FIT
Upon popping them out of the box and giving them a quick run in the Mixdown office, I was pleasantly surprised. I’m not usually a fan of ‘on ear’ headphones, I tend to find them uncomfortable. Not the case with the MF-100s – the light weight headset exerting the perfect amount of pressure on my ears. Noticing the extra Alcantara (suede like texture) pads in the box, I thought I’d better give them a go, why not try to achieve comfort nirvana?
SO…WHAT NOW?
Getting the leather pads off and the Alcantara ones on proved… challenging. No instructions are in the box so you’re left with your own wits to figure out how to do it. It honestly probably took me a full 15 minutes. Seems getting them off is a matter of carefully pulling them off, to get pads on there’s a small notch that you thread the elastic on and twist. Seems unnecessarily tricky but I got there eventually, and the Alcantara pads are indeed lovely on the ears.
ENOUGH PAD TALK, HOWS IT SOUND?
Really good. Coming from my fairly worn out industry standard competitor, it was like a curtain had been lifted. Clarity over the whole spectrum is stunning, mids and highs are crisp and well defined and I couldn’t detect any distortion or muddiness in the lows. I was finding bass a bit on the subtle side, but with semi-high 64ohm impedance I suspected my phone was struggling to drive the low end. Trying the MF-100s at home through a properly amplified source, the cans’ bottom end did indeed open up. Still not quite where I thought it would be, but certainly better.
SERIOUS MONITORS OR FILTHY CASUAL?
Casual, but anything but fi lthy. Coming with a microphone on the cable for hands free mad chats tells us these are designed for casual listening rather than studio monitoring. However, it’s a damn good listening experience. The frequency response seems quite flat across the spectrum, just a smidge bright and strong on the treble, but otherwise very natural. For a set of cans that double as reference for your mixing in this price range (and plenty above), you could do a lot worse and not much better than these.