Borealis Impressions
For starters, I did most of my listening through a Nistch Piety and SMSL d6s stack. I also did some work with my Geshelli J2s and Topping L70 stack.
I’ll admit, at first I wasn’t super impressed by these. They were good but not great. At the time I was just listening to some of my typical favorite progressive rock, progressive metal, post-hardcore rock etc and I was listening through my Topping L70 which is quite a clinical amp. Something was off, part of it was a bit of a nasally tilt to male vocals, this was very apparent when I was listening to the Window of the Waking Mind album by Coheed and Cambria on the first day, his singing voice which can already be a bit nasal and closed was even moreso. It was offputting.
But as I gave these time on my head to figure them out a bit, and when I later shifted them to my Nistch Piety amp (which is way less clinical) and started figuring out music that really was able to shine with the Borealis the experience flipped around entirely for me.
I spent about a solid week on the Piety without EQ listening to the Borealis through a broad range of music. I absolutely loved what it could do with acoustic guitar in a more singer/songwriter or folk style song. The album ‘Sometimes’ by Dallas Green’s side-project ‘City and Colour’ was a great experience start to finish. Going further down that rabbit hole he did a collab with P!nk called ‘You+Me’ and through the Borealis there is this rich yet stripped down sound to it. In the song Capsized P!nk’s vocals come through so rich and full while at the same time you can feel the intimacy of the two recording in a small studio room as they sing over this acoustic guitar. The Borealis pushes the vocals a little bit forward and adds to that presence you feel.
I could go on and on about how well the Borealis paired with acoustic guitar, stripped down vocals, solo piano work, it all worked so well. But in the interest of keeping this somewhat brief lets move on.
I wanted to give it some more tries with more complex, face paced, congested tracks. More prog rock, more metal, more emo, that kind of thing. So I did, and I burned through my catalog for hours and hours sitting in the bed with the Piety and Borealis pairing. Some stuff just worked like magic, I had a blast with The Dear Hunter and The Mars Volta with the Borealis in stock form. You want bass? The Mars Volta’s track ‘Equus 3’ has these deep digging bass thumps in the last 20 seconds or so of the song and the Borealis brought them with authority, maybe not like a planar or a closed back, this is an open back dynamic and expectations should be as such, but the hits were there and they were deep. Again some tracks I think maybe that slightly forward vocal presence felt a touch off to me.
Soundstage was great, I’m not a big soundstage nerd and haven’t used the headphones that are proclaimed to be the kings of soundstage like the 800s so take this as you will. It was wide, it was tall, it had some depth, and imaging was precise. Is it as good as speakers? Of course not, its a headphone. But it’s great.
Next let’s talk equalization. I am unapologetically pro-EQ and I love to EQ my headphones. So after about a week I decided it was time to make some small changes to these to see what happens. Step 1, I added in a 4db bass shelf at 70hz, a pretty typical adjustment to dynamic driver headphones for me. Step 2 I dropped 1khz by 3db with a 1.41 Q factor. This brought that added vocal presence a bit back to neutral, it made the Borealis play nicely with basically everything, not a single song troubled me, but I did feel like I had taken something away from the Borealis, some of its personality, so there was some give and take with that. But either way I jammed out for days with that EQ profile and the headphone had so much more to give still.
Let’s talk a couple of other specifics. I want to mention something I noticed on day 1, again this was through that very clinical Topping amp and doing a bit of AB testing with my usual Sennheiser 6xx. I was listening to the MTV Unplugged album by Florence+The Machine which I adore listening to. Specifically the track ‘No Light, No Light’ when played through the Borealis, Florence Welch’s voice wavers on the edge of sibilance in this config, not quite fully there and not ear piercing sharp, but enough to catch your attention. When swapping to the 6xx that muted down quite a bit, my guess is there’s a bit of a spike in the Borealis around 6khz that is accentuating this. Again, not fully sibilant, but something indeed was there and noticeable. However my Piety fixed this by about 50% so it seems very track and chain dependent, I think I had a bit of a Perfect Storm there.
Finally, lets talk fit. The short of it is I really wish it had more clamp, a lot more. I like to listen lying down in bed or reclining and I felt like I had to balance it on my head to get it to stay put and keep a good pad seal. Other than that I loved the suspension strap and the earcup/pad design and shape.
Overall I had a fantastic experience with this headphone over the past week and change. It was not perfect, it has its strengths and it has its weaknesses but I think it plays very well to those and it feels like a headphone that was designed and tuned with a purpose and a goal. The tuning is stellar, the timbre is exceptional and realistic (both with the caveat that the 1khz bump may or may not trouble you) the headphone has detail to give for days and I feel there was no stone left unturned in that department.
I think if someone was looking for the next step up from the 6xx, they want that kind of timbre and tuning but with significantly better soundstage, more detail, and maybe a touch of its own flavor, this is the headphone for you.
