Sigh...I apologise to anyone who got the Elite Atlas cuz I was raving about the them.
The driver is stellar, yes....but rest...ewww. Eventhough I cleaned this as much I could before Christmas (not that I'm great at it) I was reorganising my headphones today and and the Elite Atlas has turned into a fucking toadstool.
I'm guessing
@goldfritter is immune to this thanks to his pad swap but the default pads (and the headband) are not ZA friendly it seems...at least not coastal ZA.
In the same time the X2 and K7XX, which I can both clean even less, have held up far better.
Happy with my current setup though. MH751 when I want something spectacularly average. K361 when I want something a little comfier with a little more class. G-Pro X when I start feeling cramped by the K361's smaller pads and slightly intense highs. And then back to MH751 once my ears start wondering what they might be missing on the G-ProX.
Find myself doing this rotation every couple of days now and I'm pretty happy for now.
Would be nice to have something a little more open so I can not be completely oblivious when someone calls me from upstairs, but eh, neither budget nor availability allows for such things currently. Maybe down the line people will start bringing in (and getting rid of) 9600s that aren't completely fucked by covid shipping.