I had a chance to hear the Edition 15 at the Fujiya Avic Tokyo Headphone Festival this past weekend, and I was very impressed. While I agree that some Ultrasone models can be polarizing, my first impressions suggest the Edition 15 will have broader appeal than perhaps any high-end model Ultrasone has released so far.
My first impression was that the Ultrasone Edition 15 had a very nice balance across the audio spectrum, and sound that breathed quite freely, openly -- I didn't feel like I was hearing any of the hemmed-in effects of the enclosure like some implementations of their S-Logic platform can do (for me). Maybe this Ultrasone platform (at least somewhat related to the Edition 5, from what I can tell) is ideally suited for an open-back design. Maybe it's the new driver. Maybe it's the new velour pads. Probably it's all of these (and other) things.
By the way, the Edition 15 sounded
substantially better to my ears with the velour pads than with the Ethiopian longhair sheep leather earpads. This was a bit of a bummer to me, as that Ethiopian longhair sheep leather they're using on those earpads is of
otherworldly quality and feel -- if you've felt them (like on the Edition 5, Edition 8EX, or Tribute 7) you know what I mean. Later in the show, I came back to visit the Ultrasone exhibit with a gentleman from another headphone manufacturer, and he was asking the Ultrasone team about that leather, as he said he'd never felt any leather with that kind of perfectly uniform supple hand before. Ah well, it's the
velours that I'll be listening to with the Edition 15, and with those velours I think they may have their best sounding headphone to date.
With the leather pads, the Edition 15's tonal balance took on a bass-heavier tilt and imparted some of the enclosure effect -- in other words, it wasn't as balanced tonally, and it didn't breathe as freely and openly as with the velours.
The Edition 7 / Tribute 7 had been my favorite Ultrasone models, but I'll be rushing to hear the Edition 15 at the next possible opportunity.
One last thing, and this is usually of very minor importance to me: The Edition 15 is also a gorgeous headphone to look at, and my photos below don't do justice to the design and build quality (click on the photos to see larger sizes):
