Yaxi ESP950 Comfort Pads Review – No Brainer

Yaxi ESP950 Comfort is the name of Yaxi’s earpad upgrades dedicated to Koss ESP/950 (or EPS/95X) earphones. They retail for $59,00 diectly from the manufacturer’s website and the price includes worldwide FedX shipping.

At-a-glance Card

Structure and materials

Already at the very first tactile experience, Yaxi ESP950 Comfort pads present an obvious better aspect compared to the original pads.  Koss’s original pads are covered in cheap-looking (although quite resistant) velour, stuffed with ordinary foam.  Yaxi ESP950 Comfort’s front cover is in Alcantara, and protein leather is used for the outer profile. They are evidently “better” in terms of manufacture, materials selection, softness and haptics. Their size is almost but not precisely identical to the originals, with the latter being a tad (maybe 1mm) vertically thinner, and an even smaller tad thicker in terms of horizontal width.

Installation

There’s I’m afraid little to improve on the installation procedure as far as the Koss ESP/950 goes. Taking away the previous pads is very easy, while installing them requires some patience as the user is supposed to help the pad’s backside outer lip into the housing’s perimetral groove, which does not offer any facilitation for that. Anyhow, it’s not an Everest climb either.

Comfort

Yaxi ESP950 Comfort offer an obviously better wearing experience compared to stock pads. The difference is very significant, not a small upgrade at all. Skin contact is much more pleasing, and suppleness is way superior offering a much more “convincing” feeling of adherance, including when wearing spectacles like I do.

Sound impact

While pyisical comfort is already a definite improvement, the main reason why one may want a pair of Yaxi ESP950 Comfort is no-doubt due to how they make sound quite evidently better.

On stock pads Koss ESP/950 offers clean-ish and lean-ish timber, with an obviously mid-centric presentation, pushing vocals often even too much forward, quite nice unfatiguing but not very detailed trebles and (oppositely) quite disappointing bass: unextended, early rolled off actually, and with an evident mid-bass bump trying (without succeeding) to compensate for that.

On Yaxi ESP950 Comfort the music (literally) changes.

What they technically do is recall mids a bit back from the too forward, unnatural position they take on stock pads, and most of all make midbass faster, and louder.

Talking in less analythical and more horizontal terms, this first of all means that the heaphone’s general tonality instantly swaps to “neutral-balaced”, offering an evidently more pleasing presentation overall.

Thanks to the faster and more bodied bass, and the not anymore “too forward” mids, the general timbre ceases to appear “lean-ish” and gets into clear-natural territory. 

Also, and equally importantly, the achieved superior tonal balance makes soundstage drawing way more “credible”, especially thanks to the evident improvement in depth sensation.

Yaxi ESP950 Comfort do hot have the power to un-roll ESP/950’s sub-bass up, of course, but the entire bass line is I would say enormously much more organic, acoustically natural.

Mids as I mentioned are not “unnaturally ahead of the pack” as before, and in their mid and low part they also greatly benefit from the evidently increased bass weight, resulting in improved mid note weight.

Trebles are also somewhat improved in terms of note weight and organicity, especially the presence segment. While still staying short of getting hot or fatiguing, they do come out “less relaxed” then with stock pads, contributing to the overall obvious improvement in terms of horizontal presentation coherence.

Conclusions

Quite rarely I find accessory products offering such an evident improvement as to fall into “no brainer” territory. Yaxi ESP950 Comfort pads are no doubt one of such uncommon cases. The positive impact they bring onto Koss ESP/950 sound is nothing short of remarkable. This, paired with their very convincing construction quality, and a quick look at the cost of the HPs they apply onto, make their purchase cost an absolute bargain.

Disclaimer

I received the Yaxi ESP950 Comfort earpads courtesy of the manufacturer. As previous mentioned, you can purchase them directly from their website. Very interestingly, their prices do include worldwide FedX shipping.

Our generic standard disclaimer.