[ScubadudeSA]

Closest thing to HD540? Stax comes to mind.

 

[sennsay]

A history lesson - for me: Most of my Head-fi listening (in recent months) has been with using my 15 year old and heavily updated Tianyun Zero DAC (FrankenZero or just Frankie) with the Burson Vivid V6 output module into the Schiit Magni 3+, a very good combo, full of transparent detail and natural communication, the latter is particularly valid for the AD1852 DAC chip and its implementation in Frankie, retaining those qualities even when modified tonally by whatever output module is being used at the time - the Vivid being the most transparent from top to bottom and is now basically a fixture.
Much more recently, as in a couple of weeks, I pulled out of storage my much upgraded KHA 1, which simply stands for Kit Headphone Amp 1 (Best version. There is a KHA 2, slightly less upgraded, plus two stock versions packed away). This was originally a kit from Jaycar, the best headphone amp design they made. I 'amped' mine out with all Dale non-inductive resistors, Nichicon Muse FA electrolytic caps, WIMA polypropylene caps, Black Gate NX series 0.1uF caps on the main board and also as bypass caps on all electrolytics, top quality Vishay resistors in the output circuit, Russian Paper In Oil caps with the hand-wound output coils, also, the bias voltage was raised a little from stock to the output transistors. I bypassed the fused inputs with solid core copper and powered the amp with Audio-gd's excellent Class A power supply, variable for both voltage and current outputs. Needs a heatsink and could easily power a preamp as well.
This KHA 1 is as old as Frankie and can still give marvellous results, as I found out in recent days. I've always enjoyed the results with this amp over the years, clean and powerful and with slight variances of SQ by changing the input module from various opamp combos (especially the excellent OPA627BPs on a Brown Dog adapter) or the HDAMs by A-gd, finding the Earth HDAM to be my favourite for neutrality and sheer communication skills. This amp has powered my original HD540 Ref1 cans for many years then, easily driving the 600 ohm load with power to spare.
So, to a couple of weeks ago; I had bought a couple of the Sparkos Labs SS3602 modules to try out in Frankie. NO! Just no. Lovely .... but too soft, much of that wonderfully 'Vivid' transparency, speed and fine detail was missing, especially in the bass! Vocals are terrific, pushed forward in the mix and never a trace of harshness or edge, quite endearing in itself, but not accurate otherwise. Oh did I miss the speed and ambient detail of the Vivid's bass though, let alone in the top end! This was using the Magni 3+ as an amp for the time being.
Hmm, I bring out KHA 1. Unfortunately I have only one pair of the extremely pure Slinkylinks silver ICs and since I want the best signal possible from Frankie, they continue the output to the Magni 3+, now becoming a preamp for the KHA 1. I popped in a set of Mogami ICs from the Magni to the amp, they're good ... but not the Slinkys, as none have ever been that I've heard over the years, including Kimber silver ICs and other fine cables. I put the SS3602 into KHA 1 for starters. Here, in the INPUT stages, it performs much better, very enjoyable, bouncy and fun, those vocals are still forward in the mix but not unnaturally so, just very present and alive. Bass is better here too, but still missing the sheer focused snap of a kick drum skin, the weight AND dynamic speed, such that I gave up listening to some tracks such as, Richard Thompson's Calvary Cross live, The Doors with both The End and When The Music's Over. Ani DiFranco's Fuel, which has a very weighty drum kit quite clearly in a separate booth and gave a better showing in the amp than in Frankie (where it lost the booth altogether), but still softened the impact and skin tonality. The left hand on the piano of Kate Bush's Aerial was just too soft, I just couldn't enjoy that music the same way, no matter how nice the vocals might have been.
