Phil's Superpower of Enthusiasm

1. The R70x Refine was a limited edition run from Apos, a well-loved audio seller based in the EU (designer and purveyor, incidentally, of my favorite funky tube amp, the Apos Gremlin). ↩︎
2. The R70x originally listed at $489, but was more consistently around $350 towards the end of their production run. ↩︎
3. I score bass, mids, and treble on a two part scale: 1-5 for quantity (5 being the highest), and A-E for quality (A being best in class, E being laughably bad). For soundstage it’s also a two part scale, with the number representing the width and the letter the separation within it. ↩︎
4. For comfort/fit, my scale is A-E with A being disappear entirely into the background and E being I want to tear my ears off to stop feeling these headphones on my head. I’ve had one E: the Koss PortaPro.  ↩︎
5. I’m a balanced skeptic, but XLR cables are just more fun. ↩︎
6. U-shaped generally means elevated bass and treble, but with a more sudden shift from bass to mids and then to treble than a v-shaped frequency response. ↩︎
7. It’s worth noting that the R70x and Refine have the misfortune of immediately following my review of the Audeze LCD-2.2 pf, a soundstage monster, so that might be coloring my impressions. ↩︎
8. Again, these are following the LCD-2.2 pf and a couple of Focals so I’m open to it being an unfair comparison. ↩︎
9. When I go a few months between having this experience I get close to convincing myself again that I can’t hear any differences between DACs … then I run into something like this again. ↩︎
10. I had a somewhat similar issue with the Jotunheim 2 and the Meze Empyrean II when using the provided OEM dual mini-XLR to XLR cable, and consensus among Meze and Schiit seemed to be that it might be a wiring issue in the Jotunheim. ↩︎
11. I even ordered the Sennheiser HD 550 to see if they’d be a reasonable replacement recommendation! Review coming soon. Spoiler: they’re pretty damned great, even though I’m not a huge fan of the 500 series. ↩︎
12. Yes, I know that they’re not 6 series. Yes, I know that they’re being made by the Sennheiser Pro division, while the rest of the 6X0s are part of Sonova, post acquisition of the Consumer Division (and back on the block, apparently).
    
    Get over it. ↩︎
13. Even when the mic gets a little too hot. ↩︎
14. It’s worth noting that at least for the last few weeks, I’ve been running the Sundara mostly with a couple of 3D printed bass-boosting spacers. I pulled them out for this review, but I’ve been generally very impressed. ↩︎
15. I generally like the single-band style Hifiman headbands, but between the weight and the looser clamp the Edition XS just feel a lot less stable on my head. ↩︎
16. For example, Zeos has an expensive cable collaboration with Apos, and Joshua Valour is working on an IEM cable collab; I’m not questioning their motivations (well, not Joshua’s at least!) but I think we’re all careful not to hurt the feelings of people we work with. ↩︎

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