Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro Review (headphone)

[HereYaGo]

But how can you review something you're a fan of??

Anyway, 3 year burn-in? What am I supposed to do until than?

They take a few months to burn in. Pads start to sound bad after a year actually. There is some driver burn in. a 6khz peak caused by firm new pads that goes away after a week of use. so really the initial 3 or so month burn in is the only real concern and then old pads. this is all common knowledge. just way too many people as you can see in this thread saying they owned it for a week and returned it. initial impressions before burn in causes people to avoid them

 

[tankas]

 

[killdozzer]

@HereYaGo thank you for trying, I only wanted to make a light humorous comment. I don't believe in burn-in.

In this case I might take pads molding to the shape of one's head as "burn-in" figuratively, but other than that... My belief is that it is only listeners ears that get used to sound and this is missinterpreted as burn-in. That said, I wouldn't want my ears to get used to something that meassures this bad.

 

[HereYaGo]

@HereYaGo thank you for trying, I only wanted to make a light humorous comment. I don't believe in burn-in.

k. the machine said that too i guess it just got used to it.

 

[Adahn]

I'll just point a couple of issues with this review as a longtime fan of these cans.

First off, the harman target curve is being treated as an objective standard and deviations from it are measured and shown as deviations from a flat response. The harman target is not representative of a flat response. Furthermore, when the beyer trio got in production there was no such thing as a harman target to aim for obviously.

Nevertheless, you can easily eq these headphones to match the harman target. Same way you can eq any other headphone to match the harman target if that's your preference. Stock frequency response has stopped being of any interest these days for most applications. EQ is easy and free. Whatever your own preference curve might be, nobody's stopping you from adjusting any headphone to it.

Regarding power requirements. These headphones, as specified by beyer can handle a max of 100mW. The measured sensitivity of 704mv = 97db/V means these headphones are good up to a max of 111dB at 5Vrms for the 250ohm regions. Pushing past 5Vrms to do the 114dB tests is out of specs and distortion will obviously be extreme. The power requirement of 100mW@250R is rather steep for your average smartphone, but nothing any modern headphone amp would worry about.

The impedance hump up to +100ohms in the bass region is fairly common among headphones. A quick look at the venerable hd650's review by amir shows the nominal 300ohm impedance rising up to 483ohms in the bass region. Just the way it is.

THD at 94/104 is harder to justify. It's definitely not as bad as it looks on paper. To me it's either inaudible or simply doesn't bother me in the mix, considering it affects mainly the sub 100hz region. Others might be more sensitive. Julian Krause posted a THD test a while back that can give you an idea of your real tolerances. Again, looking at the results the hd650 got in the same test, while clearly better, it's nowhere near great either. Something to keep in mind (plus that they cost 2-3x as much).

Bottom line here is that their shortcomings are well known. The FR is what it is and if you don't like it, you can simply eq it. And you absolutely need an amp to drive them, especially if you want to eq them. New knowledge out of this review is the bass THD. Subjectively it's a non issue and pretty much every headphone suffers from it in some degree.

Bearing in mind the price (around 120e in Europe) there's still not much competition for these cans, as far as over head open backs go. The build quality is unmatched even by headphones costing 5x as much and the comfort is top notch. I've had some sets for almost 2 decades and they still look and sound pristine. Seen people with sets that go back over 30 years and are also in supreme condition. This is a headphone build to last.

Considering that after eq they all sound more or less the same and real world performance does not seem to suffer in the slightest by the arguably poor bass THD, the value is still there. Until somebody comes up with a quality build that measures better and costs about as much, these ain't going anywhere.

 

[HereYaGo]

yeah no point convincing people to like them. they can just know that there are fans of them.

 

[killdozzer]

@Adahn Nice comment. Can you really EQ all that is shown on these?

 

[killdozzer]

@HereYaGo I would still look for the explanation elsewhere. However, if you know exactly what happenes with the driver when it burns in, I'd be more than happy to hear you out. Only thing I'm not in for is that Fremer's "I don't know what it is, don't ask me, they just sound better".

 

[HereYaGo]

@HereYaGo I would still look for the explanation elsewhere. However, if you know exactly what happenes with the driver when it burns in, I'd be more than happy to hear you out. Only thing I'm not in for is that Fremer's "I don't know what it is, don't ask me, they just sound better".

You never used 'em so it's cool bruh. Just some fans passing through who actually own them and use them.

 

[Yuhasz01]

Measurements without controlled blind listening tests have little value for headphones evaluation.

 

[infinitesymphony]

I don't have any problem with what this person is doing, per se, but in the course of trying to find reviews for interfaces, microphones, and other studio equipment, I inevitably keep running into his channel, which seems to change names every few weeks to confuse people into clicking through, and encounter reviews that are short on insight and long on speculation.

