I lost interest in headphones eventually, after using DIY nearfield speakers for a while. You can position/angle the drivers however you want, however close/far/high/low you want, playing however loud/quiet you want, with whatever baffle materials you'd like to try. Can design the baffle so you...

One thing I used to do with the HD540II is take the earcups/drivers off the headband, remove the earpads/inner material and hold each driver in the air in front of my ears with music playing at moderate volume. I would move the driver position and alter the driver angle to study how it affected...

Haha, no, but that is the kind of thing I would do. The K1000 with drivers fully angled outwards looked ridiculous to wear but offered fantastic spatial sound. Speakers have to be positioned a bit in front of the face to achieve a genuine stereoscopic effect, where both ears hear both channels...

Glad to see the HD540 models are still receiving attention and providing musical enjoyment. Several years back, I remember comparing HD540II and HD800 side-by-side over many days. The 800 is the better technical performer with deeper bass extension, higher resolution of detail/dynamics, cleaner...

Yes, I initially carefully cut open the middle line. The pads on the 540II in the first two photos are totally velvet (front and back, the strongest and most attractive pad type). Unfortunately, many HD540II come with pads that have a velvet front but a fabric back, covered in a pleather. This...

The HD430 earpads use the same attachment rings as the 540 earpads. So you could transplant those across but you will inevitably destroy the pads to get them out. I used to clean the 540II velours in warm clean water and rubbing with alcohol gel. I soon learned that after taking out the inner...

I never experienced any loose connections with that push-on adapter. For me, it always provided a secure fit. Although, I did buy several new ones of the gold-plated version because many of the 540II came without an adapter. Sometimes I completely replaced the cable as well, so I had to factor...

Yes, I liked the cable/plug in the first photo the most and I tried to make sure all my purchases/sales featured that cable type. The push-on adapter was typically silver coloured. I bought several of the gold-plated variant of it like the old HD600 had, so that all my cables had an adapter. Not...

Oh, I don't like the large plug termination of the steel-litz cable either. The copper cable is a 3.5mm jack with an optional push-on adapter to convert it to 1/4 inch jack, the same as the HD600 had. Copper cables give a more natural sound anyway, helping to avoid excessive treble and listening...

I don't recommend the Ref 1 as readily because it doesn't tend to come with the parts that I prefer. I like the stock oxygen-free copper cable and velvet earpads of the Ref II model. I even like the colour and appearance of the mk2 model more. The mk1 model sometimes comes with a stiffer...

I am glad to see the HD540 Reference II getting some love and praise. I hoarded over 12 of them at one point because I was so enthusiastic about the sound quality, design and comfort and I wanted to restore several to absolutely perfect condition and be confident in my recommendation to others...

HD250 is a sealed headphone. HD540 is an open headphone. There are similarities in the sound frames but they are quite different and certainly not interchangeable. I disassembled several of both models so I am familiar with the internals. I also tried a HD540II with unmatched drivers and the...

To my ears, I always thought HD540II and HD560II sounded almost exactly the same when they had similar headband clamping and similar thickness of earpads. The main difference was the position of the sound; 540 sound image had better placement than the 560II, in my opinion, so was consequently a...

Budget stuff like HD540 can provide a very enjoyable listening experience. I am just fussy. The major thing with MySphere's small driver size is that the moving mass can be very very low so the speed is highly responsive. Starts quickly and stops quickly.

I had my doubts about MySphere in the beginning, because the driver size is much smaller than the K1000. I thought this would translate to a smaller stereo image and less bass weight but this was unfounded. It turns out that the only advantage of the K1000's larger driver size is that it is much...

Yes, MySphere, if implemented with care and consideration, could take on anything at any price. The impulse response is very fast and the frequency response is exquisitely flat. Its fit and driver angle/position can be tweaked until optimum sound quality is achieved.

MySphere, because of its small driver size, is very critical of its positioning at the ear. It can take time and patience to obtain the best sound but it is very much worth the effort. Sorry about your wallet but it is the only summit-fi headphone that I would risk dropping a multi-thousand...

AKG K1000 is a substantial improvement over chambered headphones like HD540 and HD800. The stereo image is much more three-dimensional and the bass weight/transparency is more natural. K1000 has some slight elevation in the mid-bass to low midrange region (flat but all at a higher dB SPL) but is...

Great, I'm quite happy if I'm wrong about the Reference Gold if you are enjoying them more than the mk1 and mk2. Listening to music is more about enjoying it rather than analyzing it. I stopped buying headphones a while back and I have settled on tweaking one.

HD540 Reference II seemed to give me consistently great sound quality between different samples with the same earpad type and clamping pressure, whilst some Reference mk1 sounded either the same as the II or noticeably inferior (diminished clarity and treble quality) to the II. Ref II all 300...

Oh, it was a review I read on here. I just remembered. https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/hifiman-ananda-bt.24092/reviews#item-review-23246 I don't think that Bluetooth is necessarily bad, it depends on how it is implemented I think. If BT signal degradation can be prevented and EM interference...

I think I read a review for that Ananda planar magnetic somewhere online a while back where they claimed the sound quality through Bluetooth was actually better than it was through a cable. Could that actually be true?

Just a thought I've been having, but seeing as Bluetooth technology is featured in a lot of hi-fi headphones these days and its quality has improved quite significantly over the last decade, does it have a place in summit-fi? Do any existing ultra-high-end headphone products already feature HR...

There's a reason that I owned over 16 HD540 headphones a couple of years ago. It's because of their potential for remarkable sound reproduction. The HD800 did not have the same musical qualities despite its improved technical abilities. I had to buy a low serial number AKG K1000 in order to get...