So, the Sparkos Labs SS3602 in the amp .. 6-7/10 (5/10 in Frankie) .. but when I went back to the Earth HDAM, yeehah, here we have it all, deeeep punchy bass in balance with detailed and uncompressed midrange and top end, vocals only slightly less forward than with the SS3602, yet with diction you could learn French or Mandarin from the articulate clarity, with body and texture. All that fine ambient detail across the board about 9.5/10ths of the Vivid's ability to effortlessly be an open book. Interestingly, there seems to be even more power available when using the Magni 3+ as a preamp into KHA 1, I almost never need to go over 11-12 o'clock on the volume control. The overall sound is even bigger and more open than with the Magni 3+ on it's own, head and cans doing the vanishing act with depth AND height, as well as sounds right outside and below the ear cups when present, such as the utterly delicious organ solos on When The Music's Over, down below the left ear cup, oh what a sound, fingers lifting off keys and the lovely tones of that organ ... mmm. Just suspended in space. As is Morrison's voice and the drum kit so dynamically clear in its own space behind him, lost with the SS3602, just too soft and unfocused for my liking. Blurred. The same track with the Earth HDAM is riveting!
So, here we have two items that I first bought and upgraded back in 2008/9 and they've only got better, even compared to much newer gear. Keepers!
The HD540 Ref1s are now performing even better, bringing the best of what I used to have over a decade ago and improving them further. Big, bold, present, dynamic yet detailed and naturally communicative with the emotional connection intact. I could do with even more transparent ICs from preamp to amp now, the hunt is on, I just wish I'd bought two sets of the Slinkylinks silver cables when I had the chance, though they were not cheap even 10-12 years ago, the ICs being $420NZ and the 2M silver speaker cables some $449! I still have both sets and that will never change. Nothing I've heard comes close to them and no, I haven't heard mega $k cables in my home, I've never really had the funds to do so, although I've heard some in hifi emporiums and wasn't that impressed. The sheer undistorted purity of the Slinky ICs is not fully maintained through the Mogami ICs, as good as that cable is (though it is far superior to stock off the shelf ICs I've heard/owned), the bass frequencies are slightly warmed. They are at least very quiet, not a trace of any noise other than the signal passes through them. I can just unplug from KHA 1 and pop the cable straight into the Magni 3+ to hear any differences the cable and electronics make, bass in particular just being so utterly transparent in the latter, yet the expansion of all images is just so addictive using the KHA 1/Earth combo, with no real musical expression being lost, that I'm good with it.
One last point to consider is that the new Burson Vivid V7 is about to be released! Hmm, V7 in Frankie and the V6 in KHA 1. That's really got me thinking. I'm about to put my order in for a V7 shortly.
A few pics here: one of the all-discrete Earth HDAM (on its own and installed in KHA 1) - yes, it's big compared to even the Burson Vivid V6 and the almost petite Sparkos Labs SS3602, but here the results speak for themselves, the HDAM with full size discrete components takes the cake for involving, tactile and very present images with a big soundstage; pics show KHA 1 without a case, the heatsink on the Class A power supply peeking at the top of one of them, interestingly I have used the same non-inductive Dale resistors as A-gd have in the HDAM. One pic of all three varieties of HDAM that used to be available once upon a time, from left; Earth, Sun, Moon. The latter I did pop into KHA 1 for a day, very taut bass, is without some of the depth of Earth, vocal pushed back in the mix though, if still clean and clear - not something I prefer, yet it didn't really gel with me emotionally, maybe that's why I've rarely used it in this amp, it was well run in though in KHA 2 but was not really a popular option musically for me. There's just something about the circuitry in that Earth HDAM (I have several spares that have had various use) that truly works for me. The Sun model has been rarely used, it's a teensy touch lighter/brighter in tonality but needs more playing around with, maybe even properly running in which for these HDAMs is a good 50 hours+. I may well put another power supply onto KHA 2 and run the HDAMs in separately. That big green PIO capacitor on the Earth HDAM is for power supply bypass duties, the high frequencies become just so pure and untainted with these things. The pic of Frankie is a slightly older one pre the upgrade to the Nichicon FG caps in the power supply and the replacement of various smaller electrolytics that were significantly failing their supposed values. The headphone amp in Frankie is disconnected from the PS.
It's all been quite fun and rather revelatory, especially after some health issues have sometimes laid me lowish for the last 7 months.

