BestTurntables.com

1. 

   Eric Mars
   April 3rd, 2010 - 00:04

   I’m a Grado guy thru and thru. The sound of my 325is’s is delicious. Next economic bubble I can climb onboard and make a bundle I’m buying their top of the line. But needed closed cans for noisy environment listening. Bet on these and they are fantastic. So fantastic I’m going to get the Pro 750′s as well.

   They do need burn in, leave em hooked up to internet radio for a weekend or so and the sound will mellow and warm up. Nice clear soundstage, tight bass. Not sure what the S-Logic stuff is about, they are normal headphones. I think it’s basically the same effect Grado gets by putting buttons on the grill and having earpads that demand a certain placement on the ear. Hint: don’t ever 2nd guess Robert Grado. Don’t do any “mods” the internet says will make them better. They won’t. Grado phones are perfect at birth.

   I find the following phones incredible:

   Open air: Grado (always #1)
   
   Closed: Loving Ultrasone, Sennheiser is their only competition; their phones are incredible as well. A little less meaty but airy and accurate and a pure delight, every model I’ve ever listened to I’ve loved.
   
   In ear: Etymotic, your only choice Expensive but when you’re putting something that close to your eardrums, don’t cheap out.
   
   Noise Cancelling: Audio Technica. Sennheiser sound in a way affordable package that will totally shut out the sounds of BART and the homeless guy sitting next to you and barfing. Big plus over Bose they continue to work even if the tiny AAA battery goes out. And that only happens once a year.
   
   Ear Buds: Have to admit I like the Bose tri-ports, but they are bass heavy and take a nuclear power plant to run. Frankly, Bose could spend a little less on TV ads for clock radios and inflight magazine ads for noise-cancelling phones and a lot more on engineering and we might have some credible products there. Build quality is great, and they seem to want to be great, but the MBA’s in marketing and the bean-counters obviously have veto power at that company. If you don’t want to spring for the $99 bose triports, try anything else out there. It’s the most popular headphone form factor available (doesn’t mess up your hair) and umpteen companies do a great job on them.
   
   Sony anything: hit or miss. Their V6 (and related) models are legendary in music mixing because they are unbelievably brutal and accurate. This is the traditional use for closed phones: putting music under the microscope. Their earbuds are hit or miss, good luck you may get nirvana, you may get fingernails on chalkboards. If I’m looking for something cheap and credible, I do look to Sony.

   I’ve both produced music, and loved it as a listener. There is no one size fits all tool for everything, that’s what makes loving recorded music endlessly fascinating. But I tell you, these Ultrasone folks are onto something, they are taking closed phones beyond their traditional 2 uses as either a scalpel or a DJ tool. They may just be the Grado of closed phones.
   Rating: 5 / 5
2. 

   AmazonUser
   April 3rd, 2010 - 02:27

   Was not overly impressed with the sound, but it was pretty good. But the dealbreaker was the vise-like pressure these put on your head — specifically, your jawbone. I let them sit expanded over a couch arm for three days, but still quite painful.
   Rating: 2 / 5
3. 

   Evan Dowling
   April 3rd, 2010 - 04:48

   Just bought two pairs of these babies as monitors for live performance. They sound incredible. Great bass, smooth highs and full mids. The sound guy at the venue guessed that I paid three times as much when he heard them. Not the biggest soundstage in the world, but they are great and very listenable. After three straight hours of listening, my ears still felt great.
   Rating: 4 / 5
4. 

   Totally Honest Reviewer
   April 3rd, 2010 - 05:53

   First, let me say that I own three pair of headphones: Denon AH-D1000S, then upgraded to Denon AH-D2000, and these Ultrasone HFI-580 S-Logic Surround. Out of the three, I prefer the Ultrasone HFI-580.

   The HFI-580′s are very stylish, light and comfortable. And may I add, they have outstanding sound – good clear highs and punchy base – actually better than the Denons to my ears. Also, there is no fatigue with the Ultrasones after listening a long time. As far as the surround effect, I do hear it come through in some music but haven’t tried them with movies yet. The AH-D2000′s have a smooth, distinct sound, and were the most expensive but are quite heavy and large. However, the base seems to be lacking in both the Denons, at least to me. I do love the AH-1000′s for their comfort and good clear sound. I use a small amplifier, which tends to bring out the detail even more and add to listening enjoyment. All in all, I still prefer these Ultrasones for the bright highs, punchy base, and for the lightweight comfort and good looks. These are by far my favorite.
   Rating: 5 / 5
5. 

