It is already marketed in China and will be available in Europe and US around July 2014 and will be selling for around $ 83 = € 60 = £ 50 = DKK 450
Frequency response of the stock HD-685:
It has 40mm drivers where the HD681′s have 50mm drivers. It comes with 2 cords where one of them has a mic/remote for i-thingies.
Mids and treble sounds good, no piercing highs, nice ‘open’ sound in that the voices are forward and not dull or overly warm.
The highs are soft but unfortunately also lack ‘extension’. This is quite audible in cymbals and guitar strumming for instance.
If you like to hear these finer nuances, this headphone is not for you.
If you like big bass and listen to compressed files a lot this headphone could be usable.
Downside… very boomy and ‘hollow’ bass/mids that is, IF you prefer a ‘balanced’ sound (I do).
The bigger toms, for instance, are exaggerated and sound a bit ‘hollow’ which is the most obvious 'expression' of this elevated bass response.
Uncontrolled and ‘fat-ish’ bass but not bleeding into the mids.
Personally I do like it better than stock HD681-EVO but am seriously missing velours pads and the treble extension.
The treble peak isn’t obvious in the sound and sort-off ‘masks’ the lack of treble extension.
With some EQ in the 16kHz band it does improve somewhat, but sounds a bit ‘rough’ in that area when you do where it should sound smooth.
The hollow and non-controlled bass can be improved with some easy fixes. adding some ‘acoustipack lite®’ and an amount of wool inside the cups (which are very easy to open) and using velours Shure SRH-940 pads makes it sound much better in the bass area. The lack of treble extension remains.
Bass is lowered but still very ‘big’ but much more controlled.
The pads start to feel 'sweaty' quite soon and are of the thicker type pleather kind, very similar to EVO pleather pads.
Cable is about equally microphonic as HD681EVO, won’t bother everyone but it does bother me.
Microphony isn’t worse than many other headphones though.
Didn’t test the remote control as I do not own any i-thingies.
Fairly good isolation from sounds from the outside and people around you won’t be bothered as this headphone is fully closed.
The hinges are plastic (but look like metal), the cups have a rubbery coating on them.
The headband is very comfortable and soft.
Clamping force is slightly above comfortable but think it can be ‘bent’ a bit looser.
The HD685 has a cheapish feeling to it when holding it in your hands.
Folds up for easy transport.
The cups cannot swivel to the sides but only swivel up and down.
The headband does allow some small ’tilt’ so the cups aren’t too rigid in one direction.
Fortunately the cups have a slight ‘angle’ or offset from 180 degrees and thus fall very naturally over the head
Plays well directly from portable devices and will still have ‘body’ on these devices.
My personal opinion is the modified HD681 and modified HD681-EVO are still the better (preferred by me) models.
In stock form I prefer the HD685 over the HD681-EVO though.
To show the differences between these three Superlux models, below the plots of the stock versions.
HD681(green trace), HD681-EVO (red trace) and HD685 (blue trace)
As I do not like these headphones in stock conditions below all three of them in modified conditions. HD681(red version), HD681-EVO and HD685
HD681(green trace), HD681-EVO (red trace) and HD685 (blue trace)
The HD681 is the one with the largest extension on both sides of the frequency range. The HD681-EVO with about 16kHz in the upper range still sounds quite ‘airy’. The drop-off from the HD685 above 12kHz is quite audible. The 3dB ‘hump’ of the HD685 is audible but not deal breaking, for me the lack of treble extension is.
