Pioneer SE-MHR5 Review

It's been a while since my last Headphones review. I got a couple other pairs since the Axent Wear review of 2 years ago, but none of them were good enough to warrant a review.

Little bit of story time before going to the actual review.
I've had my AKG K-271 Studio for 8 year and a half now. I've changed the cable twice, and the pads recently. They are still sounding great, but I'm afraid that they might die at any moment. And with the model not existing anymore, and the Mark II not getting reviews as good as the original, I've been trying to find something else to replace them. I'm getting worried that I'll never find anything... but I'll keep looking!
So with this mindset, I went to the Angler fish Festival (a festival in Oarai, that's heavily Girls Und Panzer based) and Onkyo was demoing their new Girls Und Panzer Collaboration headphones, the SE-MHR5.
I tried the headphones there and from the short amount of time I tried them, they sounded really great. The GUP collabo version was 30000 yen, but I though they were worth it. When they made us try them, the headphones were plugged into Pioneer's XDP-300R audio player (I think, it might have been the Grand Beat too, They didn't give info about the device itself at the event.).
When i came back home I found out the non Collabo version of these headphones is 14000 yen at Bic Camera, so I bought them immediately. I'm not a big enough GUP fan to pay 160$ more for a pair of headphones.

Now the review!

The look:
The headphones look pretty normal... They are all made of plastic, and while they don't feel cheap, they also don't feel premium to the touch. The don't have an especially good look. I think the Collabo version might have actually had metal on them? But I'm not sure... Obviously the collabo version looks better because of the GUP panels, but I got the non-collabo version, so the panel is just the Pioneer logo on a black background with a vinil disk feel.

The headphones came with a nice small transport case, which is pretty nice.

As you can see on the last picture, the headphones can be folded to fit into the transport pouch. You can also maybe see on the right side, there's a second cable in the pouch, but this is not an extra cable in case your first one dies. It's a special cable for usage with Pioneer's own device, that provides "balanced output", basically the pin has 4 channels instead of 3, so each side gets 2, and there's no shared channel. As I don't have any device that can take this cable, I couldn't try it.


Comfort:
This is actually probably the most disappointing point of these headphones. When I tried them at the event, I only wore them for 5 minute so I didn't notice, but they are not comfortable for long periods of listening time.
The cups, while being bigger than the ones on the SONY mdr-zx600, are still too small to completely go over the ear, so they are still very On Ear, and not over the hear headphones, and it shows after a while, because they clamp more on your head than the Sony ones.
So far my limit has been about 2 hours, which is very low.

Now onto the important part, how do they sound?
Like last time I did the comparison with a pair of AKG K-271 Studio (~250$) and a pair of cheaper Sony mdr-zx600 for on the go music (~40$).
Once again, a disclaimer: I'm a big music fan, I love listening to music, and I'm a bit crazy about the sound, but I still don't think I qualify as an Audiophile. I love a pure sound, and I want what I listen to, to be as close as possible as what the arranger probably wanted me to ear. So this whole review will be based on that principle.
 Disclaimer #2: Because I don't have the pioneer devices with the balanced output headphone plug, I may not be able to use the headphones at their maximum quality.

The test I did wasn't scientific at all, I just played 5 songs, which are pretty different from each others, all repeated a lot with the different headsets, trying to pick up the sound difference, what make each of them sound better or worse.
The songs were:

1. fripSide - Sister's Noise
2. EGOIST - Fallen
3. Kimino-Museum - ラストリモート
4. Kimino-Museum - Last Paradise
5. Kimino-Museum - Plotted tragedy

You might notice there's a lot of Kimino-Museum songs this time, it's because I wanted to test them during the full vocal harmony that Kimino-Museum can produce, but I used the wrong song (still a very good song) so I did another one after that. The first Kimino-Museum song (same than last time) is used for a different type of sound test.

