Grabbed some Aeon X's from Fleabay. The original Aeons I thought were nice, a bit hot in the treble but a bit too overdamped which made the tuning pads useless. The Aeon Open 2's had a smoother treble but even more suffocating, warm, lush.
These X's have less dampening, the two notch tuning filters bring down the treble down to a nice level, very smooth and cohesive sounding. They're warm and lush but tasteful. Timbre is spot on, powerful type of sound, weighty, good dynamics. Those who say these don't sound dynamic are talking out their arse or under driving they slam more than any Audeze, not as much as a dynamic like the Focal Clear but they're leaner, more aggressive in general and dynamic drivers do hit harder, planers I find mostly have softer dynamics. These slam with weight, notes have heft especially drums. Vocals are awesome, full bodied, soulful, good range male voices sound chesty, female voices are lush but have a slight muted character compared to the HD650 or Focal clear but never recessed.
I can say that for a while, since the old Audeze days I've always just settled, the HD650 is a great headphone, it has always sounded medicore in the bass and a little sharp around 5k since the silent revision. These take what I like about both the old Audeze and HD650 and get close to where I can live with this for a while.
I've owned the LCD-4, great headphone, prob the best outside of the Abyss but timbre of voices was off putting. These Aeon X are not on that level, I'd say they're about on par with an LCD-2, HD650 for resolution, but what these do is have that nice, smooth full bodied sound, great timbre and full mid bass giving that sense of power and more natural decay.
I'll deffo be keeping these for a good while. Don't understand why they couldn't do this with the Aeon 2.
Thanks!
Yeah - I know myself too well - if I didn't grab these I'd spend an age in mid-fi switching from one to another and end up spending the same amount while never hitting this level. This is all
@Ryanr1987 's fault starting me down this spiral at the start of lockdown when he sold me the brilliant Verum Ones on the MM
I got lucky, managed to grab the Utopia and Stellia mega cheap from the UK distributor and owners of either get a £700 discount on the Arche up until the end of the year. All in I think I've probably saved a few grand vs list price.
Sorry not sorry! Verums are awesome headphones, I'm keeping an eye out for Verum 2 when he gets around to it. Not sure what's the current state is of all the controversy with Garuspik as not been on SuperBestAudioFriends recrntly to catch up with the news.
