HBen
500+ Head-Fier
After seeing Sonoma in Munich this year, I have to say that this is an exceptionally well-made product. It screamed quality in this regard undoubtedly. And it sounded quite balanced, though noisy MOC environment wasn't helpful at all..
I also heard and saw the Sonoma at Munich this year ... quite different impression apart from the noise issue in the MOC hall ^^:
Impressions were very mixed to say the least:
- Judging the music quality was difficult during show conditions. Sonoma had a quieter corner of the hall but still quite not quiet enough. As far as I could grasp I didn't feel like that this system would top a proper HD800 or Stax-Setup ...
- The amplifier was well made and looked decent - pretty small for a DAC/Amp after all. At the booth you were able to look at the electronics inside ... looked like not very much hardware in there. Not judging by this anyway ... just something I was surprised by.
- Another propietary connector ... thought "doesn't the world have enough plugs and cables that don't match already". Well you'll never be able to plug this headphone into any other amplifier than the one in the package ...
- Biggest turn off to me was the build quality of the headphones and the fit (clamping pressure). The Headphone felt pretty cheaply made, lots of plastic. The fit was pretty tight and high pressure - kind of like a HD600 new out of the box - without velour pads though. The build kind of made me think of the HE60 if that tells something ...
- Talked to two guys at the sonoma booth in the MOC-hall who were there doing marketing for the sonoma system ... they basically told me they knew nothing about the headphone system apart from what's in the brochure and were just here for "marketing" purposes ... which was kind of a let down. Maybe important to mention that sonoma had the biggest, most well set up, most organized and surely most expensive booth of all retailers at the MOC in Munich with severall separate listening stations, lots of glossy brochures and so on - so a pretty big marketing effort was made after all ...
Other booths like Abyss had some headphone engineers or higher up employees of the respective companies at the show that were actually interesting to talk to and knew something about their products apart from specs and marketing lines printed on glossy paper.
So that point didn't leave a very good impression as well.
After all I wasn't very excited when I left - rather kind of disppointed.
In short: seems like not my cup of tea ...
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