This is my review of the F7200 from Final, which I picked up from them at CanJam 2017. The Sonorous VI are just about my favorite headphone ever, and I love listening to familiar music with them. When I heard that Final had some of their famous balanced armatures in a new package with a bunch of adjustability, I was instantly intrigued. I find that there is always a bit of time that it will take to adjust to a new set of headphones, but with these headphones, I was pleasantly surprised to find that familiar and comforting sound from the F7200 that I have learned to cherish in the Sonorous VI. In the Sonorous VI, a dynamic driver handles the mids and lows, while a balanced armature handles from 5-6khz up. There is a bit of smear because of this transition, but the cans are really perfect for me. 
 
The first thing that struck me was the super nice presentation of the headphones. I would definitely consider these headphones as a gift to someone special... it is definitely an amazing box that feels great in the hand. The carrying case is great, but not really intuitive. That's okay, since the whole package looks phenomenal, and the case is definitely better than a zip up case, for example, while it is also impervious to the dings and scratches of the FAD piano forte headphone case.
 
The headphones come with a bunch of tips and options for mounting in the ear canal. I tried a bunch of different combinations, and settled on the foam comply tips for my personal tastes. The isolation was great, and the bass cleaned up a bit. I really enjoyed the listening and tip-choosing process, and as I spend more time with them, I'm sure I'll refine my taste tip-wise. I did find that mounting farther into the ear gave the headphones a better sense of control, and added a bit of mid-range intimacy.
 
I love prog rock and metal. These are honestly not great headphones for that kind of music. Hard and Fast music doesn't play to the F7200's strengths, but that's perfectly fine by me. I decided to turn back the clock to some personal recordings of mine playing piano. I recorded a few of Liszt's Etudes on Paganini's themes, and I know those recordings inside and out. The depth and quality of the sound was truly awe-inspiring. I loved it. I listened maybe 5 or 10 times to the sixth etude, with its 10 variations. I was blown away by the presence of the 3rd variation detail and smooth bass lines, while still maintaining dynamics for the 10th variation without blowing out. I listened to White Moth Black Butterfly's Rising Sun in 24 bit MQS, and it was just perfect. The sensation of the music was as if it came right out of the center of my back and forward through the center of the chest. Sound stage was ethereal, just like electrostatics. 
 
In contrast, the guitar on Dream Theater's Nightmare to Remember feels shallow and hollow, but at the same time way too developed from 3-4 khz. I tried lowering the volume, and it really cleaned up. It occurred to me that they might need breaking in, so I gave it 24 hours. That made a huge difference. The piano recordings warmed up greatly, and strings became much more intimate. Unfortunately the guitars and snares in heavier music, like TesseracT's Polaris album, never achieved a full body. At lower volumes, these have to be the most relaxing headphones I have ever listened with... think about the music you enjoy listening to quietly, and I recommend that sort of music for these headphones. Bigger and faster music just doesn't sound convincing with these headphones. Try Karl Verkade's "dreams made of rain" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l8Tq06xuOk) and just bask in the sound. Compared to my HD800S cans, the F7200 is like gazing at a painting before and after cleaning the smudges off my glasses, or the difference between a 3D movie and 2D movie. The textures move backwards and forwards and side to side with the pads and guitar, but never get lost or over complicated.
 
Unfortunately, I couldn't enjoy percussive music at all with the F7200, even music that was "dry" or simple. Animals As Leaders' "Brain Dance" has an incredible progression that develops with the soundscape and calls back to simpler themes as the music complicates itself backwards like a snake in a basket. With my Focal/D'Agostino floorstanding speaker rig, the development was always welcoming, and drew me in. With the F7200, I felt that with every musical layer added, I lost a bit of clarity, and I wished it had stayed put for just a bit longer. My HD800S, in comparison, get more and more engaging as the song progresses. There are some exceptions to this rule, but generally I found the F7200 to lack midbass presence, or when it was there (ear tip selection, postioning etc), it was never compelling or resolute the way a Focal Utopia is.
 
