i need to come online quickly post a reassessment of these phones.

when i first put them on, i realized they fit a little oddly but figured i'd get used to it. i walked around and did groceries and thought they sounded great - although they had an exaggerated bottom. when i took them home, that bottom got very muddy. i was sitting upwards the whole time i was testing them. i noticed that they seemed to fit my ears better if i twisted them forward, so the headband was on my forehead, or if i flipped the stereo around. i kind of concluded it was probably a factory defect, and they were meant to have the l and r on opposite sides - although they were wired correctly relative to the labels. i was getting a little remorse.

see, i got a $150 pair of headphones because i was hoping i could use them as a back up studio monitor. the testing i was doing suggested to me that this was a bad decision, and, worse, i'd have to flip the stereo to use them as walking phones. yuck, right.

i eventually got the idea tonight to lie down as i was listening to my 2001 record and everything immediately snapped into place. see, when you're lying down, you want to push the phones forward a little - the headband comes up on your forehead. so, the cups on the phones snapped in and the exaggerated bass disappeared.

so, it's almost like these phones have two settings. as walking phones, the bass is really pretty crazy. as lying down phones, they really balance out and actually sound very nice - not as nice as my very flat 440-IIs, but certainly an upgrade over my last pair of walking phones.

that's something that might be useful to point out about this model. these are sennheiser hd-449s. if you want them reasonably flat, you really have to listen to them lying down.

i'm going to try and mix with them tomorrow to see what happens. if i can use these as stereo backups, i will probably keep them solely for stereo backups and get a pair of $60 phones for walking that don't have these oval, noise isolation pads.