"Old" vs "New" HD580/600s & HD650s?

No. They're all sound the same. That's why

Why would they have updated the HD-580? It has been discontinued for some time.

This is just the placebo effect playing tricks on your ears. It's likely that someone generated a fake rumor in hopes of sparking up some Sennheiser discussion - in place of HD-700 / 800 / 850 threads - and now your mind is discovering nonexistent changes in sound. Also, as Uncle Erik has pointed out, the HD-580's could not have undergone "upgrades" as they haven't been officially in production for quite some time.

I have a four year old pair of HD650 and recently bought a second pair for my computer setup. The second pair has a little more than 100 hours on them and are pretty much settled now (to my ears).
The difference is still obvious though: the new ones sound distinctly "snappier" and more forward than the old ones.
Just to check I asked my wife if she heard a difference, and without having any idea of which pair was old or new or what I was referring to she said the the old one was "darker" and "mellower".
Could be the age difference, but I wonder...

Is there any physical difference? Any difference in, for example, dampening cloths etc..?

There's a difference between old and new 650 acoustic screen. The old ones were silk, the new ones metallic fabric. But Senn engineers claimed that there're no difference in sound.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f4/sen...ctures-230845/

And some post on the *issue* in this thread too
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/3193317-post8.html
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/3193655-post11.html

EDIT: You guys are fast, and beat me to it!

Try to swap pads. And at 100 hours burn in might still be incomplete.

We discussed about this subject in another thread which was about me moving from HD650 to HD600. I couldn't care less if people are making threads about this or not. I have no intention on making false rumors or anything as ridiculous as that.

This is everything but a placebo effect. Difference between the newer HD650 and the older was easily audible. We did quite thorough comparison between a newer HD650 (two months old) and mine (bought 07/2006). Mine had black cover material around the driver and the newer pair had white cover material. You can see the difference here. In the link, the pictures are from two different headphones, but you can have black or white cover on HD650 also. Just like we had at the meet. Also the black cover is all the way black, even though in the picture it looks like that only the center part would be black. It's just because the picture is taken against white background (you can see through the black material).

We had same mods done to both pairs (defoamed in and outside) and we also checked that the difference was not about cables. We changed the cable from the newer pair (it had APuresound V3) to mine and vice versa, but still the difference was the same. Earpads were pretty much in similar condition on both HD650's. Both of them were also completely burned in. And of course we used the same rig to drive them (that was my rig seen in my signature).

Newer pair has tighter bass and slightly less of it. It has clearer and airier sound, like the veil would've been completely removed. Old pair was darker and muffled in comparison. It was harder to hear all the details with older pair. I preferred the newer pair by a clear margin. Newer pair was like a mixture of HD600 and HD650.

It can also be that HD650 just changes over time but I doubt that. My pair wasn't that much used and for the last year I pretty much listened to speakers only.

This difference made me quite unhappy with my pair so I decided to sell them. I went for HD600 because it works extremely well in my current rig. Maybe on summer I'll audition a new pair od HD650 again.

They are identical (tested with the same cable, both are unmodded, complete with stock foam cover), save for the earlier mentioned white mesh cloth on the new ones and black mesh cloth on the old ones.

I think that age definitely plays a part in it. With the rs-1's, even when the buttons were still in production an older pair sounded more balanced than a newer pair. It's just burn in over time. I think it's relatively the same case with the senns. However, I honestly believe that the differences are exaggerated on the boards....but what here isn't?

I hope you just didn't start an avalanche of wallet-lightening upgraditis for veteran 650 owners