V-Moda Crossfade M-80 - Wow!

[quadpatch]

I just got a pair of V-Moda M-80's and have been blown away by the sound quality, especially straight out of the iPhone! The isolation & build quality are really great too but I can't help appreciating the styling... so pretty!

They also scale really well with the DACport. They sound great for everything accept bass-head music so probably not one to replace people's obsession with beats (although the LP2 has more bass I hear). The main reason I wanted to shout about these is that they blew the Sennheiser HD25-1 II's out of the water to my ears and that's quite something!

A couple of negatives though, firstly the cables. You get two: One with 1 button & mic and one with 3 buttons & mic. Neither of these cables displayed music properly to the first 3 devices I pluged them in to (PC motherboard sound output, DACport with headphone adaptor that it came with or my Samsung Galaxy S). I was worried that they were broken but I had experienced this on a 'House of Marley' pair so I kept experimenting. it turns out that it's the mic's fault. For this to work it has 3 separators on the connector and a lot of equipment doesn't know what to do with this. I can fix it by using a different headphone adaptor on the DACport so I am ok but it's rubbish that the M-80's don't come with a normal cable (no mic)! My second gripe is a minor one that I knew I had to accept when I bought them, they sit on the ear and exert quite a bit of pressure causing pain after a while. They are worse than the Sennheiser HD25 but not as bad as the Grado SR80.

Anyway, that's it, just felt like shouting about these things. Maybe this will sway some people who are looking at beats for the looks but don't need the bass punch.

 

[dalethorn]

Some suggestions for your M-80:

OK to bend the headband forward like Tyll shows in his video at Innerfidelity, in case that makes the earcups get a better fit to the angle of your ears. But I suggest not to bend the headband apart, since that would reduce the bass.

I also suggest you try a slight downward adjust on the most noticeable part of the midrange, since that will have a positive effect on the bass and treble. Or maybe after burn-and and whatever physical adjustments you make, you will accomplish the same thing. But the bass is quite good when everything is in place. The M-80 is actually made for bass, since the driver has components specific for bass - not just a single piece for all freq's.

My problem with the cables is when plugging into some headphone amps, the connection was not too good because the amps did not like the Apple-enabled miniplug for some reason. But what got my M-80 sent for repair was the jack in the earcup where the cable goes in. I didn't know for sure, but I tried all 3 cables I had and concluded that the jack had gone bad somehow. I will know more when they fix it.

 

[quadpatch]

Thanks for that Dale. Hope you get yours fixed soon. Did you say you had 3 cables with yours? Did you get one without the mini-plug? Mine only came with 2, both having mini-plugs (mic and button). I should clarify that it's this that gives the bad channels on the audio, I'm not sure if that 3rd connection is for the button/s or the mic, whatever, a lot of devices seem to hate it. For me if a song had vocals they get pushed really far back to an almost inaudible level and the rest of the sound generally feels like it's muted and echoing, pretty bad really. I don't know why they don't just include a straight cable (with no mic or buttons) so it just works. I sent them a mail about that just now.

Other than that issue though these are the best headphones I have ever owned (for the price). I'm curious about the LP2 now as they sit around the ear, I wonder if they stand up to the M-80's audio quality. All I know is they have a more pronouced bass, hopefully without sacrificing too much else. I might see if I can swap my Sennheiser HD25-1 II's for some now that the M-80's have destroyed them for me.

 

[dalethorn]

Vmoda are about to release the M100, which I think will be their best yet. On the cables, it sure sounds like the mic is being activated wrongly by your music player, or something. I never had that problem. The third cable I have I purchased from Vmoda for the additional iPod controls, otherwise same as the first two cables.