ES-R10 - A reasonably priced Sony R10 clone?

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Has anyone heard these yet? Any impressions?

They're getting excellent reviews over at HF, and the price is pretty competitive. I've always been smitten by the R10 mystique, and this might be the best way to hear what its all about. The relatively modest amping requirement is a bonus.

https://www.eslabhk.com/product-page/es-r10-closed-back-dynamic-headphone

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/es-...ny-r10-replica-discussion-impressions.962569/

 

@Stuff Jones From individuals who I know have listened to the ES-R10, it is not close to the Sony R10 sonically. It does not have nearly the tonality, speed and imaging clarity of the original R10. But this is not to say that the ES-R10 is not a decent pair dynamic headphones at the price, especially for those who listen to pop music a lot. To have an idea of what the Sony R10 sounds like, the best way remains to be finding some head-fi'er who has it and allow you to have a listen. Due to the high prices and uncertain working condition of the Sony, it is too much a risk to buy without trying one first.

 

These are really good, jumped on the wagon about a month ago. I've owned several pairs of R10 in the past and these compete.

 

I asked ESLab about these a while ago and they gave me an FR measurement:


Purple is ES-R10 and pink is OG. I’m not sure what rig they used but the low/mid treble peak was enough to spook me from blind buying. They mentioned the possibility of a tour later this year though which I expressed interest in joining.

 

Finally got my ears on the ES-R10.

Quick summary from someone who hasn't heard the original R10
- Does not sound overtly colored like the Audio Technica W10VTG
- Decent technically, but I need to test it with more amp/dac pairings to really ascertain how good it is in this aspect
- Timbre is great - piano sounds really nice (but I'm not a pianist)
- Bass only reaches ~30Hz, but is surprisingly impactful.
- Soundstage is convincingly 3D and large (as expected).
- Sensitive, actually sounds OK driven directly by the iFi Gryphon's 4.4 mm line out (the MS-Pro did not).
- Is pretty. Build looks and feels fine to me.

 

necro bump. Just wanted to chime in these are pretty darn good sounding to my ears.

Very open sounding - tbh was about as open and spacious as my senn hd800s.

Sounds great with all genres! I am literally blasting jazz to death metal to hip hop to classic rock and pop all within a single listening session.

The last time i would have listened to an OG R10 would have been at a local chicago meet in the mid to late 2000's and 2010's so can't offer a comparison there. If you forced me to, I would say these sound better to my ears, or probably closer to what we used to call back in the day a "bass heavy" R10 (which in reality wasn't truly bass heavy, its just that the condition and age of those things usually meant we were listening to an R10 that had deteroriated to the point of sonic degradation).