the way the speakers are placed and overall signature causes the signature to present a less bright in your face treble… as the signature overall is more relaxed and rounded off… 1990 does have the more analytical approach and a heavier slam to its bass. At the same time the soundstage is quite different between the two as T1 is much larger(blatantly so when you A/B test them actually).
I am… actually shocked I didn’t get pinged or messaged on this one lmfao. Pretty known I own both of these as I post pictures of them even.
DT 1990: Analytical, Very sharp imaging, heavy peak in the treble can cause discomfort especially in vocals and the S sounds(this goes for gunshots down halls among other things… varies by person), Planar-like bass slam, neutral mids, heavy amounts of detail(over-detailed by a long shot), decided to tear apart bad soundtracks and pick out flaws in studios, separation is fantastic, heavy Dampening due to filters placed inside the headphone and over the driver, one of the larger soundstages of beyerdynamic, 250 ohms isn’t so scale heavy you can pretty much reach the peaks of the headphones potential around say an RNHP amp connection which does extremely well for this headphone, doesn’t respond as well to tubes but will work, comes with two pads A pads make it like DT 880 B pads make it like DT 990
A pads in purple B pads in blue ^ DT 1990 graph
T1 2nd generation: Relaxed, Same sharp imaging, Heavy peak but rounded off, curved drivers causes a change in presentation and relaxes the treble a bit so its not so piercing, Very laid back signature, Very large soundstage the biggest beyerdynamic offers by quite the margin, Rounded bass that is slightly increased by the neutral line… this increase goes along the mids in a similar fashion to the frequency respond to an HD800S, like a miniature HD800S but doesn’t cost 1k+, 600 ohms demands power and heavily relies on stronger equipment to sound at its best, extreme amounts of scaling… may peak around $500-$600 equipment(things such as the singxer or liquid platinum) however still responds to even higher equipment. Pad swaps alter the signature dramatically, does very well with tube amps but may become to wet or boomy depending on the tubes
T1 2nd gen in green vs the HD800 for comparison to show the similarities
Considering its discontinued? very unlikely he will have problems selling
Both will run off that… but I HIGHLY encourage an upgrade later if swinging a T1 2nd gen… At the very least upgrade the dac to the modius to go with the asgard. If you want to really punch it up a notch swing a liquid platinum + bifrost 2… makes it very warm and smooth to ease up the treble further… balances it out beautifully
