-three years of existence.

 

[Somafunk]

You can get more clean decibels with little effort (phone, laptop, etc) with V-Moda M100 or M200 than with more expensive headphones that also need amps.

Not much point in clean decibels if it sounds like a trash can kicked down a stairwell

 

[Multicore]

Well.. What else can be expected? Disappointed but not surprised...

How so? Maybe the manufacturer has a reputation? Idk. I never heard of V-MODA before now