Take a look at the frequency responses for the gear he prefers, DT990 and Neumann TLM103, and it's clear that in the case of the former the peaking he calls "chewed up" on other equipment doesn't seem to bother him here, and in the case of both he has a bias toward treble-shelved frequency response. Which is fine, but it's not neutral--these items can't be held up as gold standards suitable for every purpose.

This is all a moot point because the real goal is to rack up monetized views by "reviewing" as much equipment as possible.

They take a few months to burn in. Pads start to sound bad after a year actually. There is some driver burn in. a 6khz peak caused by firm new pads that goes away after a week of use. so really the initial 3 or so month burn in is the only real concern and then old pads. this is all common knowledge. just way too many people as you can see in this thread saying they owned it for a week and returned it. initial impressions before burn in causes people to avoid them

So the defense of the DT990s is that they sound really good on months 3-11?

 

[Helicopter]

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ead-about-headphone-measurements.18451/page-9

 

[amirm]

Measurements without controlled blind listening tests have little value for headphones evaluation.

You are saying measurements are without value unless followed by blind tests? Why would we measure then if have the blind tests?

If you are not saying that, then the measurements stand on their own and refer to research for nearly a decade in determining preference. We don't repeat all psychoacoustic research every time we refer to them as far as threshold of audibility. We learn from controlled listening tests to establish objective criteria.

All this aside, where have you seen any reviews of headphones that include controlled blind tests? Assuming nowhere in which case, you are suggesting people shop blind and ignore all other data?

 

[Yuhasz01]

Oh wow, I'm famous.

I don't have any problem with what this person is doing, per se, but in the course of trying to find reviews for interfaces, microphones, and other studio equipment, I inevitably keep running into his channel, which seems to change names every few weeks to confuse people into clicking through, and encounter reviews that are short on insight and long on speculation.

Take a look at the frequency responses for the gear he prefers, DT990 and Neumann TLM103, and it's clear that in the case of the former the peaking he calls "chewed up" on other equipment doesn't seem to bother him here, and in the case of both he has a bias toward treble-shelved frequency response. Which is fine, but it's not neutral--these items can't be held up as gold standards suitable for every purpose.

This is all a moot point because the real goal is to rack up monetized views by "reviewing" as much equipment as possible.


So the defense of the DT990s is that they sound really good on months 3-11?

Stick to legitimate audio evaluation issues and do not attack people here: crappy thing to do.

 

[HereYaGo]

So the defense of the DT990s is that they sound really good on months 3-11?

this guy says a week i would agree with that as well but they get good over time not on first listen which is what people have to point out i would go as far as to say t hat dt990 are the only headphones that change so dramatically and in a good way altho a lot of beyers change in sound dt990 improves the most:

 

[Adahn]

@Adahn Nice comment. Can you really EQ all that is shown on these?

Yeah sure, why not. I mean, you'll never get them to do proper sub, but that's true for every open back out there essentially. Anything you don't like above 50ish Hz can be corrected no problem.

 

[infinitesymphony]

Stick to legitimate audio evaluation issues and do not attack people here: crappy thing to do.

It's not an attack, it's a criticism about what I perceive to be a common issue on YouTube: low-effort, low-content reviews based on little to no original research, drawing conclusions about others' research, meant primarily to attract views and generate controversy.

 

[ZööZ]

Holyyy cow there's a lot of static hiss or white noise to be heard with dt990 on an album called False from Lambert, that amir's EQ practically eliminates altogether... I noticed similar effects with Oratory1990 eq as well (on different content) but this is right up in your face difference that distracts me from anything else right now... have to concentrate and listen some more and different content before I can make any more comparisons between the two different eq.
The stock tuning sounds quite awful in comparison after a few tracks.

 

[modes]

this guy says a week i would agree with that as well but they get good over time not on first listen which is what people have to point out i would go as far as to say t hat dt990 are the only headphones that change so dramatically and in a good way altho a lot of beyers change in sound dt990 improves the most:

Did you forget you're supposed to call yourself the See Description and/or Industry Destroyer?

 

[stalepie2]

Holyyy cow there's a lot of static hiss or white noise to be heard with dt990 on an album called False from Lambert, that amir's EQ practically eliminates altogether... I noticed similar effects with Oratory1990 eq as well (on different content) but this is right up in your face difference that distracts me from anything else right now... have to concentrate and listen some more and different content before I can make any more comparisons between the two different eq.
The stock tuning sounds quite awful in comparison after a few tracks.

Which track in particular? I think I hear it on my HD 25s in some of them... if a certain EQ or frequency target (Harmon) is masking noise then I would suggest it's not good for studio work (which these headphones are meant to be used for), since it would be good to hear unwanted noise and eliminate it, not hear a smoothed over version when mixing/mastering before release. (Given this kind of electronic music, though, those sort of crackles and pops are probably intentional ambience that are left in for atmospheric texture).