F7200 vs Sonorous VI
    F7200 is for a relaxed, "vinyl" feel, while the Sonorous VI are like party cans. More bass in the F7200, but it is boxier and less airy sounding. Sound stage and extension is very similar. F7200 much better at micro detail and coherency. I would buy the Sonorous VI if I could only buy one, but that is because I am a sucker for atmospheric metal music. A perfect example is Tesseracts saxaphone solo at the end of the scala album, where the F7200 offers an amazing mix of waterfall like rhythms underpinning an intimate sax solo, but the Sonorous VI takes you for a wild ride at a blistering pace down the side of a mountain, with a wailing sax solo oscillating between serenity and mania. For piano music I find that the balanced armature in the F7200 brings an unbelievable realism that the Sonouros VI cannot, simply because the F7200 is so much more coherent and collected between the mids and highs, where the Sonorous VI suffers from a crossover.
 
F7200 vs HD800S
    The F7200 brings much more detail to the table. At high volumes, the HD800S can deliver so much more dynamic range and impact, but never with the finesse that the F7200 can at lower volumes. The HD800S has a narrower soundstage than the F7200. I consider the F7200 soundstage more equivalent to the original HD800. The bass in the HD800S is far rounder and quicker, while the F7200 tends more to a sort of faint thunder sort of bass. For me, I choose the F7200 over the HD800S, since it does every thing I would use the HD800S for, but better. The amount of realism and detail afforded by a good recording is astounding. There is nothing undiscerning about either headphone, but the F7200 has "longer arms" for lack of a better phrase.Of course the HD800S can manage progressive metal better, but I wouldn't use it for Prog Metal anyways.
 
F7200 vs Utopia
    The F7200 is on par with the Utopias for anything above 2kHz, but the Utopias have the versatility of midbass structure that the F7200 simply can't deliver. I'd pick the Utopia over the F7200 for most applications, but the F7200 can offer the experience of classical music with the same depth and detail, but on the go as well, with great sound isolation to boot. However, the Utopias really can do almost anything musically, and I'd overall choose the Utopia cans as long as I didn't need sound isolation. The big idea is that the F7200 really can compete with the Utopias though with simpler classical content.
 
You may notice that I took a picture of the F7200 with my mojo... that was taken the day I got the headphones in JFK airport. I'd like to just go on the record saying that these made the Mojo sound HORRIBLE. In fact, I can't really enjoy the mojo anymore... the F7200 revealed distortion in the bass and smear in the highs that I just can't overlook anymore with normal cans.
 
With my ak120, it was a different story. Less bass, but an overall more inviting sound, oddly enough. The AK240 was a bit too bright for my tastes with the F7200, and I really just enjoyed my Zhang Audio 56K DAC for an honest, simple, portrayal of the music. The Zhang audio always felt boring and stark with my HD800S and Piano Forte VIII, but it gave a wonderfully black backdrop for the F7200 to jump out of.
 
TLR F7200 has an unreal soundstage, immersive and moody handling, and ethereal nuance, on pair with the absolute best. Truly a horrendous set of headphones for rap,edm,rock. Addictive and seductive portrayal of simpler recordings (high quality is a must). Not forgiving, not "fun", but definitely delicate and precise, up there with the absolute best. Driven well, you will be lost like never before in your favorite "chill" music.

Very, very nice headphones; my favorite cans in the 500 to 1500 USD range.
 
- Owned for 6 months, would buy again immediately if I lost them
- I design 100k+ speaker systems for a living, and my ears work good
- Best sound I have enjoyed from headphones PERIOD
 
PRO:
Exceptional Vocal Clarity
Ethereal Open-Back Soundstage (from a proprietary balanced armature)  with Critically Damped Closed-Back Bass 
Very comfortable with B-type cushions
 
CON:
Not a perfect fit for my friends with small heads
Rising HF response does not play well with some (inferior) recordings

I ordered these directly from Michael Brown of US FAD operations, because I wanted the old "Pandora Hope VI" logo and name. I had heard good things from a friend, and I needed a pair of over-ear cans. My previous go-to headphones were the JH Audio Layla headphones. Unfortunately, the CIEMs caused me to get a severe fungal/bacterial infection that ended up rupturing my eardrums and developing a mild brain infection. So the in-ears had to go. To make this transition, I considered the best from Sennheiser, Grado, Sony, Hifiman, the LCD 3s, etc. I wasn't interested in spending an inordinate amount of money on Stax headphones or something that required special amplification beyond what my AK380 can provide. Because I design speakers for a living, I figured I would just design my own headphones before going down too long a rabbit trail. Out of all I had tried, the HD800s had the most realistic reproduction of music in the air around my head, which might even overcome my dislike of openback headphones' characteristic environmental noise bleed. None of the planar headphones I had tried carried the bass properly without bloating around 150-200hz or fizzling below 100hz. All of the closed back designs I had tried left me with something very different than a soundstage... more like a sensation that I had not done the toe-in properly for a set of floorstanding speakers.
 
