Related Q: Where in the fuck do you even get a Questyle CAS192 these days? They have no U.S. distributor and seem to have become borderline unobtainium in the states as of late. I hunted around a bit for one when I was looking for a balanced WM8741 alternative and came up empty.

I had a chance to demo a previous iteration of the Omnis where Zach was still working out the damping scheme. The models he had at the meet were substantially ahead of the ones I heard previously. I felt like top to bottom coherence of mids/treble/bass was lacking in the previous iteration. On my TransDAC > Project Ember setup at Zachs, I thought I heard a major problem on one model in the transition in upper bass to lower mids with my own test tracks and on Zach’s Violectric/EAD setup. This problem was no longer present at the meet.

Zach had his EAD/V281 rig hooked up to a laptop using Tidal – that gave me access to a number of familiar test tracks. General notes, starting with the positives:

1.   Crisp and correct string attacks on acoustic folk and alternative tracks (Iron & Wine, Jose Gonzales). Instrument timbre seemed spot on across the board.

2.   Crash cymbals had the appropriate amount of sibilance – not too much, but also not not present (The Who, Baba O’Reilly). I’ve found that “sibilance” with many reviewers has come to mean the exact same thing as “sibilance issues” – for example, the hot 6k area on the HD25/Amperior. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m also not talking about elevated sibilance that comes from problem recordings – though I’ll get to that in a second. I’m talking about the natural presence of sibilants (the fucking ‘S’ sound) inherent in certain instruments and the human voice. Cymbal decay was appropriate and accurate.

3.   The Omni’s sound more open and spacious than any other T50rp mod that I’ve heard (Fleet Foxes). The only real competitor in this metric is the Paradox Slants, which stages extremely well and which may have slightly more precise instrument separation and overall imaging. The Omnis still sound more open.

4.   Zach’s done a great job making the Omnis open and airy without making them limp dick. The Omnis sound energetic for electronic music (Daft Punk, various off of R.A.M. but of course “Get Lucky” and “Giorgio by Moroder”) and hit hard when they need to for rock music (Rush, Danzig, Rage Against The Machine).

5.   Vocals on the Omni had a sweetness emphasis that made them great for listening to vocalist-centered pop music. By “pop music”, I don’t mean dance pop or pop rock, but the entire scope of modern genres that place one or more vocalists as focal point, from barbershop acapella to nerdcore hip hop like Cool Keith or Deltron 3030. Neil Finn on tracks like “Distant Sun” and “Throw Your Arms Around Me” (and other various tracks from Crowded House, Farewell to the World) had the appropriate gradient of effort and relaxation in his voice. John McCrea (Cake) sounds correctly monotone – but not affectless, still present and full. Lauren Hill on The Score sounds at the same time chesty and ethereal. It’s difficult for a headphone to do all of these well.

Other stuff. As with all of this, YMMV, subjective listening, stuff and things qualifiers:

1.   Product Variation: I only got to hear cherry and walnut models.

Q: I don’t believe there was a Blackwood-cupped Omni there? If there was, I didn’t get to hear it.

While the sound of each unit was extremely similar, one model - which had mismatched pads - had a couple slight variations from the others.  I want to make it clear that these are tiny differences. Pretty well things that fall well within manufacturing tolerances for any headphone manufacturer. It had a midrange that was ever so slightly more forward than the others. It also had a slightly higher vocal sibilance range elevation that was audible on poorly recorded tracks. I use Sixo Rodriguez’s “Cause” from Coming From Reality as a test track for this; it’s a fantastic song that, due to poor recording, sounds like the audio equivalent of sandpaper. Talking with Zach after comparison listening, and having him take a comparison listen as well, he noted that he could hear a difference. We talked about three possible causes for this variance: the mismatched pads could have caused it; the difference in wood could have caused it; the t50rp’s drivers have documented product variance that also could have caused it. If you listen to poorly recorded music, this is something to think about. Zach offers a free retune and you might want to take advantage of that if you find your pair too hot in that area.

2.   I really liked the Omni. My personal favorite in Zach’s lineup is still the Blackwood though. The Blackwoods have two strengths that, despite sounding more closed, being slightly less tonally neutral than the Omni, and having worse staging, would make me choose them over the Omni. To my ears, the Blackwoods still seem to sound slightly clearer and cleaner than the Omnis. The Blackwoods also have a type of wood cup reverb that contributes to a sense of depth that I didn’t hear with the walnut or cherry Omnis. I’m not sure if a Blackwood-cupped Omni would have these qualities or not.