Recording - March 2014 - 31

As good as these phones sounded out
of the box, they just sounded better after
a burn-in period of 24 hours; they were
an absolute delight, and I found that they
quickly isolated and presented elements
of tracks that weren't well-recorded or
processed. You can hear bad edits,
cheesy plug-ins, sibilant vocals, and poor
mic placements as you work, making it
easy to know where your mixes need
more attention.
I spent a lot of time grooving on the
MDR-7510, enjoying them on all types of
music, and took a lot of notes, so that I
would be able to make some hopefully
sensible comparisons as I moved on to
the last part of this review...
Listening to the MDR-7520
And then I put on the MDR-7520 and
all of my careful planning basically went
out the window. Wow. I'm sorry, but
wow.
After many hours of listening over several days, I did my best to sort out the difference between these two headphones. I
guess the best thing I can say about the
MDR-7520 is that its LCP driver takes the
same sort of voicing that the MDR-7510
offers, and catapults it to the next level.
You could get close to an accurate
review of the MDR-7520 by reading what
I wrote about the MDR-7510 above and
adding to every sentence, "... just a little bit
more." There's more isolation, more comfort over long listening sessions, more clear
definition of voices within the sound stage,
more accurate imaging, and (thanks to a
remarkable 4000 mW power handling
capability) more lively dynamic range.
There's more clear and lusciously detailed
bass, more sharply defined and accurate
mids, and more clear and sweet treble.
The high end on these phones does
deserve a special mention, though. I
have no way to objectively test the 80
kHz claimed by Sony, but the treble in
these headphones is just more, well,
there. Not accentuated or hyped, but
you get a sense of being able to understand and work with more information in
the extreme highs. You can use an "air
band" on an EQ and actually hear
rather than sorta-kinda feel what's going
on up there; you can hear when a CD
was badly encoded from analog and
there are foldover artifacts in the very
highest highs.
If there's a downside to this much treble, it's that sometimes you'll hear something as being problematic when it
wouldn't be on any-okay, I'll say it-
cheaper headphones. Vocals recorded
with great clarity suddenly have so much
detail that they can be perceived as sibilant; tiny bits of hiss in audio effects can
make you itch. If it all leads to more carefully honed tracks, though, it's worth it.
RECORDING March 2014

Take your choice
The MDR-7510 is an incredible value for the money; it's competitive in price with
many headphones that frankly can't compete. I think it's going to become a familiar
fixture in studios, in much the same way the MDR-V6 and MDR-7506 were starting in
the 1980s, and it's going to be one of my go-to recommendations for recording musicians who want to get serious with their next set of headphones.
Is the MDR-7520 worth triple the cost of the MDR-7510? I think I'm going to diplomatically leave that to your ears and your pocketbook. To a discerning listener, especially
one working with audio at high sample rates on a regular basis, the difference in highend clarity and detail are amazing and well worth the investment. Paired with a top-flight
headphone amp, the MDR-7520 is a headphone to be proud of, but many of its benefits will be heard by engineers working with less spendy interfaces and consoles. It's simply one of the very best closed-back headphones you can buy at any price.
Prices: MDR-7510, $149.99; MDR-7520, $499.99
More from: Sony, sony.com/proaudio

http://www.sony.com/proaudio http://www.gracedesign.com

Recording - March 2014

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