Addendum: some hours later. I've been meaning to connect up a pair of 0.5M ICs I made up a couple of years back. Created from pure solid core copper wire and made in a way that makes them basically non-directional and then coated in a particular substance that I have literally been sworn to secrecy about and covered in clear heatshrink, terminated in the very fine Bullet Plugs. I find these plugs remove a layer of distortion that you don't know about until it's gone. On any cable. So the whole of this little system is now solid core and Bullet plugged from DAC to amp. It shows as soon as I played the first seconds of It's A Kind Of Peace by the wonderful Cat Power, utter undistorted clarity, bass now so close in dynamic purity to that of the Vivid V6 that I could only measure it in fractions of a percentage. The slight 'wetness' of the Mogami IC now gone, all instruments and vocals focused in clear, undistorted space, not a note blurred, almost anechoic chamber-like, so verging on dryness rather than being lush, yet no lack ... at least so far ... of natural ambient decay. Just as if a layer of distortion has been removed, the Slinkylinks do exactly that compared to any other cable I know of so far. With the electronic tracks from The 2 Bears; Get Together and My Queen, the quality and focus of the deep synth basses is simply wonderful, vocals crystal clear.
There is a lot more music to be heard here, but I will say that if you can buy some good fine silver cable - at least 4 nines - make up a nice set of short lengths to start with and terminate them with the (newly improved) Bullet Plugs, you may find a new level of transparency to your music. I have NEVER had any issues with external noise polluting the sound and neither has KHA 1, even in it's undressed state. I just haven't found a suitable case yet and I might need two, one for the power supply, as I want to keep the amp as cable-less as possible. I'll need to find .. or build .. a case that fits the current dimensions of the board. Not a single instance of hums or buzzes, it's completely silent. And that is without input capacitors to boot, I wanted to keep the signal as pure as possible. I tried the stock cheapie caps, that didn't last long, even trying some poly caps, but no, I didn't like that either, so capacitorless the input is.
I will need to play some more music that has plenty of top end to it to see if the extension continues upwards, or it becomes drier and slightly rolled off, as I have experienced with some highly damped cables. The two extra pics show the Bullet plugs terminating the solid core new additions.

 

[sennsay]

I have a new addition to the electronics family, an April Music Stello HP100 h/phone amp/preamp, bought second hand ... well, naturally, since the amp came out in 2006, making it as 'old' as the FrankenZero, but at a $595US price at the time. Beautifully built, it was introduced as an intro to the High End, the Eximus line being their top end products. As a preamp/amp fed by Frankie, it is supremely neutral and really does show up the frequency balance of any headphone you connect to it. The HD540 Ref1s sound terrific with it, never needing to go over 12pm-1pm on the volume control, with a tad extra warmth in the lower bass, though with great focus and impact when required, and lovely extended treble. The HD430s, even with the pleather Orhpolsters show a lack of deep bass and a touch of the stock brightness, though with excellent mid clarity. Stock HD540 Ref1s with the stock cable and used wang pleather pads show their trademark upper mid grain and forward nature, with open yet less focused bass and compressed midrange soundstage.
So, a fine addition to the family and very pleasant to use, with two analogue inputs, switchable gain (both accessed from the front panel), nice solid switchgear and fine quality terminals on the rear. A very nice Alps Blue Velvet pot is for volume control. The whole unit weighs 8Ibs, solid.
The preamp opamps are the venerable TL071's ... we can do better, though they are just fine here, if lacking sheer image body and tactility. I unsoldered them and put in gold pinned opamp sockets, also replacing the bypass capacitors from the stock Samyoung (Seriously, in this level of gear!) 100uF bipolars to the last two 100uF Nichicon Muse versions I had left, a little larger but they fit just fine. The opamp sockets now allow me to roll not only opamps but move to something like the Burson Vivid V6 modules, which I did. They were 'ok', more dynamic than the TL071's certainly, but a bit too much on the forward detail and became a bit tiring to hear after a while. They are NOT fully run in though, probably only doing some 20 hours or so, less than half of the running in time, so I took them out and returned to the original TL071's. However, I am awaiting the arrival of a pair of single Vivid V7 Pro Classics and a dual Vivid V7 Pro, the latter will go into Frankie and I will put the two new Classics (noticeably upgraded from the V6 Classics!) into the Stello HP100. There will be some serious running in time coming up, but I am keen to hear if I have already reached the pinnacle from Frankie, or there is more to be had. The first two pics are off the Net, the third interior shot is mine. Note the Mundorf M-Caps in the output stages, nice.

