ETA Genesis 1.1 Impressions

My gen g is finally applied with new foam rings, new grills, and new pads (thus sonically 'almost new'). Furthermore I put a cheap headband cover to distribute pressure on head crown better. Nothing too dramatically changed. But I found tiny or even micro delta in almost every treble evaluation criterion.

From here I have tons of options and ways to further dial in. Plugs, blue foam rings, etc etc. But at least for now I am NOT motivated enough to sacrifice music listening time.

Listening with GG has been a big pleasure for my use cases. In particular, I like how GG resolve dynamics and details in female vocal tracks. Some songs I often listen to are sung by a group of girls (say, N people). GG offers me enough surgical ability to disassemble K similar voices into an unit I want to hear. I can not only immediately know who are singing now (i.e., how K chosen out of N) but also hear each singer (out of K) separately focusing on individual vocal techniques. This is one of areas my HD650 Kiss couldn't do for me. They somewhat analyze but not in the way my poor ears can easily recognize. With GG, I don't have to push my brain as hard as I do with 650. Everything heard with good separation from the beginning even in the most complicated mix. Headphones survived in my place all can do this. GG is no slouch compared to any survivors I own. I don't doubt GG would also survive and add to my collection list.

 

Well, my motto is... to not do anything destructive unless I absolutely cannot help it. So I didn't do that.

What I did try was to put a front filter layer in front of the driver following the blue foam. Pics:

GenG without front filter:


With front filter:


This front filter is the speaker filter cloth material that can be found fairly easily on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HMBKNSS/

And here's what it does to the frequency response:



Look, ma, it actually is pretty darn close to HD650:


This kind of reduces the treble spike, makes it more... tolerable to my ears, which in turns helps the headphone sounding slightly warmer, less "upward tilted" like the original config with just blue foam.

I think this is the closest to Sennheiser midrange. HD650 is still just a tiny little bit warmer, but it's not significantly so. I'd be okay with GenG like this no matter the source.

Edit: bonus, just FR alone of GenG with the front filter:


^ this may be right up some folks' alley... if they can tell what my measurement system is doing. I think this is just about... 1.5dB shy of being "perfect" to me.