Well i've been using my HD-600's for about a week now so far. No complaints at all really. I'm extremely picky with headphones and usually know if i'm going to like it within the first few hours. It seems like only a small percentage of headphones have the type of sound i'm looking for. I won't go on and on about why I like these, but a few general comments. As you may have read, I compared the AKG 702 side by side to these FOREVER and my ears ended up liking the HD-600 a bit better mostly because they were more fun to me. Both are amazing headphones of course. The 702 was a poor fit to me. I did some rather long winded comparisons and i'm sure you can find them around here still.
So i'm impressed with these a lot in the first few days and then one day I turn them on and they sound way different. Strangely they started sounding better after they "warmed up" for 15 minutes. I don't know how on earth this happened. Perhaps I just had some bad music tracks or my ears were not interested in listening to music or maybe I was tired.
The thing I noticed about these headphones is that they're not very forgiving of poor quality music. I have a few very rare and old MP3 rips of old CDs I bought and my original CDs have become scratched, so I can't fix them. They're all imports, so I can't just go out and buy them so they're out of print.
I've found it's so extremely easy to spot the "garbage" tracks on these headphones. Even more so then on the AKG 702 and even my SRH-840. I don't know why this is really.
On a few tracks everything sounds amazing and then suddenly I heard some tracks and it's so hard to hear vocals. I'm thinking to myself "what's wrong with my headphones?!" and then I tried the same track on two other pairs of headphones and it's just as hard to hear.
I'm thinking that a lot of my music is poorly recorded/made, despite them being ALAC or WAV. Some of the Japanese music from my favorite singer sounds pretty harsh on nearly every headphone. It still sounds bad on the HD-600, but it's toned down a bit. Garbage in and Garbage out they say I guess. I feel like if I tested myself on these headphones between 160kbps and 320kbps mp3, i'd have to be stupid to not be able to guess which one had the better audio quality. I have a few tracks that are 128kbps from years ago. Ewww. They're the ones that I can't "fix".
I use these with a fairly good receiver and even with that they sound great. I'm liking these headphones so much that i'm definitely getting a desktop amp. I've tried them with two portable amps and the sound quality out of them is not bad at all. Not 100% as good as from a desktop amp, but not horrible.
Don't laugh, but I plan on using these for 30-60 minutes every other day during exercise with a Nuforce Mobile. I've got this nice cheap case, where I can attach the tiny amp to the front cover of the case (and flip it over) and it works perfectly. The volume and sound quality is good enough to get me by. The volume is actually quite loud and yes I know about the degraded quality somewhat, but this is only 30 minutes every other day. Any other time i'll use it with my receiver and desktop amp.
On a portable amp, the bass is reduced slightly, but strangely on the Nuforce Mobile they still have a lot of bass. The HD-600 sound quality straight out of a Ipod Touch was very, very BAD. I did that for only about a minute and never wanted to do that again.
Someone mentioned the brightness of the Hd-600 with the HD-600 cable is too much. I think it's actually a step down from the AKG 702 and DT-880 32 ohm. It never gets so bad it's annoying. Not once and my ears are pretty sensitive to some of the upper frequencies and that's one reason I wanted to get the HD-600. I heard they're toned down a bit from other headphones. Of course, not as much as the HD-650 though.
I'll probably upgrade the cable to a good one after I get a decent amp. My receiver seems to be doing a good job, but i'm definitely upgrading to a desktop amp. Since I work at a desk for 8 hours a day, it's not been something i've been looking forward too. Of course it doesn't have to be at my computer I guess!
BTW today I watched two 2 1/2 hour long basketball games while listening to music with these headphones on. My ears get a bit hot but overall I felt like they were not even on my head. The music out of them doesn't fatigue my ears AT ALL. With my SRH-840 the music is so detailed that I can't listen to some music for over two hours, but I still love them. The highs can be slightly fatiguing on those headphones, but it's not too bad. I feel those were a bit better with electronic music, but i'm not sure why. Some music feels a bit more natural on the HD-600 over the SRH-840. I like both.
The HD-600 has the most bass out of any headphone i've heard other then the D2000, but I like it. It's taken me awhile to get into it though. I thought the SRH-840 had a lot of bass until I heard these. I put back on the SRH-840 and my first thought is "Where's the bass?!".
I listen to some weird music, but one thing i've noticed is that Cantonese Pop (Cantopop!) sounds incredible out of any good $200+ headphone. It's the least "picky" music out of everything I have. That's not a music most people would want to check into it, but some of it I like. I basically will try anything I normally don't like right now due to having nice, new headphones. Maybe even Rap or Country!
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