Let the pads wear in! (HEDDphone D1)
After a decade of daily driving the HD6XX, I finally decided to bite the bullet on what I was hoping would be a fairly direct upgrade and get a HEDDphone D1. I'll post a more detailed review later, but I just wanted to call something out for everyone who either just got theirs or is considering one: let the pads wear in!
I've seen a lot of different impressions on the treble response on these headphones ranging from too spicy to too dark to both at the same time and I think this is due to how sensitive these headphones are to driver placement. I think Resolve and Super Review both mentioned something along the lines of these being quite bright on some heads with fresh pads, and I agree. If you've ever swapped to fresh pads on an HD6X0 and found the sound suddenly much brighter and somewhat peaky in the treble, this is largely the same issue but with sharper peaks in different frequency ranges.
When I first tried these on, my first impressions were "these sound really normal" followed shortly by "this treble is quite spicy". I heard very pronounced peaks at 5-6khz and 10-11khz that resulted in a high sibilant, fizzy, overly sharped treble response that started to give me headaches within a few minutes of listening. After a week of keeping wearing these for fairly long periods of time + leaving the pads under a macbook over a couple nights (not sure how much this helped), I now find the treble response fairly close to my HD6XX.
The difference is so noticeable that during the first couple of days I found the sound noticeably less fatiguing at the end of a long session than at the beginning. Yes part of that is getting used to the sound, but I've been A/Bing with my Senns fairly regularly and the difference is very noticeable. Plus I don't think becoming less fatigued in the same session is just placebo, especially when ears were getting physically sore at this point.
I also installed a Capra Strap recently found that helps a bit, as it makes centering the driver on my ear much easier than with the stock headband, which has very little give. My ideal size on the stock headband is halfway between 2 of the notches, so I was moving between 2 settings regularly and noticing the effects of this on the sound as well. The improved comfort certainly helps with fatigue as well.
Now that things have started to stabilize, I would say this: If you're used to brighter headphones like Beyers or Hifimans, these will be dark in comparison. If you're like me and accustomed to the HD6X0 sound on worn pads, these will be a more trebly overall, but with a different shape.