 

[BEYER]

Someone tried edt770 pads on hd 540?

 

[IgorUA]

Someone tried edt770 pads on hd 540?

I tried pads with DT990 and in my opinion they don't fit and make the sound like with closed headphones, adding bass, but reducing the level of midrange. All the magic of the HD540 sound is lost. But I am now using these pads from 990, but completely redesigned. In my opinion, the inside of the pads should be solid, not perforated like in Beyerdynamic. And the outer velor part should breathe. In standard Beyerdynamic pads, the inner velor side has a film layer. I cut these pads along the seam, glued the part with perforations with powerful Gorilla tape, and peeled off the film. And then I sewed it back together. Now everything I listen to with these headphones sounds unreal. If you know how to sew, I can describe the process in more detail.

 

[gammarayson]

My HD 540s bought a couple of years ago in excellent condition from a German seller on eBay have suddenly stopped working They are just completely dead, no sound at all from either channel. There was no gradual loss of sound, or fall out in one channel, just complete silence. At first I thought it could the be custom XLR cable, but I tried with the original cable, also no luck. I am using a Topping A90 amp, but all my other headphones work perfectly. Any suggestions what the problem could be?

 

[LobalWarming]

My HD 540s bought a couple of years ago in excellent condition from a German seller on eBay have suddenly stopped working They are just completely dead, no sound at all from either channel. There was no gradual loss of sound, or fall out in one channel, just complete silence. At first I thought it could the be custom XLR cable, but I tried with the original cable, also no luck. I am using a Topping A90 amp, but all my other headphones work perfectly. Any suggestions what the problem could be?

Could be the internal spring contacts. Had to mess with them in my 540s. Never had both fail at once with same pair though.

Check Fran's 540 review for the how-to details. It's not for the clumsy of fingers or faint of focus. As I can attest.

 

[piglet]

The first audiophile headphones I owned were the Sennheiser HD540 Ref Gold. I bought them in 1991. Before those the headphones I'd used were ones that came with a couple of Sony Walkman's that I'd owned. When I bought the HD540 cans my friends were absolutely scandalised that I'd spent so much on cans. Soon after I bought them I moved to London where I was living in a tiny flat (apartment in US/Canada) and playing music with speakers would be almost as loud for my neighbours as it was for me and as I like to listen to music late at night I started using the HD540 cans every night pretty much. That was where my love of headphones started.

I sold the HD540 cans some years ago, I was almost never using them actually. They were still working but the earpads had started actually crumbling. I could have revived them but it was better for them to go to someone who was going to be using them and enjoying them.

I loved them when I had them but I don't miss them today as I think I've got a very good headphone selection.

I think the HD540 cans were trailblazers in that they brought a very high quality of music replay to a lot of people.

 

[Vintageaudioholic]