   Esha
   April 3rd, 2010 - 07:08

   Well the Ultrasone HFI-580′s came in today. Guess this is a good as place as any to write my opinion. They sounded so good I had to share.

   First impression of them. They’re very meaty, much meatier than the inexpensive Koss UR-15C I was using prior. (A $20 pair of headphones (when I bought them).) The Koss don’t sound “bad” per-se, especially since they’ve been through multi-hundred hours of burn-in, and have settled in to sound as good as they can.

   The looks are very bold, and they look very impressive close up. They may be targeted towards the more edgier crowd, as they’re very “in-your-face” and don’t have as a muted appearance as some other higher-end phones. Could be good or bad on your point of view, personally I really like it.

   Now, the sound. Since comparing it to the Koss is a travesty in and of itself (as it utterly dominates them), my other comparison comes from Sony MDR-710 LP ($70 when I bought them, Ultraportable supra-aural headphones. Owned for going on 2 years.)

   Now the Sony’s sound pretty darn good, but they are supra-aural versus the Ultrasone and Koss which are circum-aural. The Sony are the reason I decided to purchase these Ultrasone, because they really opened up how a decent pair of headphones can really change the way you listen to things. I have also owned a great many cheap earbuds and circum-aural headphones in my life($5 – 10), so I know how the sound stacks up to cheapy’s too.

   Being circum-aural has advantages because of attenuation of outside noise. I first thought about gushing about how awesome they sound, but then I decided some actual thought out impressions would be more helpful. It’s hard to describe since I’m not in the habit of reviewing headphones, so I don’t know all of the terms one uses to describe the nuances of headphones to another person, but here it goes.

   The sound is very “rich” compared to my other headphones I own, I don’t know how to put it, there is more detail and it just sounds “fuller”. I intentionally picked tracks I had listened to many times, because I knew how they sounded pretty well from my other pairs. I was picking up pitch shifts in notes and sounds that were previously undetectable. It just seems like it covers a much broader range of sound and the sound is fantastic. I listened both to CD music, and mp3′s. I didn’t have any DVD audio to test… other than DVD movies.

   Bass. As I said the bass notes are very important to me. They actually tie the Sony MDR-710 here, you’d be surprised at how bassy those little Sony’s are, and I might go so far as to say they actually have more bass than the Ultrasones. But again, it just seemed like the Ultrasone’s convey more detail in bass, probably due to being more isolated from the circum-aural design. (Keep in mind the Sony’s have about 40 hours of burn-in, and the Ultrasone’s are out of the box.)

   On DVD’s, again I was picking up more detail. The sound of peoples clothes as they rubbed together was one thing that stuck out. Footsteps, breathing, just overall much more sound detail. I was pretty impressed overall, I watched Matrix Reloaded to test the action scenes. (Say what you want about the movie itself but the action scenes are incredible.)

   Gaming. Well what better game to test on than GTA-IV since it just came out. (I chose the 360 to test on because my PC although using optical out to my receiver does not output 5.1 from the optical out.) I figured here is where the much touted “S-Logic” feature pattented by Ultrasone would finally show it’s colors. It just sounded like a really good pair of stereo headphones, although I haven’t ever listened to a pair of “true” 5.1′s (3 speakers & sub in each ear cup). But from what I read, most 5.1 headphones can’t deliver other than LTB. I did actually shop around for 5.1 headphones but I didn’t find any with the right combination of features and aesthetics that appealed to me (USB-based is automatic disqualification for me).

   So maybe S-Logic does work, this is something I will just have to give more than 30 minutes to. I did actually stand stationary and close my eyes and spin the control stick until I was unsure of my position, then slowly started rotating, detecting if sound was coming from left or right is easy as it only plays in one ear, but as it came to front to back, I did manage to accurately pick if the source was coming from in front of me or behind me 3/3 times. This is only a rough test and 3/3 could have just been luck, but I didn’t spend much more time testing this.

   Ultrasone claims you can achieve the same level of listening volume with lower decibles, due to their S-Logic off-center drivers, this was something I didn’t believe and was skeptical of. Turns out it is true and then some, I actually had to turn the volume down a bit from what I usually have it set it.

   Overall I am very impressed and think it was money well spent. They won’t be replacing the Sony as those are so compact when they fold up and can slip into a pocket easily. Rather they will compliment them mainly for home use and some mixing.
   Rating: 5 / 5

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