Yamaha HPH-MT8 Over-Ear Headphones Reviews

I was scared to purchase these at first but when I got them I was so relieved. They sound fantastic! My Focusrite 2i2 provides plenty of power. (the 10 to 11 o'clock position is waaay loud enough for me.) Clear and detailed sound... you cant go wrong with these.

I use my headphones primarily for piano practice in my apartment but I intend to use them for mixing/mastering/tracking while in Studio One Professional. I have large ears, AKG's don't cut it anymore. Very comfortable, adjustable, accurate. Highly recommended!

I've had these for about a year now, and have used them primarily for tracking drums and mixing full bands. These quickly became my go-to cans for literally everything. When mixing, they deliver a huge amount of detail in a very flat, unhyped way. They can produce a very high volume level, but more importantly, they maintain their detail & transparent response at low volume, too. They provide great isolation for mixing in a noisy environment, or even tracking a huge drum kit on a hard rock song. They're simply wonderful all-around headphones, and have replaced my studio monitors as my primary means of getting initial mixes. I used to mix primarily on a couple sets of monitors & check the mixes on headphones, but now I do exactly the opposite with the HPH-MT8's. This allows me to mix "inside the box" literally anywhere, and check the mixes back at the studio at my leisure. They're an incredible value for the price.

These headphones blow every other option under $200 way out of the water, and rival cans three times the price! The only way I can describe it...is that these sound like how I know the music SHOULD sound when I listen to any other speaker or headphone. Incredible clarity, full and balanced bass that sits properly, great stereo seperation, VERY accurate without sounding dull and lifeless. My only complaint is they are a bit on the heavier side, but the quality of sound is SO amazing that it doesn't bother me. They ARE very comfortable to wear, however. The fit and adjustability are great.

I spent hours listening to headphones from all the major brands' options under $500, and these were the clear winner. It wasn't even a close contest. Do yourself a favor and give these a try. Yamaha have outdone themselves!

Great sound quality. For me they deliver great tone quality from lows to highs. I like that they came with 2 cords and that they are replaceable and even had the ability to collapse and store in the included bag.

The five stars rating is relative because the headphones may not please everyone the way it impresses me. I'm a fan of flat sound monitors and using Yamaha HS7 for my studio monitors, so this headphones is just an addition to that setting.

CONS:
(1) You may ask, "where's my bass?" when using this headphones because it sounds pretty flat. However, you will have to listen to your mix on different systems before publishing it anyway, so flat sound is not that a big issue.
(2) Yamaha may need to do some more work on noise isolation feature of this headphones.

PROS:
(1) Frequency response is so great. I could hear every detail. That's just so amazing. I only use headphones to check for the detail and this one does that job so perfect.
(2) Comes with 2 different length cords. I like the 9 ft. straight cord.
(3) Good quality material.

I can't comment on durability because I just have it for couple weeks.

i feel wonderful with my yamaha headphone .just 1 word ."AMAZING"

I have big ears so finding closed headphones that don't crush these massive car doors isn't easy. These are very comfortable, but so far I've only had them on for 2-3 hours at a time so your results may vary for longer wearing periods. Got a pair on a demo special and my sales rep James helped bring this home to me. Very neutral sounding, which I like. I will use these on my Boss Pocket GT as well and it really helps bring that device to life.

Now that I've had these a couple of weeks the things I noticed.

1. the pads are super thin on the ear cups and the headband

2. I noticed a high-end that was unnatural and confirmed this with a frequency analyzer.
There is a a huge hyped eq. between 7 and 9 kilohertz. (I confirmed this with a spectrum analyzer) this will cause you to make incorrect adjustments, be aware if you are trying to mix with these.
it would be a good idea to insert a parametric and correct this huge bump in the frequency response.

3.the rest of the frequency range is relatively flat and responsive to to adjustments

4. They are built well and have a sturdy feel to them.

5.Input cord lock which is pretty much a standard on decent and above average Studio mixing phones


NOTE:

I'm a professional studio engineer and I personally think the mix is balanced, but unfortunately you don't really get a sense of space with these headphones. You will feel like the sound is right up at your ear and in your face. I think a sense of space is really important for headphones because it can feel overwhelming when the music is slamming into your eardrums constantly. Beyerdynamic DT150 and DT770 Pros are my standard for the studio and they are an example of spacious sounding headphones. All in all, the build quality is decent, not amazing, plastic and aluminium joints, made in Taiwan. For the same price you can get a set of DT770 Pros and I would recommend those over this in my opinion. Mix is decent however, good bass and treble response and fairly neutral.

These Yamaha HPH-MT8 headphones sound refreshingly good to me as my previous Sony headphones were 20 years old. I can hear detail now I could not before. For that I’m glad I made the purchase but don’t have much to compare them to. Please let me qualify this. I am not a good source for subjective sound evaluation because I am over 63 and have some noise induced hearing loss particularly near the 3k-4kHz frequency range per my audiologist. A hearing audiogram only covers 125 Hz to 8 kHz. There are online tests that go from 8k to 20k. These show me I’m deaf above 14 kHz but I’m not sure that my computer’s sound card can reproduce those frequencies. Hum.. I do assume these results are accurate due to my age. So I also assume these are much better than I can appreciate. I don’t hear any product induced noise and they isolate me from outside noise as expected. I do wish the straight cord could be 12 ft. not 9 ft.

Be aware these are somewhat heavy headphones. The only problem I have with these is they are a bit uncomfortable where the head band rests on the top of my skull. For me these are woefully under padded on the bottom. After compression of the padding, a condition that will always present itself due to their weight, the net cushion is barely 1/16 of an inch. These ride uncomfortably on my crew cut skull ridge and I’ll probably need to wear a cap to use them for any length of time. I remove all cap buttons for the same reason too.

To me, this is a simple design flaw for what appear to have been a well thought out and meticulously constructed design. I think they didn’t test their design enough or on any cranky old people before they went into production. The solution’s manufacturing cost is probably only 10 cents.

Would I buy them again should I lose them in the next few years? No because I get cranky enduring discomfort on my noggin but, if Yamaha corrected this then Yes I would buy them again. I use Yamaha NS-6490 speakers for my final mix down so I have a bias and tend to really like their products.