Unfortunately, to my ears the HD800 has an unreal amount of painfully audible distortion from 5-9kHz that bleeds into the upper transients. In my experience, this is usually due to asymmetrical voice coil loading (the HD800s have a tonality that is so eerily reminiscent of an overdriven BMR from cotswold sound systems). This issue is exacerbated, I believe, by the fact that the HD800s are completely open back. THAT BEING SAID, I know plenty of people who love the sound of the HD800s, and would never part with theirs... but I am a purist, and I want soundstage without cannibalizing the nonlinear characteristics of the headphones. I know from my experience building speakers that odd order harmonics in the fraunhofer region collect to form gradient side nodes that dramatically increase the sensation of a soundstage. This is because sounds which are panned farther to the right or left actually get a small volume boost, while at the same time their origin moves from the farthest edge of the speaker to some place between the edge of the speaker and the gradient side nodes. I would imagine that this same principle dictates that transients in the HF range would receive the most distortion that are panned the most. Since non-linear distortions of compression drivers increase exponentially with respect to the input voltage, the HD800s are able to spread out the sound better across the listening field. If only such a soundstage could be achieved by some mechanism besides distortion...
 
I ordered from Michael, and he said if I wasn't thrilled, I could return them, and that suited me just fine. He did instruct me that his headphones only migrate a maximum of 3% during breaking in for 48 hours, and then less that 1% over the next 3000 hours. From this, I expected the headphones to perform perfectly out of the box. When the arrived, I immediately put on some of my favorite Dream Theater songs... as I was listening, I really got lost in the sound. Immersed that way I have only really experienced with sound systems over 50 grand (on the exceptional low end). When I hit the song "Regression", the headphones just blew me away; I actually took them off to make sure I wasn't hearing in-room reflections. The portrayal of the music was clinical, but not harsh, aggressive, but not unbalanced. After burn-in, I had no complaints, but even before then, the headphones were keepers. For a two-way headphone, FAD sure did their work right. After some listening, I called up Michael and told him what I thought. He answered some of my questions, and was a generally awesome guy. If I have any issues with my headphones, I am confident he will be on my side. 
 
Burn-in is a must. After 2 days of burn-in, the headphones sounded much better. While the headphones were wonderful out of the box, they were a major step down from my JH Laylas, maybe even my JH Roxxanes. The soundstage and LF reach did not change over the break-in period, but the speed of the impulse response in the bass end benefited greatly from the . The high-frequencies got much more aligned to the total tonal character of the headphones. I don't know if there is a simple crossover in the headphones, but I would not be surprised - the headphones reacted to burn in the same way floorstanding speakers do. As we all know, the majority of burn-in has to do with the crossover, whether in the integration of a new driver or cables with their new damping factors. For headphones, balanced armatures do need mechanical burn-in to bring the compliance of the mechanics to an ideal level that matches sensitivity parameters used to model the crossover networks. I am not sure whether the quoted 3% value refers to drivers that FAD has already mounted or whether that includes the crossover network. Burn-in is a measurable necessity. Skip only if you enjoy experiencing the shift in headphone characteristics in person.
 
The ear-pieces swivel a bit, and since the balanced armature is mounted on the inside front of the cup, ear-piece positioning has a significant impact on the perception of the soundstage width, height, and depth. I typically hear headphones as if the frequencies panned the right and left are both lower (vertically) than those panned to the middle. However, if I swivel both cups so that the headphone cable connections are pointing farther forward, the soundstage takes an equal vertical position through the whole listening width. In this orientation, full-orchestrata recordings typically create the illusion of depth away from me as equally moving downwards vertically.