Nice review, I love these phones. I have a balanced cable coming in tomorrow; can't wait to check that out since my phone dongle doesn't drive these very well in single ended.

Hope it will be a lot of fun! I also should get a balanced cable, most dongles are made to sound better over balanced, guess they managed to convice us to join the new standard

Yep, turns out the balanced cable gives this setup with the TC44C just the little extra boost I needed with these phones. Didn't sound the best running flat out on single ended.

As a mix engineer (music, mostly metal), I'm studying the product page and the embedded video on these. It seems like they're designed to hit a target curve optimized for mixing in the Dolby-certified world, i.e. for multichannel film audio mixing.

I'm very keen to find the perfect headphones for mixing music - something that will reveal all details in the mix, even down to 20 Hz, accurate transient reproduction, while having a curve that facilitates mixes that will translate well. In other words, something that doesn't have exaggerated highs and lows, because then my mixes will be too flat. I was hoping these might be something to explore to this end, but it seems they're not really designed with mixing music in mind.

>ransient reproduction, while having a curve that facilitates mixes that will translate well. In other words, something that doesn't have exaggerated highs and lows, because then my mixes will be too flat. I was hoping these might be something to explore to this end, but it seems they're not re

WEll, those ones would theoretically have what you need, but the midrnage is somewhat thicker than what I consider perfectly neutral / spot on tonally, that may be visible in your mixes, which may end up sounding thinner, for you trying to get a perfectly balanced mix.

​

S5X has perfectly fine treble and bass, like really nice, but that extra bit of thickness is audible. It is not like beats, or other commercial headphones bad, but it exists.

Well I spent almost three months with these and i gotta say they have grown immensely on me. I come from medium & high end headphones but the design, flat fr curve and overall purpose for mixing really got my attention. I have to state that I really love Ollo as a company. They have the nicest customer service and they stand behind values I really like for the music industry. The packaging was pretty nice and environment conscious. Out of the box they were one of the most comfortable headphones I've ever had. I needed to bend the metal band a bit for a better clamp though, because it was a bit too loose on my head. Now for the overall sound impressions:

Even though i really appreciated the perfect stereo imaging and clarity from the very beginning, at first they sounded dull and boring to my ears for enjoying music. I had not ever heard such flat headphones and I guess I was spoiled by coloring and eq tricks. Since back then I was only listening to music for pleasure I barely used them after the first two days, opting instead for higher end headphones. Thing is after a couple of weeks I gave them another go and I realized how incredibly clean, natural and well articulated the sound truly was. I started to appreciate this flat sound signature a lot. It's not as passionate (colored) as audiophile aimed headphones but you get a perfect, natural studio sound that grows on you over time (it definitely did on me). It's so relaxing... The drums sound real-life like, as natural as you can get. They're definitely on the clinical listening group of headphones, yet there is still a bit of warmth and the detail doesn't get in the way of enjoying the music once you get accustomed. I guess these are an acquired taste for listening purposes but for me they are the new best hp under 500$. Shure 1540 are my second pick probably. These are the equivalent of ordering a steak at a restaurant and receiving a raw piece of organic, pasture raised steak. No sauce, no cooking, just a perfect raw steak, and since I really like raw meat...