Okay, so I bought both the OG Clear and the Clear MG over a week ago, so let’s ramble for a bit.
Honestly, I think that by far the biggest difference between them is exactly the thing that GoldenSound is referring to as a “wooly” texture over everything (which is a reasonable description, imo). I initially wanted to call it a muddiness, which also sounds insane to me considering that these two are the most resolving headphones that I own.
The Clear MG is fuller, slightly bassier, and muddier while the OG Clear is “clear-er” (lol) and thinner. If my chain was just a smidge thin-sounding, I think I’d dislike the OG, honestly (which explains why everyone pairs the OG with the Bifrost). Also, I should mention I’ve spent like 90% of my listening time on the Quicksilver, which is a tube amp.
What I find especially funny about this is that while that texture on the MG definitely sounds weird to me in spots, I didn’t always find it disagreeable. For example, I listened to the first few tracks of Jai Wolf’s “The Cure for Loneliness” and I preferred the separation of the sound on the OG while listening to “Lose My Mind,” but while listening to “Still Sleeping,” I preferred how the MG made it sound more full and cohesive. And it’s not like these are two different genres of music, they’re literally two songs on the same album.
Some other notes: I’m 32 years old and I can’t hear 17Khz. It would be a stretch to claim I can even hear 16.5KHz. So I definitely can’t hear the 18KHz treble issue on the MG. Before COVID, I used to attend weekly swing dances with live music, so yeah, several years of loud music events on a regular basis probably hasn’t helped my hearing.
As for timbre, I don’t think the difference in timbre between the OG and the MG is particularly significant. They do have different timbre, but like, my daily driver is an Eikon, which has much better timbre than both imo. So it’s kinda like, if you care about timbre a lot, you probably don’t want either Clear, but I personally don’t find the timbre of either one of them offensive, so if it’s not that important to you, I think you’ll be fine.
Anyway, the real reason I bought the Clears in the first place is because I had recently bought a new DAC. My most resolving headphone was my Eikon and I wanted something a little more detailed to really let me hear the improvements in my chain. From that perspective, I don’t think I would’ve been dissatisfied with either of the Clears (though interestingly, the jump from my previous DAC to my new DAC was a bigger jump than from the Eikon to the Clear).
Crinacle’s review of the Clear MG mentioned some weirdness with the pads, so probably at some point, I’ll try putting the OG Clear’s pads on the MG and vice-versa and see how that goes (yay for the Pro skus including extra pads).
So now that I’ve upgraded my DAC and bought a Clear, I think I’m in the mood for my next headphone to be something kinda fun and stupid like a Gjallarhorn or something. I dunno, we’ll see how things go after my wallet’s recovered.