DT-1990 Pro 250 Ohm : Upgrade from the DT990

I'm a producer over 10 years and I've worked with the DT990s for about 7 years, so I am absolutely biased :)

But I'll try to be critical. I compared the DT1990 against the 770, 880, 990, 900 Pro, 1770, AKG something, Devine Pro and Neumann's in the store. Of these, the DT1990s were the absolute winner in terms of quality and clarity, there was no question about it. I am not sure how they compare to other brands like LCDs.

However, the DT1990s are not flat. In fact they are considerably worsely tuned than the predecessor DT990. The DT900 Pro were the 'flattest', but none of them are by any means flat. They are all boosted in the high end, but the 990 has 3 peaks, the 900 Pro has a broad peak and the 1990 has a narrow peak (bit higher freq than the others). Therefore, they sound quite musical, the high end (8-12k) on the 1990s is boosted so it sounds all crispy clear and beautiful, but you need a good reference monitor to ground you to reality.

Nevertheless I'm giving this a 5 star rating despite of it, because the clarity of the 1990s is a huge improvement from the other models. In any mix you can clearly hear each element play, you can distinguish exactly from where the sound is coming from. The stereo image is way way better than the other models.

In terms of build quality it's also clearly improved to the other ones, but for comfort I have to note that they are quite heavy (a lot heavier than the 990s, because these are metal as opposed to plastic from the others).

P.s. don't bother to buy the 1770s, they are pretty crappy and not a clear improvement to the older models...