Panasonic RP-HTF890-S Studio Monitor

 (4 customer reviews)

I've owned these for almost a month and they sound awesome. By default settings the headphones seem to be a little lighter on the bass side for me and do not provide much sound isolation at all because they are open air type. A benefit to the open air type is the clarity and seemingly less listening fatigue over longer periods of time. They are comfortable and large (go over the ears) and the cord is durable, thick, doesn't tangle easily due to its outer coating. The headband doesn't seem as durable as the headphones I owned before (RP-HT722) but this is just a part of the aesthetics/design for the free-adjusting/lightweight style: [...] The RP-HT722's lasted me over 5 years.
As for the sound, these have superb range and clarity, especially on the mids and highs. If your input or media player is capable of amplification/tweaks like boost bass frequencies/equalizer or even a headphone amplifier, you can achieve more emphasis on bass if you desire. It has a 50 mm driver unit...Read more

In both the pictures and in person these headphones look very nice. The initial impression of the build quality combined with the styling makes you think that these are indeed for high end equipment as the specifications say, however I disagree.

Driving them with either a Burr Brown DSD1791 DAC (through an Onkyo receiver) via analog or via the Onkyo DAC (CS42518, not as good) in the receiver via optical the three largest issues are:

1) Far too much high frequencies.
2) Very fatiguing highs as if the highs have a sharp (and too high) frequency response peak, not just a general boost of highs.
3) Very weak bass. Audio product specification are notoriously "embellished" but saying these are 5 Hz to 30 kHz is going too far. (Especially if you compare them to the 5 Hz to 35 kHz rated ATH-A700.)

These are simply too fatiguing in the highs and too imbalanced (low bass and too high highs) to enjoy. In fact I did not want to listen to a whole CD but I...Read more

I got these at a great discount, and I'm very pleased with them. The sound range is impressive enough, and I can certainly make the difference between these and average 20-20K Hz headphones. After several days daily use, I can only say these have made me realize how a poor format choice for audio can be more detrimental than poor hardware (upgrading music library to .flac from .mp3). Construction feels solid enough, though not suitable for headbanging: they WILL fall off, but hat's expected.