First thing, they sound a lot better than the Axent Wear sounded during that last review, so this time there's no real disappointment.
The AKG headphones, at double the price, still perform a lot better though.
The sound of the Pioneers is pretty bass heavy, just a bit heavier than the SONY ones, and this is something I failed to notice when I was at the event. The bass while being pretty loud doesn't hide other sounds too much, but it feels like the sound is a lot better on the low then than the high end of the spectrum.
During Fallen, some of the more subtle piano notes get lost a bit, hidden by the strong bass. Once again the sony strangely perform pretty bad on this song, so the Pioneer sounded better than the sony ones on this song.
The biggest problem I found with the sound of the Pioneer was with song with a lot of spacial sounds. And by this I mean songs with a lot of music sources (instruments, voices) coming from different directions in the song. With the AKG, you can pinpoint every instrument in your head, every voice, you can follow traveling sound, and you can easily concentrate on any instrument at any time and isolate it. That's where the Pioneers lost some points. Because while they aren't bad, they are not great at it either. Instruments can get lost behind the strong bass. The piano in Lost paradise was really hard to isolate with them. And high pitched sounds were a bit harder to notice compared to low sounds (like the hi-hat abuse that Tymizz does in any Kimino-museum song) sounds a bit disappointing.
So while they were better overall that the sony, the 100$ difference feels a bit hard to justify, because once again the sony did very good in all these tests. I'm still surprised at how good these 40$ headphones are...
If you're the kind of person who like bass, these headphones would be pretty good because the sound is actually good while still boosting bass.
For me they'll be a good second pair I guess, but the hunt for the AKG K-271 is not over yet.

Note: when i did my Axent Wear review 2 years ago, the Sony headphones were listed at 40$ somewhere, since I wrote that price down, but they are now listed at 90$ on amazon japan. So at this price point their quality makes more sense.

Axent Wear Cat Ear Headphones Review!

Today we received the Axent Wear Headphones, It was quite a surprise because the last update were saying "There are still lots of improvements to be made", but here we are with the final product in hand.
First thing to notice is, the box is pretty cool.

Also it's  pretty huge.
Inside that box was a nice black case, and the headphones themselves were inside, along with a (very small) usb cable, a (pretty small) double headed headphone jack, and a small microphone.

As you can see I ordered the blue ones.

They look pretty nice, and don't feel cheap to the touch.
 The cat ears are pretty heavy though, so if you bend your head forward or backward, the headphones will fall down.
The cups can flip pretty much any side so you can have them rest on your shoulders when not wearing them, or you can bring them inside itself to make them more compact when carrying around.

 Now, these are headphones so let's talk about sound Quality.
 At home right now I have a pair of AKG K-271 Studio (~250$), a pair of cheaper Sony mdr-zx600 for on the go music (~40$), so the comparison will be done with those 2, pretty differently priced pair of headphones. (you can read the review I made of my AKG 5 more than 5 years ago here)

Right of the bat I'll say this now, I love Music, and while I won't call me an audiophile, I'm the closest thing there is to it, that isn't it. I love a pure sound, and I want what I listen to, to be as close as possible as what the arranger probably wanted me to ear. So this whole review will be based on that principle. (This is also why I have AKG)

The test I did wasn't scientific at all, I just played 3 songs, which are pretty different from each others, all repeated a lot with the different headsets, trying to pick up the sound difference, what make each of them sound better or worse.
The songs were:

1. fripSide - Sister's Noise
2. EGOIST - Fallen
3. Kimino-Museum - ラストリモート

Let's get it out of the way now, The AKG headphones were a lot better than the other ones, it's not really surprising, it's a completely different class of headphone. With Those awesome AGK headphones you can ear a lot of really small sounds that are harder to notice on the other ones, and you can also pinpoint each instrument easily, and where they "stand" in the sound created.
The Sony ones were surprisingly really good for their price, The bass was a little stronger, and there were a very few times where I noticed a little something missing, it wasn't because the bass was too strong, it was just missing, and I can't really explain it. The surprise came from the Axent Wear, and it wasn't a good surprise.
First the Bass are really high, and make a lot of noise. So much in fact that it over powers other frequency, which, 1st makes it hard to actually see if the other sounds are actually there or not, but covers most of them pretty much completely (especially in a Bass heavy song)
In Fallen, the added bass gave an interesting feel to the song, making it a little more  "scary" I guess, but still, it removed too much of the original intended chaos this song was originally carrying.
This is not really surprising for this kind of headphones I guess.
Bass heavy have 2 purposes, 1: hide low fidelity with big bass, 2: please people who rally just want boom boom.
Lots of "fashion" headphones hide their crappy sound with big bass, for example Skull Candy.
I think the Axent Wear aren't sounding that bad, and if you're one of those that really love bass heavy sound, you might like them, they are not just the high fidelity headphones I would have hoped they would be.
The Sony, which are a third of the price, sounded better than them.

