Okay so went out of my way to register to this forum to share my experiences with these bizarrely highly rated headphones, just like one of the previous commentors here said.
Spending this very late night writing this review, so others don’t do the same mistake.
TL;DR: I can’t wrap my head around paying $500 for these headphones. Value is a complicated conversation but from the points below you will see what i mean. I unfortunately did spend that money and contemplating returning them. Just a lot of effort as i ordered overseas. Don’t get me wrong they are good but nowhere near as good as the measurements would suggest. I have DT770s (250ohms) and with a simple highpass shelf to take the edge off the highs (or few Specific EQ tweaks), DT770 Pro’s sound same Or even better than DCA’s through my Zen DAC V2’s. That’s a $150 rrp headphone….
I am a mechanical engineer, so very well know the value of measurements in context of evaluating things, especially to make things objective. However, I believe problem here is we just don’t have all values quantified. Freq response, THD, Phase response etc. sounds like don’t cover the whole listening experience. I unfortunately don’t know about audio enough to point what’s missing obviously but here to say my experience does not match what Amir is suggesting here.
Let me also give you some references so you know my start point and you can try to gauge yourself to it. Natural sounding - to me- is my JBL LSR305 speaker in an untreated, mid sized room. I know it’s not a good reference point, it’s not a studio environment, but thats what i have. Unless you were sitting next to the mixing engineer when the music you are listening to was being mixed, or you own a unechoic chamber with some perfectly flat speakers or a perfectly treated room with room compansated speakers, i am here to tell you your reference point isn‘t perfectly flat either. Outside of my studio monitors I have as
main gear:
HD6XX, 58X, X2HR, Hifiman HE-X4, DT770 Pro, iFi Zen Dac V2
and the others category:
Creative Aurvana Live, HD280, Bose QC25, XM4’s, AirPods Pro, PowerBeats Pro, Shure Se-215, Koss portapro.
With all that context here are my thoughts:
First listen, they are not bad. Nothing vowed me, they were… alright. Nothing special. I did hear a lot about `lifeless` sound of these so i was expecting a worse sound i guess so i was a bit relieved. But that’s hardly good, basically happy they weren’t terrible lol.
So i started playing around with EQ to get them to be flat to Harman curve. Well since the measurements come so close, there really isn’t that much to EQ but i could not get them to work with EQ’s i tried doing myself. Then came here to use Amir’s settings. They did marginally help make a difference, but honestly hard to tell and can’t even tell you if it was for the better either. After a while i sorta started hearing what people meant by lifeless. (Not as bad as they make it sound to be, if i dind’t have other gear around, i would not call them lifeless by any stretch.) My best guess was somehow missing base - another context i do EQ all my headphones to Harman curve, and generally happy with how they sound that way. However these still felt like they were missing bass?? Even tho they are tuned to the same target? Not sure how that’s possible…
Anyway long story short adding a high bass-low mid lift between 25hz and 650hz of 3-4db did bring `life` back to these. And the iFi’s TrueBass just makes them fun. Luckly they take EQ well, i suspect due to low distortion.
But so here is the problem: these don’t sound right without these seemingly non-Harman EQ’s to my ears, with all the reference points i have above, most of which are Harman tuned. Hence the reason i say measurement don’t sound like they really reflect how these cans sound… Once those extra adjustments are there, i could call them really good. But again these are $500 cans (down from $800???), and DCA’s with EQ barely match DT770 Pro’s($150) also with EQ?
Here are quick comparisons for people who have these other cans:
DT770: closest to DCA’s, with a high freq shelf to take DT770s edge down a 3-4dB. (And 7dB peak at 3,5kHz + 3dB at 5,5kHz, and a -10dB dip at 9kHz) Bass is very close between the two, mids sound better on Beyers with no adjustments needed.
HD6XX: No EQ hands down 6XX wins, just sounds… more organic? realistic? more like the JBL monitors? with a tiny bit of a bass shelf for 6XXs (to 50Hz), no contest overall 6XX sound much better. But closed back vs open back so there is that.
58X: same as 6XX Tonality wise.
X2HR: no EQ, I’d take DCA Aeon’s, if many wasn’t a thing… They are just better on low mids and highs. But again, not saying much X2HRs are like $150. Not sure if i got a lucky and got a pair with super low distortion, but once i EQ X2HR’s to Harman curve from Rtings measurements, boy they are head and shoulders better than DCA’s, on par with 6XX if not better.
Hifiman HE-X4: these are pretty much only good for light jazz and classical without EQ. Almost as good as DCA’s with EQ but very genre dependent. However these headphones take EQ like nothing i ever heard and the bass SLAM is another level. (Yes i did demo Audeze LCD 2 and X’s) Not sure how but DCA’s, even though they have the same tech, and approx same size driver, they just can’t punch that hard even with a bit bass shelf. Mids/highs are a wash… with a $130 headphone lol.
For the over all value for the money conversation, that’s a bit hard as to some this is chump change, to some it’s not much but they don’t value audio to spend as much and to some they value the hobby but they just are limited from their income and this is their yearly splurge. So my advice is to hear them if you can. And if you can’t, just avoid these and buy something you CAN demo before buying.
So there you are. Obviously everything i said is subjective, but that sorta the point. I really don’t think subjective data used in measuring headphones today isn’t enough to describe and quantify the sound we hear and the way our brain process‘ the sounds we receive.
I wanted to hear these because they were on Tyles’ wall. I followed him when he was first stating out on Youtube and he was THE ONE. Mainly because he measured headphones. So i suspect both Tyle and Amir might have some bias from measurements? Maybe not. These are my opinions…
(not for the first time if I remember correctly). But by an insignificant 0.1 here, although still, effectively the original response will likely be equally preferred by the average listener compared to with this EQ (to be clear this does not mean they will sound the same). The difference to 97 (near the top of the 'Excellent' category according to Olive's research) however is large, and so for the majority of listeners, the science says Oratory's EQ will be significantly more preferred.
