Tubes certainly make a big difference in sound compared to solid state, but for me personally it's a negative one with the HD650 (not considering very high-end tube amps or hybrids that might be better). The tubes I've experience (Little Dot Mk3 and similar) added the missing bass, but made the sound really messy, boomy and technically weak. A preference thing for sure, but I hated it. Instead I do EQ to keep all the good and fix almost all the bad.

That's how it is. A clean well measuring amp/dac at any price range does pretty much what another clean and well measuring dac/amp. Output power changes, feel of the knobs, but sound differences usually come from coloration and distortion which many might prefer and might fit certain headphones very well, but that's purely personal preference and imo can't be considered a good worthwhile thing in general.

In my experience speakers are very different in this sense. I wouldn't pay a penny extra for headphone amps as long as I get enough of clean power, but with speakers I'd much rather take many amp = 2-3 times the price of the speakers than the other way around.

Technicalities are perceived elements of sound that are all effected by the frequency response (some perhaps are mostly related to tuning) and likely no single measurement can capture any of them. Our brains translate the combination of various sound elements into musical elements so we talk of slam, soundstage, detail etc because those are what we care about and understand. People also mean vastly different things with the same words and differ in what is good or bad even if they mean the same thing. FR is a huge thing, bigger than the average hobbyist thinks I believe, but there are meaningful things beyond that. This is where I'm at for now.

The best ad for these would be a French lady enjoying them in a bath, but I suspect Focal is too serious and dry for that. Just like their headphones.

I used my own setup and had no issues with other headphones. I tested a few and it's not impossible I just had hearing fatigue. I wonder what I tested before them if my ears got really sensitive. I test headphones with slightly louder volumes than I would use them with. Need to go test them again some day.

I wonder why I hated the Radiance and Stellia when I tested them some months ago. What people and reviews say seems usually different to what I experienced so I wonder if they were somehow faulty or if my ears had some momentary sensitivity or I had bad seal. They were really bright with weak bass.

I don't mind it. There needs to be some light telling you the modes etc so why not a fancy one. It's a bit over the top, but you can always turn it off.

Can't really say. Felt fine. They're pretty light so the construction is likely different and durability is likely more important on this kind of headphone. Probably only time will tell.

325kbps it says for aptX.

I dunno, basic bluetooth? aptXTM it says.

Yeah, I think the current price is perfectly decent, but $500 would be very competitive.

Yeah, closed back. Didn't have time to really try anything more beyond initial sound quality. I don't much care for ANC anyway due to the SQ issues it usually causes. Passive isolation has been almost abandoned by consumer BT headphones and that's horrible design aiming to impress the buyer by making the product worse to then show how much it improves with ANC. XM5's are the worst in this way I've come across yet.

If your use case allows for the XS equally then they're probably the better choice. I have a pair in the mail so I'll do a review soonish.

I had only 10 minutes to test the Bathys, but I'm very impressed with the tuning and technicality. This is the first bluetooth headphone that I've felt wasn't a complete compromise in design and soundwise very overpriced. I liked them more than Focals usually. Clear MG/OG and Utopia sound good without EQ, but for me these come after those and far ahead of Celestee, Stellia etc. I've heard that they excel in wired use as well and the BT tonality (assuming they are different) is very good already. Really rough metal sounded perfectly clear and vocal jazz was lovely. I might need to get a pair. I'll go try them for a an hour or two and do a review asap.

Many simply dislike wearing IEMs. They haven't been particularly good until relatively recently and the user base is growing. Headphones need EQ most of the time compared to IEM's, but still I prefer the feel, soundstage and openness of headphones for many use cases. If budget is very limited then IEMs are often certainly the better option for sound quality.

Speakers (in a good space) are much easier to tune and thus sound good. Different use case. EQ is room treatment for headphones in a way and not doing it leaves a lot to of potential unused.

The bitrate is usually irrelevant to the reproduction quality of the headphone. 192kbps MP3 is not the biggest bottleneck with a Susvara or LCD-5 and the difference between that and lossless can be heard with some $50 headphones. Good headphones sound good (and better than less good headphones) even with poor quality files (128kbps and below). The sound quality difference between an excellent and good headphone stays about the exact same regardless if you use Spotify or DSD512.

For general fomo reasons I recommend 320kbps MP3 or lossless, but in most situations standard streaming is perfectly fine for almost anything.

Yeah, it's the sound, not the design type. 770 really benefits from (read needs) EQ.

There's a lot more bass, upper bass and lower mids in the 599's so you are used to a very different tuning. I would certainly prefer the 599, but I'd recommend using them a week or two and then compare again to the 555. EQ would do wonders, but the source should be a PC.

There is no technical aspect that tonality doesn't change the perception of. For many the tuning is the biggest part.

People often use neutral to say flat and boring sounding. What is their reference point also makes it impossible to say if it's a complaint about an HD600 or something that's a flat line with almost nothing below 200Hz or above 10kHz. I feel somewhat similarly about the Sony 1000-series headphones that they succeed in sounding like they're missing a bit of everything everything.