You can read an relatively interesting article about bass and headphones here

Now, just comparing the price and sound directly would be unfair to the Axent Wear. They are after all, more than just normal Headphones. First, they are actually a headset, and come with a microphone. I didn't actually test the mic, because I didn't really care about it, but that's 1 more feature.
2nd: they have Speakers in the Cat ears, that's cool right?
It could have been.
But the sound of those speakers are fucking awful.
It sounds worse than 5$ shitty speakers you can get in discount shops. It get distorted pretty quick if you raise the volume, and if you don't it just sound empty.
Also, if you have the headphones on, and start the speakers, you will not detect a change of sound, so be careful with that function, or people might give you weird looks (for other reasons than the fact you have fucking nekomimi on your headphones)
3rd: They are a fashion Item.
They have fucking nekomimi on the top, they are looking pretty nice overall.
I mean I love the look of my AKG, but this is a different class, those are made for this look primarily.
4th: they are shiny! The LEDs in the Speakers and ear cup looks pretty cool.

Just look how cool I look at the Game center with them!

I hope I didn't forget anything, if you have questions or comment please post them below.
You can pre-order Axen Wear here.

See you next time Nyaa!

Update 2016/09/09:
Since this post is still landed on often by people looking for a review of these, I decided to update it a bit. I learned a few things after writing this, especially about why the speakers on mine didn't work well.
It turns out the whole first batch, for the backers, was crap. Lots of problems happened, and the backers were pretty much used as beta testers. My friends who ordered them got 1 where the LEDs didn't work, and 1 where the external speakers didn't work at all.
As for me, 1 week after writing this review I started having problem with a bad contact inside the headset, making the right speaker stop working all the time. Brookstone, who took over the sales of the headphones, decided that since backers paid more than 1 year before getting their product, they were not under warranty anymore, so we got stuck with these shitty things.
Basically backers are not considered customers by them.

Sphere Live

Today I went to see Sphere live.

Sphere is a Seiyuu unit, consisting of Aki Toyosaki, Haruka Tomatsu, Minako Kotobuki and Ayahi Takagaki.
I personally was interested in them at first because of Toyosaki Aki, the Seiyuu of Yui in K-On.
I saw them for the first time together at AniSama, and really enjoyed it.
But now it was their "One Man Show", and that's really different.

The formula of the show was super nice, the whole thing was a big Story, with songs in-between.
The 4 of them being seiyuu, the acting was very good, and really funny.
It had a good pacing too, because people sat down during the story part, so I could have gone on watching this forever.

Of course the main attraction of this kind of event is the music, and I wasn't disappointed. Of course this kind of music isn't for everyone, but I personally love it, and they sang perfectly.
The choreography are really nice too, and as with all the live in japan, it's crazy to see everyone knowing every dance for every songs in the crowd.

We got tickets in the second row, and by an awesome luck, on the side where Aki-chan spent most of her time in the show, that was fucking awesome, she's so great. She has one of the most beautiful smile I've ever seen. People around me told me that because of me she looked more often our way.
Not sure if it's true, but anyway I'm super glad of the whole thing. Being so close to her, enjoying this awesome live, with great artist, One of my best show in japan so far.

I want to see them again, but unfortunately, their next live will be the same day I come back from Canada after Christmas, so I'll miss it.
I hope they make more next year!

Sabagebu Event

Today I went to the special Sabagebu event "ゲスかわ☆ガールズ JAPAN TOUR 2015 FINAL".

This was unplanned. My superior at work got sick and had tickets for both of today's events, so he gave them to me.
It's really sad for him that he couldn't go, because this event was fucking awesome.
This event was one of the greatest event I've been to in Japan.

It was my first time going to a special event for animes like these. The Seiyuus of the main characters were there, and performed songs, answered some questions, and read a new scenario live.
The questions led to pretty funny answers, and I think I was able to get like 80% of what was said.
On a side note, sometime I kinda stop thinking and just listen and then suddenly I realize "omg I understand" and at that exact moment, I stop understanding.... it's like, if I notice that I'm understanding, and then start trying to understand "manually" I can't anymore, this is frustrating...
The song were pretty nice, I liked the little effect they put on the big screen, especially during Kayo's song, there was some "magic" effects going out from her staff, looked nice.
But the best part was really the scenario read(acted) live. It was funny, and really showed how these people are pretty damn skilled at this.
The most surprising one was Urara's seiyuu, Ookubo Rumi. her acting skill was so great. loved her so much. I actually got inside there a Kayo fan and got out of there an Urara fan.
Touyama Nao, voicing Kayo, was also pretty nice to see live. She's one of my favourite Seiyuu, but her role in Kayo doesn't really make her shine since she's a relatively silent character, but still liked to see her, and she was pretty damn funny during the talking parts.

