"Sounds different" is the answer you're going to get from headphone users (this sub), if you really want to know why they sound different, you need to ask a headphone designer / engineer.

And I don't think that's a huge population of people, so you'd be quite fortunate to find one on this sub who knows the answer and is going to take the time to write an answer you find satisfactory.

My impression, as someone who is not a headphone engineer, is that there are an insane number of variables that go into how sound is perceived through a headphone ("psychoacoustics"), and the way that different headphones design around those variables is complicated. There's certainly more to it than the size of the driver. Like one of the interesting things about the Focal Elegia closed back is that they have sound baffling inside the earcup that dissipates low frequencies, to reduce resonance, and it seems to make them sound more like an open-back headphone. I think another variable is how consistent the left and right ears are in their frequency response, as inconsistency can muddy up the directional imaging. And that's something that depends on really tight controls in the manufacturing process with all the different components, and the way in which they're assembled.

That's just a flavour I've what I've been able to deduce from being around the hobby, I don't really know the answer. I just try out different headphones, and some of them sound better to me than others (in ways that aren't totally captured by frequency response, since I typically EQ all my headphones to the Harman curve)

I've ordered hundreds of items off Amazon over the years, and the closest they've come to ever delivering me the wrong item is that I got the GameOne headphones in black even though in the picture they were white. From my experience they run an incredibly tight ship, although I guess it could vary among different distribution centers.

I don't know why you're being defensive, no one is giving you a hard time for having an opinion. But thinking that the headband will break (even though it hasn't) is not an "experience", and I didn't understand your point about the headphones being fatiguing after EQ.

I'll back this up, nothing beats the HD800S for soundstage and imaging, particularly in the context of FPS gaming.

But the dual use for music makes it tough, especially since OP's genre preference is metal. The HD800S sounds far better than the average headphone for any kind of music, but it has pillowy bass, and shines with things like instrument separation and soundstage that pay off more with understated stuff, like classical music or acoustic. I wouldn't be shocked if at the end of the day you still preferred the XS for music. But for gaming, I don't think you'll find anything at any price point that's better than the HD800S.

I definitely use EQ. I can’t imagine finding something fatiguing if you EQ out the frequencies that give you trouble (and I’m sensitive to this as well, though more with Beyer stock tuning than Focal stock tuning).

I’ve seen all the people saying “when not if” on the headband breaking, but I’ll deal with it “when” it happens. I also have the Clear MG and no issue with it at all, nor is it as obvious to me as it seems to be to other people that it’s at imminent risk of breaking. Everything can break if you use it, I’m happy to have something that sounds and looks good and not live in fear about it.

I will chime in to say the Focal Elegia, because I love them, and I bet I would like the Stellia even more (if I was willing to pay that much for a closed back). I'm more of a fan of open backs, but the Elegia gets really close to the technical performance of an open back, without the weird bass boominess and muffled sound that tends to plague closed backs.

I've also owned and daily driven the HD 569 and a Bose Soundlink (wireless). Night and day difference with the Elegia how much better quality the sound is, it even compares well to Clear MG (not *as* good, but bloody close). I really hoped to save money on a closed back in getting the 569, because I didn't have very high expectations for an outdoor, walking around closed back. I honestly just wanted to keep my ears warm in the cold. But the 569 absolutely drained the life out of music, and I never took the Elegia off my wishlist. And I don't regret it, it's just a delight to listen to.

I've never had this problem, but it's because I wrapped my cable in a plastic spiral protector that effectively makes the cable thicker. Now my reason for the spiral protector is not to prevent tangles, it's because I have a cat who has chewed through at least half a dozen cables with soft rubber coatings (including some painfully expensive headphone cables), but he leaves hard plastic alone.

If you wanted to try it yourself, you can search for the cable protectors on amazon, they're cheap. The catch is that (a) that they make the cable a fair bit bulkier , and (b) that that they take forever to install.

I also have the same dac/amp on my desk, good choice!

I very recently bought (then had a change of heart and returned) a Topping E70. Per ASR it measured spectacularly well, right near the very top end of everything they’ve ever tested. And I noticed nothing in terms of sound, other than it added 60ms of lag. The paired L70 amp also ran way hotter than the Monolith dac/amp I was replacing.

I liked the aesthetics of the E70 / L70 stack, it felt premium in a way that I think counts for something. Placebo is part of the listening experience, and I’ve come to terms with that. But for $1000 bucks (CAD) it just wasn’t worth it.

I have a newfound appreciation for the fact my Monolith runs cold, and also it has a feature called “dynamic range compression” that I’ve come to like for gaming, because it softens the sharpness of loud noises that otherwise hurt my ears. For me it’s about quality of life features like the DRC, and about reliability (the reason I prefer the Monolith over various cheaper and smaller options is because it doesn’t drop out or crash, problems I’ve had repeatedly with other devices).

Is Crin using his new measurement rig in this graph? I haven’t followed it that closely, I just saw his video unboxing the new gear. May mean the baseline has changed.

