I was in search of some closed back headphones primarily for late evening television viewing, and started searching around a bit. Being more or less a Beyer guy, I was leaning toward either DT770s or DT1770s, and given my taste, the latter seemed more likely, though I didn't want to spend that kind of money for gear that would be used for little to no music playback. I looked for a few other cans, and then thought about Denons for no particular reason. Then, serendipitously, I visited the Denon site during the whole Black Friday sale-a-thon and found the AH-D5200 on sale, marked down from $700 to $210. I thought such a deal would not last, so I bought. (Turns out the sale did not last; as I learned subsequently on headphone sites, the sale priced units were gone in hours.)
When I received them, even though the site stated "black", I got the zebrawood enclosures. The wood looks nice enough, but I was fine with black. That minor aesthetic nicety aside, the D5200s are very nice. The build quality is excellent, with a lot of metal, nice pads, and they are smaller and lighter than anticipated. The ear cups almost seem too small, but they end up surrounding the ears just right. As to sound, with the Schiit Jotunheim or Asgard III, they have tight, punchy bass, but not too much weight, a pretty neutral midrange that does voices well with no shrillness or chestiness, and the highs are excellent, while not as clear and pristine as Beyers (and sounding more rolled off than the high frequency boost that comes with Beyers). They present all detail perfectly. Since the cans more or less hew to the Harman curve, they represent a high-priced and high quality execution of the most widely used frequency response curve. Denon reputedly switched to making their own drivers rather than using Fostex sourced ones, though I have no way of confirming that. (I suppose I could email corporate.) Whoever makes them, they work quite well.
Since I use open back cans for all serious listening, and IEMs only while walking, the headstage is different than I am used to. It is bounded by the ear cups completely. The cans also sort of present some things in a hard left/center/right fashion when things pan sometimes. It's not unpleasant and basically exposes less competent sound mixing. Spatial placement is precise, decays with the Asgard are so quick and clean they possibly over-highlight some audio effects, and they can be listened to for hours with no listening fatigue of any kind. They work shockingly well with a cell phone, though I would never use them that way for extended periods. The output impedance output on my Woo (these cans are 24 Ohm) sounds like some tube rolling is in order for optimum sound, so amp matching requires some work with some models. My DT1990s and T1s are better overall, but otherwise, these are probably the best cans in my collection. At $700, I'm not sure I would have opted for these over DT1770s, but at $210, it was a stupid good bargain.
