ATH-W1000 with Velvet earpads

I changed the earpads of my ATH-W1000 headphone from the artificial leather that came with it to velvet today.

The W1000's artificial leather earpads are actually have good quality and quite comfortable to wear. I didn't aware of it being artificial leather at all at the beginning until I carefully re-read the headphone spec. However, for my personal matter, I just prefer velvet as they are bits more comfortable for long listening (yeah, I'm listening with W1000 a lot).

Here are some before & after photo:

Well, being honest, the artificial leather looks better and make the whole thing looks more luxury. But it doesn't matter as look has nothing to do with comfort (apart from some psychological reasons). The downside of velvet, on the other hand, is heat. So in the very hot days I will probably change it back to the artificial leather. Oh, well, I might prefer changing it back to the leather when I'm showing it off to my freinds too ;-)

And no, I didn't pay for the velvet pads. The ATH-AD700 I bought for my girlfriend has the velvet pads and it came with a pair of replacement pads inside the box (some sort of limited extra bonus from Yodobashi-camera or Audio-Technica itself, I'm not sure), so I'm using that pair. It's a bit bigger than the W1000's leather pads, just a bit, and I have no problem putting them on.

One more thing ...

I'm now thinking ...... hard ... very hard actually ... on one thing. I'm really satisfy with my W1000, as I said in my previous blog entry that I reviewed my head/earphones ... however, it might be nice to have an open-air headphone, too. After all, I like Sennheiser HD650 with my few experiences with it in the audio shops. HD650 is obviously one of the best headphones in its price range (so, don't start talking/comparing apple-to-orange, no Sony R10, ATH-L3000, Stax Omega II here!).

So ... I'm thinking hard about ATH-AD1000 (since I won't have money for the flagship ATH-AD2000, which cost as twice as much ... but according to what I read ... it sounds much better).

Wait a minute, I said I like Senn HD650, right? So why don't I just buy it? ... Well, compared to Senn, ATH's line are much easier to drive, even from portable devices. And while HD650 would beat AD1000, it's not an easy win; they are rather competitive (personal preference & taste here ... you might think either is far better than another one, fine with me).

Another important reason is: build quality. I kinda like Audio-Technica products for the build quality, of the mid-level products and above at least. (I know, they make crap cheap products, too). For the same price range and comparable sound quality, Audio-Technica's products often offer better build quality than others.

Last reason.... I'm going back to Thailand pretty soon, and I don't know when I'm coming back to Japan again. While you can find Senn, Sony, Grado, Koss ... etc's headphones (and other well-known brands that also make headphones, like Pioneer, Philips) in Thailand, .... you can't find the Audio-Technica.