Well the thing is I did spend hours listening to them in a store about 4-5 years ago. They were plugged into $6000+ worth of amp/dac/cables. And they had the best bass I have ever heard in a pair of cans, second only to the STAX LP700. Yes, really. Those stax cans were massaging my ears and vibrating my head like no other. It was in the same shop, so maybe they have some magic ass EQ going on or maybe their $20k power cables do make s difference. Or maybe the whole experience was a placebo. I did listen to the Focal Utopia’s and Hifman well but they were far too flat for my taste.

My Topping stack only cost $250 but I have been told the difference between a topping stack and a $6000 stack should be quite minor. Another factor is this was years ago so it was the old LCD-X. I bought the newer, revised 2021 model.

Thanks, I will give it a go ! Because I literally refuse to believe anyone enjoys the sound that comes from EQing via the apps I used.

Those that have the issue can escalate with Sony and they will replace them with a new pair that has a 90 day warranty.

I know this because I and others have done it. Not that I'm defending Sony as when my new ones arrive I'm selling them. They way they've handled this is dogshit, expecting customers to fit the bill for their shit defective batteries. I loathe companies that force you to fight with them for proper service. I'll be selling my xm4's unopened when they show up.

Sony has lost me as a customer for awhile. I don't appreciate being advised to send out a flagship product, just outside of "warranty" because it's got a defective battery or they fucked their firmware up or w/e. Lithium ion battery that dies in just over a year = defective.

There's nothing a customer can do within reason to kill these batteries that quickly.

Well, I've only had the headphones for about 4 months but they've NEVER done that. Version is 1.4.2, I just checked. The right one does seem to drain just a tiny bit quicker (like 10-15 minutes less battery life) but I think that's because I remove the left ear bud from time to time.

I understand that tuning headphones (especially on a manufacturing scale) isn't exactly easy, but I find it hard to believe that V-shaped signatures became the norm because it's easier to engineer. I've seen some enthusiasts DIY tune headphones with household materials and get significantly better measurements. I think it's more of a marketing issue, where manufacturers won't post any information about the sound signature of a headphone, and just kinda assume that people like V-shaped headphones because most people don't have the vocabulary to express what they like about a particular headphone. Recently JBL came out with a well-measuring cheap Bluetooth over ear headphone (the tune 710 I believe), but you wouldn't know it, because absolutely no-where in the website, stats or marketing material can you find the measurements. Clearly it isn't impossible if JBL can come out with a well tuned headphone. Not to mention the leaps and bounds the IEM market has been making, and some of the headphones Koss has released too.

It's a little word game at this point. Are we talking about objective neutral or subjective neutral. Even objective neutral could be just harman neutral or a completely flat FR response if you ask me but what do I know, I'm just an enjoyer with limited experience.

Every time someone mentions neutral I'm a bit confused because they might mention a headphone that I don't think is neutral.

How it all sounds to my ears, I think the Hifiman Arya SE and the DT1990 with analytic pads and with oratory's EQ (except not with mount Beyer) are pretty neutral so I guess something like flat lows and mids and the harman treble bump. Arya being more neutral than the Beyers in my opinion.

The hifiman Anandas don't sound neutral to me as their bass is even too "boring", as in lower bass isn't there. Other than their bass, they're neutral in my opinion.

Although maybe I'm mixing my own preferences with neutral here.

> it still isn’t neutral because the bass and treble are amplified.

That's hypothetical, because the preferred sound of most people is not V-shaped (when given the option).

The word "neutral" comes from latin "ne utrum", meaning "neither of both".
In this context it refers to "neither too little nor too much".

If the average person (in a properly conducted listening test, which is hard to do) prefers a sound, then by definition it is neutrum, meaning it leans neither in one direction nor in the other direction.

> First i tought most people would rather have bassy gear like Bose or Beats.

Most people buy after the brand name, not after sound quality - even though they sometimes follow what they think a certain brand promises in sound.
Few people are save from that - yourself (no disrespect to you, I'm sure you are a good listener) being not excempt either: Both Bose and Beats have made bass-light products! Yet the myth that "bose = bass" and of course "beats = bass" persists (not entirely unfounded eiher of course)

> A quick search showed me that the most sold earpiece was apparently the airpods (i couldn't fact-check), which have a treble bias.

Most likely not because of sound quality though, but because of the ease of use and also the brand name, as you said yourself:

> To me it only show that people react more to brand recognition and/or to the "fashion" element of their gear.

> But whether most people would rather want unbiased gear or not is left to be proven.

There's been quite a lot of research on that matter actually, plenty of controlled listening tests having been done with different ways of formulating essentially the same question: Do people prefer unbiased/"good"/neutral/uncolored sound, or have they gotten used to something else?
In general, most research (that I'm aware of) does in fact point towards the average person preferring what would be considered "good" sound (neutral, uncompressed, uncolored, ...) - as long as they're given the option.

> Harmon, Ief neutral,. .. can be thought as some widely popular neutral colors like Navy and khaki.

That comparison falls flat, because the question is not "tell me a neutral color" (for colors) or "tell me a neutral amount of bass" (for sound).

The question that the research answered was: "here's a control wheel, dial in the amount of bass that sounds correct while listening to music".
Which is the equivalent of: "here's a control wheel to control the amount of yellow in this picture of a sunflower, dial in the amount of yellow until it looks correct to you".

Maybe my unit’s defective but it just sounds like a crap gaming headset to me, no detail, very muddy, weak bass, poor separation. I should try another pair to see if mine are just broken or something, as I got these because people said good things but I just don’t see it.

I am using with an iPhone via Bluetooth but obviously if I plug it in I might as well just run a proper pair of headphones

My mistake