I uninstalled the software thinking that was the issue--nope! I set the software to its most basic "direct" audio mode, still happened! Suddenly flipped audio while playing FPS games. I could reset it by toggling the direct mode on/off again in the menu, but it was massively irritating.

I hope you have more luck than I did with SoundBlaster, I gave away my AE5 sound card because it kept inverting my left and right channels. Other than that, I did think they had a fun variety of sound processing options.

Are you listening louder? Louder sounds better. Not great for your hearing though, you have to be careful with it.

Laptops often come installed with other audio bloatware from the manufacturer. Could be a realtek app, could have some other ridiculous name, like MSI laptops come "nahimic" software. It'd be something that runs on startup and sits in your system tray.

The Scarlett is I think a particular good option for someone who wants a mic interface to double as a hifi headphone interface. Maybe some marketing puffery, but they at least make an effort to market to that demographic, with some specific emphasis on their headphone amp circuitry.

I've had cutting out/crashing issues with a couple of different mic interfaces I've used, which I suspect may be power-related, being limited to USB power. That's namely Rode's mic interface (the AI-1) and the GoXLR mini. The Rode would just switch itself off sometimes when i had my headphones plugged into it, and the GoXLR had maddening issues with intermittent audio dropouts.

It's the modern infomercial, the indie-accessible marketing stream. Plenty of crap, but every now and then the Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine is actually a pretty good idea, or the Ginsu knives are actually pretty sharp and durable. It's just an alternative way to market something when you don't have a big brand's name behind you.

It’s very hipster to assume anything popular is actually bad. I think it’s probably the case that most mass manufactured stuff is bad regardless of whether it’s marketed or not—making good things is hard and expensive.

As a counterpoint, I think AirPods are actually pretty good, despite being one of the most advertised and most popular headphones in existence.

The Better Help therapy is trash from China?

In terms of audio quality there’s no meaningful difference, but sometimes there is an EQ difference if the headphone has built in DSP, which is bypassed in wired mode. The Focal Bathys is an exception to that, it routes sound through its DSP even in wired mode (and as a result, consumes battery even in wired mode).

I like over ear headphones for cooler weather to keep my ears warm, and they do that job while being comfortable and decently portable. The Oratory EQ curve is wild, it looks like the waveform of a song, but it does the job to make them decent (plugged into Qudelix).

The options actually aren’t that extensive for closed back over-ears, suitable for outdoor use. That’s a space dominated by the consumer brands like Beats, Bose, and their headphones sound even worse and in addition are overpriced. Something like the Focal Bathys is tempting, but it’s just way more than I need, for what ends up being podcasts, most of the time.

My adoptive son (cat) has similarly chewed half a dozen cables. I had to replace a 569 cable just a few weeks ago. I suggest trying something nylon braided, he seems to leave that kind of cable alone. Soft chewy rubber is more appealing. New Fantasia is the cable brand that I’ve found to be pretty satisfactory shopping on Amazon, decent prices and solid build quality. It won’t matter for how the headphones sound.

Harman isn’t flat because flat speakers don’t sound flat inside of a room. The resonance off the walls makes bass seem louder and absorbs some frequencies.

I agree that it's silly to try and search out a "perfect reproduction" of someone else's idea of how a song should sound, but if you were to do that, it would probably be the mixing engineer, and Harman is basically designed to mimic the sound of speakers in a room. So that kind of fits.

I also think it makes some logical sense to use EQ to smooth out the things that makes a headphone weird (e.g. a massive spike at 8khz), because nobody would mix/master music on the assumption of a bizarre frequency pattern that is idiosyncratic of a particular Grado (for example). The Harman curve is the closest thing to a "normal" that there is. Then from there you can adjust to taste, like by boosting the bass. Or maybe by adding back some treble if that's what appealed to you about the Grado in the first place.

I felt the same way the first 2 or 3 times I tried autoEQ profiles (I kept coming back to it because it was so strongly commended, but every time was revulsed that it sounded "wrong" and uninstalled again). What eventually converted me was that I got treble fatigue after a few days of using the HD800S, a headphone that I otherwise absolutely adored. That was only as self-diagnosis, but I'd experienced something similar with the analytic pads on the DT1990, and both of them have spikes at 10khz. So I set it to Harman to get rid of anything "weird", and was initially just grateful that the ear pain didn't come back.

Now I'm used to it, and deviations from Harman are what sound off to me (sometimes Peace resets to a flat EQ, and I'll notice immediately that something is wrong). I don't feel too strongly that it's better sounding, I think it's mostly an issue of the sound you're used to.

I've also grown to like Harman on other headphones, but an exception is the 7hz Timeless. I don't know why it's an exception since I like Harman everywhere else, but I think they go from being exceptional to sounding like ass.

Fair enough, I didn't see OP specify the year of his model, and was too lazy to search beyond the first article I found, on the contingency that he might have had an older model.

Apple says their computers output up to 3 Vrms to high impedance headphones. If it was 1 Vrms (the Apple dongle’s power level) I’d say that’s borderline, you might benefit from more headroom, but 3 is tons of power.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT212856