Pro's:
Very comfortable
detachable cable
folds up nicely
feels high quality
clarity in the high-mids
makes a bad mix sound bad
Cons:
Makes a good mix sound bad
huge frequency bumb in the high mids
uneven/strange soundstage
a far less expensive headphone can give you a more accurate mix
the sound is not representative of the actual mix and recording.
First impression:
The Hi-X55’s are MUCH more comfortable than my Sennheiser HD-25’s. Very nice.
I’ll be using these for tracking in my home studio so I need to be able to move around, have little or no bleed, and have an honest sound reference. I need to trust them while getting sounds.
I Like that they have a long cable. Great for tracking.
I like that the cable jack is on the left. My rack is on the left. Perfect. They are lightweight. Nice.
Sound: My first impression is that vocals on songs that I know well are unnaturally boosted. More than I’ve heard before in a headphone. Also the sound stage is noticeably narrow. More like a triangle right in front of my face rather than a full left to right stereo image.
I plug into my RME Fireface UFX and listen to “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes” recorded by John Brion with Beck singing. A well recorded, super clean song with all the components of a good reference track.
I’ve listened to this track as a reference, over the years on multiple speakers, in high end studios, in venues, in my car, on my Audeze LCD-X headphones, My Neumann speakers, my Auratone speakers, and my pair of Sennheiser HD-25 tracking phones. I know how this song sounds in the world.
With the Hi-X55 headphones the song sounds “different” I suddenly hear the acoustic guitar sounds like plastic, the vocal harmonies seem to over-power the main vocal in the chours. I hear things I’ve never heard before in the song, it’s true, but the sound signature is “wrong”.
The song does not sound this way anywhere else except in the Hi-X55. That, in my opinion, is bad. On all other reference devices listed above, the ears focus on certain parts of the mix in the same way. The song makes sense. With the Hi-X55’s it’s a different tilt, a different intention, a different feel, another angle. It just sounds “off”. Hard to explain, but what I want most is the truth so I can apply that to finding sounds that are honest while I’m recording or listening back to a song.
My first impression is I can’t do that with the Hi-X55 headphones.
I bought these because in multiple reviews they were called “flat” and “neutral” sounding heaphones. I can 100% tell you right now these are NOT FLAT headphones. There is a easily noticable bump in the high-mid frequencies around the area of the voice, snare, etc.
When I apply some eq in “Total Mix” things start to sound better. That’s a good sign, but if I have to eq them to get them to sound right why not buy a much less expensive set of headhones?
I would say they are not usable as mixing headphones because their peculiar sound signature is not representative of the true sound of the song.
I put them up against the Beyerdynamic DT-770 Pro 80 Ohm The Beyer sounds better and is a more accurate reference headphone. The Beyer is a little less comfortable, has about the same amount of bleed, has the same size cable on the same side (non-detachable) and is half the price of the Hi-X55. Goodbye Austrian Audio, Hello Beyer!
