I had them for a few hours before returning for a defect. The comfort is fine, the headband wasn't an issue for me, though the clamp force was very light, but it's not a serious problem. Overall, the comfort and fit worked fine for me. Build quality is borderline ok, if they went cheaper, I would be pissed. I got them at $380, but being a $500 retail priced headphone, it's confusing how cheaply they make it, unless of course they purposely focus on sound quality as a priority instead, which it seems they did. Sound wise, really good. It has strong low frequency performance. Full bass range is here. The mids and highs are good, though the highs may be slightly bright leaning, though not a serious issue. Overall I was comparing them to my Sennheiser HD600 back and forth, I noticed right away that the edition xs had a metallic or some sort of artificial tone/timbre to them. They simply sounded slightly artificial especially compared to the HD600 which never comes across like this. Honestly it was weird at first, some people mention that it's a trait of planar magnetics, but it's definitely there and it makes me confused on whether or not I want to keep them. I ultimately returned them because there was an obvious and annoying rattle and buzzing coming from the right driver. Do note this was a previously returned unit I received, so after returning them I bought them again, reluctantly from amazon. The funny part is they listed them as new and I received them used/open box and with a defect. Really irritating. If this second try doesn't work with hifiman, I'm probably going to put the brand on blast. Everyone raves about these headphones, but barely anyone mentions about the weird metallic/artificial tone/timbre that I guess comes from planar magnetics. Only a few people mentioned this part and I really feel more people need to speak out about it, it's truly a weird thing to experience the first time you listen to a planar. I wanted to like these headphones and I was starting to really enjoy their performance against my HD600, though I need more time with them, specifically a non defective pair. If I can make it past the artificial timbre/tone, then this headphone at $380 will most likely stay in my collection.
