Having a terrible time formatting this review on my phone so my apologies in advance, but title says it all—ordered the more expensive teak version, received the bamboo version.
UPDATE: Customer service sent another shipment to me a day after my initial review; if it ends up being the right product I’ll update my review appropriately.
The sound quality of these headphones is great. unfortunately, a lot of poor decisionmaking went into the design and build. The cords have no affordance to twist or move, and but constantly find ways to get caught on clothing. I'm not looking forward to having to repair these in the near future. There's minor issues with mechanical noise, quality of the namesake wood, limited adjustability, and stitching throughout that I really did not expect at this price point.
Be warned: THESE CANNOT BE RETURNED
In my opinion and very modestly, these are the best headphones in the world . They are basically the revised version of Fostex TH-900 which I really really like, Took everything that was good in the 900, only without the side effects of the 900 - makes the E-MU Teak the perfect headphones for my ears... end game! Very suitable for professional work such as production, mixing, mastering It's simple to listen music in full range system and high sound quality and high performance.
A little background pls - I had headphones like hd598 hd800, hd25, Audeze lcd-x Ultrastone, akg 271 and I listened to so many types some of them are very expensive.
In Teak there is no need for any eq correction, they come balanced FR. Fast drivers, very high resolution and detailed. beautiful stage and image . Crazy FTB, comfort. nice look
No special amplifier is needed.
cheap.
what else?!
And you really don't need more than that
Yossi
Saw reviews of these that said how good they were and I was skeptical. I hadn't really spent this much on wired headphones, but I figured it was time to treat myself. Well worth it. Good clarity, even when cranked, I heard things in songs I'd never noticed before. Everything sounded full without being muddy. Definitely recommend these. Only negative is that shipping and customs for Canada added a lot to the final price. Still cheaper than the comparable Fostex or Denon's here, though.
I'm a closed back type of listener, so I bought these on a recommendation as I usually prefer to use my Beyerdynamic DT 1770 Pros all the time. I was pretty impressed with the sound overall - they have a great soundstage, very warm and you can hear the slightest sharp tones very clearly. They are not bass cans by any means. They look and feel great, however, the two things that make me consistently go back to the Beyerdynamics are:
1) Ear Pads constantly fall off - can't say this enough but it's a pain to pick them up and pop goes the ear pads. It's very frustrating for headphones at this price point. If anyone has any other suggestions for ear pad replacements - I'm all ears.
2) You cannot replace the cables - you are forever stuck with factory cables which is again a limiting factor at this price point.
All in all, they are great sounding if you can live with paying such a price for the issues described above.
Looks amazing, sound quality is fine. Left padded ear cup fell off after a day or two. Getting it back on is a bit hard as you need to twist the soft ear cup. Also the covering on the ear pad started to come out. I’ve only worn these for maybe 8-10 hours so falling apart already is not cool for something at this price point.
These E-Mu's are a noticeable upgrade from my Audio-Technica ATH-M50x
I'm not (yet) an audiophile and lack the vocabulary to describe these in fancy terms. I'm sure, like most things, there'll be a point of diminishing returns with gear and cost. Going from < $200 headphones to these $400-500 ones is definitely an improvement. Would going from $500 to $1000 headphones be a worthwhile improvement? I don't know. After buying these headphones, I now want to make some speaker upgrades and am happy with these E-mus. Stupid, expensive hobbies.
They sound noticeably better than the headphone they're replacing, Audio-Technica ath-m50x.
Music is much fuller, immersive, clear. There's more stuff to hear in the audio, it seems.
They're not as tight and sit more comfortable than the ath-m50x, especially around the ears.
Don't get me wrong, the bass response is solid throughout. If you read the reviews they make it seem like the bass is god like. I read a ton of reviews and it left me with unobtainable expectations. For the first week or so I was extremely disappointed as I was expecting some crazy hard hitting bass. I did immediately EQ'd with the autoEQ recommended curve and the results were significantly better. I did boost the bass a little over the recommendations. I listened to them for about 2 hours per day for about a week and was underwhelmed. However, once I went back to my hd8xx's I realized that I was taking the teaks bass response for granted. They don't have an overwhelming heavy punch but they do have a very clean analytical bass. I bought them strictly for listening to bass heavy music.... IE hip hop, house, dubstep...etc. treble and detail are not exemplary but for closed back headphones I would say it's about as good as you can get with a sub $500 pair of cans. If you are thinking about buying these your first upgrade from the $150-$250 range than I would recommend going with the sundaras for an all around headphone but if you have some higher quality headphones already and are just looking for bassy headphone than I'd pick these up. Just don't expect a crazy heavy hitting bass but instead enjoy the cleanliness. These are not daily drivers. They are good at one thing. Clean, crisp, not overpowering bass.
Headphones I own: Senn HD58X Jubilee, Denon AH-D5200, Beyer DT880&990(600ohm), DT770(80ohm), Fidelio X2HR, Audio-Technica M50x, Senn HD25-1-II (and a few more). Used to own the Denon AH-D2000 and Senn HD650.
...and now I own the Teaks. And they sound the best out of all the headphones I now own or used to own. A very nice "liquid" sound. Tons of bass that reaches very deep and is punchy as hell. Natural warmish mids. Smooth, slightly laid-back but still detailed treble that sounds very natural and lacks any sort of distortion or un-naturalness. Generally the sound is very dynamic and slightly on the darker side due to the high amount of bass. I like them very, very much.
Excellent comfort. And they look beautiful. Love them!
dexxtHey, just read through your review! I have had the emu Rosewood edition for many years now and can say that with those cups, they hit super hard! I don't know if you can still do it, but in the past, I had messaged Chan (the builder of the cups) about replacements, as I had actually wanted to try out the Teaks. He responded quite quickly and had a lot of optional cups available, so that could be a solution for you. I think if you look up e-mu headphones, you will be able to find his contact info online (or maybe drop can provide it if you can't find it).
I had also found a thread at one point as well, where someone had done a comparison of multiple cups and written lengthy reviews of them. If I recall, the Ebony cups were the bassiest and Rosewood were more in the middle. I hope this helps, I still have mine and do not regret the purchase!