Recording - May 2015 - 37

should be, exploded outward into an almost three-dimensional
soundstage... showing beauty as the sum total of what's actually
in the music, exposed and open to examination. There's simply...
more. That, in a nutshell, sums up the ATH-M70x.
Starting at the low end, I can say that while no tolerances are
quoted for that 5 Hz bottom end, what bass is there is beautifully extended, detailed, and powerful without being overwhelming. While you don't get the chest-rattling sound pressure
of a subwoofer or the all-encompassing bass boom of a $600
"audiophile" headphone, you can really hear the deep bass,
the lowest notes on a grand piano, a strong and believable fundamental on the low B string of a 5-string bass, the air and
power of the kick drum. It's not just your brain filling in the fundamental based on clearly perceived upper harmonic content;
it's actually there and you can work with it.
The transition from the bass into the low mids and mids is
smooth and uncluttered, with each frequency range speaking
clearly and without congestion or mud. From there it's up into
the all-important mids, where we hear the snap of the kick drum
beater, the tone of acoustic guitars, the upper harmonics of flatpicked bass, the meat of electric guitars, all presented in stark
detail, almost in 3D relief against the backdrop of the music.
The treble on these phones is a revelation. While the ATHM50x is renowned for its open and clear high end, the ATHM70x simply soars. The extension to 40 kHz means that when
you listen to high-resolution audio like 24/96 PCM or DSD, you
can reach to the outer limits of human hearing and never get the
sensation that the headphone is struggling to give you everything that's there. There's just air, and lots of it.
So does that mean that with all this beautiful detail, it's easy
to get pulled into the beauty and perhaps miss things you should
be hearing? Not in my experience. If a song was recorded or

mixed or mastered poorly, you can hear the problems, because
they're presented with just as much clarity as the good parts.
One of my favorite ways to test headphones is by listening to
remastered CDs; some of them actually clean up the originals
and improve on them, while others are simply victims of the
Loudness Wars, punchier and more strident and fatiguing. The
ATH-M70x points up those differences instantly.
It's always a revelation to hear some of my really old mixes from
the 1980s, when I was still learning and making plenty of mistakes. A "beautiful" headphone can hide some of the nastiness,
but the ATH-M70x lays everything out clearly and unavoidably.
The stereo imaging is precise and accurate, letting you make
really good soundstaging decisions, and the overall effect is
easy on the ears. These phones are so smooth and even that
they're actually a little dangerous-the magnified harshnesses
and spikiness that make other headphones fatiguing to listen to
are simply not there on the ATH-M70x. You can find yourself listening louder than usual, longer than usual, and never realize
you're pushing your ears too hard until hours later. What a wonderful seduction!
Conclusions
The ATH-M50x remains one of my favorite headphones. I've
come to love its workmanlike yet lovely honesty, and still consider
it one of the very best values out there in a pro audio phone. But
the ATH-M70x takes that listening experience and catapults it to a
whole new level of exacting detail and sweetness. It's everything
I have come to love in the ATH-M50x... and more.
Price: $419 (est. street price $299)
More from: Audio-Technica, www.audio-technica.com

http://www.audio-technica.com

Recording - May 2015

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