Having read a bunch of very favourable reviews of the recently released Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 headphones, I suggested them to my wife as a possible Christmas present for me, and she was generous enough to oblige. Unfortunately, I'm finding that they are not quite ticking the box for me in terms of sound quality, and I think it's possibly because they are closed back headphones, and I maybe just don't get on with closed back headphones, however good. Most of the time I listen to classical music, often orchestral, and what I'm looking for primarily, I suppose, is accurate timbre, and a sense of airiness, openness, spaciousness, to replicate as closely as possible the feeling of sitting in a concert hall. I have open back headphones which do pretty well in this respect (AKG K702 and another recent purchase, Hifiman HE400SE), but the P100s sound to me a little coloured, and closed in, constricted.
As I say, this may be just a characteristic of closed back headphones (I bought and quickly resold a pair of Sony WH-1000XM3's a couple of years ago, as I really wasn't keen on the sound). It's not a characteristic of ANC headphones per se, as I have a pair of remarkably cheap ANC IEMs, Earfun AirPro 4, which I really like and which sound pretty open and accurate to me.
So my question is whether this is something I might be able to improve with some judicious EQ, in which case what should I be looking at?
As I say, this may be just a characteristic of closed back headphones (I bought and quickly resold a pair of Sony WH-1000XM3's a couple of years ago, as I really wasn't keen on the sound). It's not a characteristic of ANC headphones per se, as I have a pair of remarkably cheap ANC IEMs, Earfun AirPro 4, which I really like and which sound pretty open and accurate to me.
So my question is whether this is something I might be able to improve with some judicious EQ, in which case what should I be looking at?