About the sound
In essence, I wanted a listening experience where nothing bothers you, but you still hear everything and in the right proportions.
I’ve kept the open midrange of the SR, but made it smoother. I have extended the highs up and, in general, removed that “information overload” feeling that SR’s tend to have for some people.
Basically, no information is lost, but what is gained is a sense of refinement. That helped in the feeling of “being there" that SR's excel at.
Magna is like refining the SR's mid-high and continuing linearly all the way down. Very neutral sound. Very much up the alley of SR aficionados.
But with bass that is better textured and deeper than with CA's.
With Immanis, I have used the extra surface area of the driver and tuned the <1kHz region to a full, big sound with a bass to match, so I added weight and punch.
I wanted some added richness in low-mid/upper bass, but with taste, nothing overwhelming. Just to give the right body to an orchestra or a choir.
As with Magna, CA-kind of bass only resembles this, but not really a good comparison.
The SR-like “edge” feels softer, but not because it really is, but because there is a <1k region to enlarge the body of the sound. If the edge would be missing, with the new tone balance, I would loose life-like presentation and the sense of refinement.
I don’t want a choir to be dull, I want to count rows, but I also want the basses, baritones and altos to have a full presence.
The difference between M and I is perhaps like listening to high-end speakers, one large floorstander with 15" woofer, the other also a floorstander, but up to 70l of volume.
They are both correct, only the bigger one sounds bigger.
The staging is quite good for a circum-aural. It goes beyond that, as now I have a large leakage zone right in front of the ear canal.
Basically, the front is open to space and that cleans up the earpad chamber reverb in front of your ear-canal. It also allows leakage of sound toward the other ear much better than when I place that leakage zone behind the ear. What I got is a sense of “spaciousness” in sound and that sense is more pronounced in Immanis.
I can listen to Classical music on either of these for 2 hours with no fatigue, yet, no information is lost, it is just presented in a different context.
With Pop, Rock, it depends on the volume and how much compression they used in mastering. For example, I can listen "Dance Fever" album by Florence+ The Machine for 2 times in a row, or my Mark Knopfler playlist for hours, but constant noise than never relieves with compressed Metal or Rock, erh...makes me look for other genres after an album.
With poorer recordings, you sure know it’s a poorer recording, but that won’t make it unlistenable. You will listen to it till the end, because of reduction of problematic areas in headphones.
Now problems in headphones do not compound with problems in recordings. It’s not because I’m reducing information, I’m just presenting it in a better way than before, I think.