It's really hard to explain how awesome this event was, but I'm really glad I could go. I also made a new friend there! During the second show, the guy beside me lent me one of his light sticks, and after the show we talked while going back to the train station... all in Japanese! \o/

Overall super day.

Here are some other pictures I took (all outside the theater itself since we couldn't take pics inside)

Very late and short Reitaisai 11 post

Wanted to at least post about it, don't have much thing to say though, the event was soso, content was great, the new touhou game is fun, the one thing that really sucked is how you need to pay 1000 more than the normal entry price if you want to be able to take pictures. wtf is that shit.
Of course when I disagree strongly against something, I do the opposite, so I took as much stealth pictures as I could!
here are the best shots, you can see the full album here: Reitaisai11

The line to get Touhou 14.3

+Sandy Whitmore Showing us Keine

Touhou 14.3

I didn't buy too much this time around, here's my loot:

IRON ATTACK!, IOSYS and 5150 in Akihabara

Today, after helping my friend move, I went to akiba. I went there to see the live of IRON ATTACK!, IOSYS and 5150 that started at 18:00, but I got there around 13:00 so I had time to walk around and take some nice pictures.
Sundays in Akihabara re "walkers heaven" where the streets are blocked to cars, so it's ideal for taking nice pictures of Akiba, and since I got my new Nexus 5 with KitKat, I was able to get some pretty sweet photo spheres of Akiba. you can check them both here: (but you'll need google + to see the sphere effect)
Photo Sphere in front of Animate and Toranoana
Photo sphere near the Akihabara Station

Of course a trip to Akiba would not be complete without a few Itasha:

I also met a nice Miku cosplayer in the Sega arcade who let me took a picture of her

At 5 I headed toward the Live's venue.
The venue was again pretty small, and it was completely packed.

Now one thing that can be a problem when you become a little more know is that it's harder to write what you want. I know some people might read this blog, that actually performed at the show, but I'm still gonna try to say what I think, even if there are some negative points.
I hope those concerned won't take it too badly, as this is only my personal opinion, based on my personal tastes.

Te show started with 5150, I was actually surprised to see he was only singing and didn't play the guitar, he had another guitarist with him there. It was kinda funny too, because when he introduced the band members, he almost introduced himself as "on the guitar". His performance was pretty good overall, but I actually didn't know many songs, I think he played only 1 song from the albums I have. And... I guess this is my own fault, but I never knew he did a black metal album, his growling voice really surprised me. I actually don't like that kind of music, so I didn't enjoy the last two songs, but I can still say that his growling voice was pretty good... well, for a growling voice.

After 5150 was IOSYS. The problem... or good point of IOSYS is that there's so many members, going to see IOSYS can be very different from one time to the other.
The last time I saw them (you can read about it here) the vocalist was 山本椛 (Momiji Yamamoto), this time it was 96. The rest of the band was pretty much the same lineup as last time.
But a different vocalist means different songs (except for a couple). 96 have her own songs, and Momiji has her own, so of course that's to be expected. 96 was pretty good on stage, and has a cute voice, but her stage presence and energy is nowhere close to Momiji's. It was especially apparent in the 2 songs she did, that Momiji also did, 断罪ヤマザナドゥ！(Danzai) and Chirno's perfect Math class.
And don't get me wrong here, I believe 96 is a good singer, but Momiji was just a lot better.
It was still a nice performance, and Cirno's perfect math class was again the highlight of the show. Though Miracle, Hinacle was also pretty good.

Last was IRON ATTACK!
For those who knows the bad, on CD they have a lot of vocalist, but usually live it'S always Uma and まいなすいょん(minusiyon), but this time a third singer was also present. I think it was YAMA-B, but I'm not 100% sure.
They were solid as usual, but I think the best surprise is they played a song by Sister's spread-i (まいなすいょん's circle) ALICE IN HEAVEN. And I love that song, I was really glad they did it.
And Ion was really cute in her stage outfit, but sorry I didn't get any pictures this time.
I guess the negative point of the show was they they didn't do any Marisa song (Sparking or STAR DUST) I really love those songs, but at least they did a couple of other really good ones, and a few new ones that I knew a little less.

Overall a very good show, and a very good day.
Akihabara is the best!

Update:
Here's some pictures from yesterday's show via ToranoanaRecords Twitter: 2014-03-09 Live In Akiba