[holden4th]

I bought my 540s in 1989 and they served me well until I bought some closed Sony's and later the HD280s.It meant that they were left lying on the shelf for a long time. The other day I won a pair of the 580s on ebay and knowing that the 540s and 580s are both 300 ohm cans I wanted to hear if the amplification I have since acquired would run the 580s. I'd never heard the 540s via amplification and I was simply amazed at what I'd missed over all those years. I'd say that The 540s were very good cans for their time.
 
Now I've heard that the 580s are streets ahead of the 540s so am I about to be blown away with my new cans?

 

[Digital-Pride]

Maybe not blown away, but I'm sure you're going to be more than impressed with the HD580.  I'm really liking the look of the older Sennheiser models, in fact I would love to pick up a pair of the HD565 Ovation.

 

[holden4th]

I'm listening to the 580s now and am blown away at how an open HP can produce this sort of bass. I have Shure 840s and the 580s outdo them in bass quality and also depth. The only downside is how revealing these cans are. I downloaded my entire CD collection onto an external HD and started with 192kbps MP3. Later on I went for 320kbps and while it sounds a lot better I fear that I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board and go lossless - FLAC maybe? The uDAC-2 is driving these quite well despite a number of threads that said they wouldn't.

 

[Digital-Pride]

The HD580 are indeed a special pair of headphones.  If you love what you're hearing now just wait till(whenever you feel ready) you get a full desktop amp.  Also, you might want to head over to this thread, to share your positive HD580 experience.

 

[lejaz]

Ditto, just got my 580's a couple of days ago, and never enjoyed bass like this before. I had the Equation RP21 for a while, and those got rave reviews for their low end, but the 580's kick their butt... IMHO. I haven't enjoyed listening to music this much in a very long time. I have a lot of 256k mp3's from Amazon myself, and I'm not sure it's the mp3's that are causing your problem so much as flaws in the recordings themselves. I'm often finding the opposite....some of my old recordings that sounded pretty awful on more treble heavy phones, sound wonderful on the 580's.
 
Quote:

I'm listening to the 580s now and am blown away at how an open HP can produce this sort of bass. I have Shure 840s and the 580s outdo them in bass quality and also depth. The only downside is how revealing these cans are. I downloaded my entire CD collection onto an external HD and started with 192kbps MP3. Later on I went for 320kbps and while it sounds a lot better I fear that I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board and go lossless - FLAC maybe? The uDAC-2 is driving these quite well despite a number of threads that said they wouldn't.