So I got some time with these Koss ESP-950, and I am loving it!
Granted, I do not have golden ears, and my experience with headphone is not as deep as many around here, but these cans are just so ridiculously addictive to listen to.
Compared to the modded Fostex T50-RP, woodied Magnum v3 and Magnum v4, these Koss are crystal clear, expansive, and very even-handed. I can’t use the neutral word to describe them, because I do not really know what absolute neutrality means, but these headphones made me feel the music, and play them without any emphasis to any region of the songs.
They handle details very well. Kid Rock’s Bawitdaba is a difficult track to handle when the heavy guitar riffs come in. The T50-RPs sound congested with them, the Magnum v3 seemed to have a little trouble handling the sudden massive amounts of details, the Westone 3s and UE TF10 glance over details and skip over parts when the drivers couldn’t take the heavy, trashy guitars. Yet the 950 handles them very well. I am able to tell the guitars from the bass from the cymbals with some level of precision instead of listening to a ball of meshed up sounds in my other headphones.
The mids on these things are just wonderful. Feist and India.Arie sounds like angels through these phones, and Jeff Buckley’s guitars and vocals perfectly portrayed his tortured soul through the rendering of his music.
The treble was never heavy handed, I don’t see much evidence of sibilance, although I don’t really hear that much sibilance with supposedly sibilance kings W3 (I find the Shure olive tips are great for the W3, btw). It’s crystal clear with enough sparkle and detail.
The bass has fantastic quality, but not that much quantity. I am perfectly happy with this, as I am not a great fan of a ridiculous amount of bass drowning out the songs. I hear bass lines and kick drums perfectly, and that is good enough for me.
All in all, I am extremely happy with these. Rumors have it that they sound even better with Stax and other 3rd party amps, but I am not going there as I can’t justify spending another $2K on an amp when I am already perfectly content with the stock E/90 that came with it. I will just leave that to head-fi meets.
P.S. My wife, who I think does have golden ears but doesn’t care much about audio, were struck by how beautiful these headphones sounded. Even she complimented them multiple times and commented how natural and smooth they sound.