Hi, I wanna ask if anyone can provide some practical advice when it comes to DIY/repairing earpads.
I've kicked the can down the road many times with my dilapidated pair of fabric pads and finally got around to fixing them yesterday though I'm not entirely convinced with what I'm hearing, I just want to see if it's my ears needing more time adjusting to the sound or there are some other issues.
The original fabric pads are effectively bust and they do not hold their structure properly, oddly enough this produces a sound signature that lacks bass but is incredibly open and to be frank, I quite enjoy it. After reading some material, the point of the ear cushions (pads) were to prevent standing waves within and provide a flat frequency even from 16-25hz, the silk strip also serves some purpose apparently, I decided to base my repair on this idea but use acoustic foam instead of the incredibly soft foam of the originals.
Due to skills, supplies and circumstances, I ended up having foam that was clearly oversized (height was 25mm instead of 20mm), it did eventually fit into the pads but the new pads were very firm (at least to me), even firmer than some firm pads that I remember. the firmness has a problem of not giving easily, hence it doesn't seal properly unless I wear it properly, unlike the dilapidated pair which has some leeway to the fit.
Once I listened to the Senns, I did feel a sense of disappointment, sure the bass is superior to what I had, but in relative terms, it sounded like a studio rather than a full blown concert hall, there seems to be a small recession in some of the upper mids which seems to be less of a problem now that I've partially accustomed to the new sound, the highs also lost their sparkle (not sure if that is because the bass is back).
I think my main query in practical terms is whether this firmness/density due to the pads being packed would negativity influence the sound of the Senns or is this THE normal that has always been?

 

[sennsay]

Ah, many of us long for those delicious original pads, so soft that they could be worn for hours and I did often! Until the second set died some years back and by then they were unobtainable. The second pair of HD540 Refs I bought a couple of years ago came with the same looking pads in your second pic, they were simply awful and have been binned. Yours look better, but the foam in mine was also rubbish and breaking down. The stitching was coming apart as well in places. I have never found anything approaching the original pads and now stick to just the wang_yifei pleather pads. They improve the bass significantly and still allow an astonishing level of out of the head openness, sometimes uncannily so. I've only just received a new set of wang pleathers in the mail today for the second pair of virtually immaculate HD540s. My 35 year old original pair are still going strong and are shod with the same wang pads. I have not found anything better overall ... yet.
Around Sept/Oct last year, some of us were talking about ordering some pleather pads from Ali (non)Express, I did so and they never came, despite emails to said non-express company. Amazingly, until the end of last week when a set of pleather pads turns up in the mailbox out of the blue, no foams, just pads with the net backing and smaller than I prefer ear openings. I'd so forgotten about the Ali pads I wasn't sure where these things had come from and it took me until the arrival of the new wangs to realise .... oh my ... these must be the pads I ordered from Ali non-Express some six months ago! They are a lot like a pair of German Orhpolsters I use on my HD430s in style, but 30mm in depth, some 10mm thicker than even the Orhpolsters (!) and more than that compared to the wang pleathers, which are a little shallower again, while having the benefit of the oval and more spacious ear openings I prefer, some 48mm x 67mm in shape. The Ali pads are more like a 54mm x 35mm tunnel, certainly giving plenty of distance from driver to ear, yet I'd imagine some tunnelling of midrange effects and less expansive soundstage. I'm yet to try them. The shape of the wangs, I find, allows for superb height of the soundstage and images appearing below chin level both centrally and outside of the ear cups, almost as much as the original cloth covered pads but with superior balance. The out-of-head images can be quite uncanny and the same goes for the HD430s with some YouTube videos, REALLY uncanny! Some vocals are so out in space that I'm looking around the room wondering if I've actually got the iMac's speakers on.
So, for me, a good day and they all arrived before we leave this little home for some traveling on the road to find a new home.
wang_yifei was brilliant when I asked if he could expedite shipping the new pads and why, he answered emails promptly and they arrived in 8 days.
More specifically, vintageaudioholic, in answer to your question, dense earpads are NOT music to the ears for the HD540s and most certainly not memory foam. Despite being moderately thick pads, the German Orhpolsters are relatively soft to wear and very comfortable on the HD430s. The wang pleathers are shallower and a tad softer again, the pleather seems to be more pliable. A number of we HD540 fans here use them. They also soften a bit with some use.
I remember when my Senns had their original pads, I could still get bass so deep that it seemed to come from my chest, it may have lacked sheer impact, but the openness was outstanding. Especially with some synth bass. Does any of this help you at all?

 

[IgorUA]

Can someone give me a link to these wang_yifei pads? I seem to have bought them from this seller, but they turned out to be thick, bigger than the diameter of the headphone cups and sounded terrible. Maybe I ordered something wrong? In my opinion, pads cannot be made of leatherette, but only of something resembling velor. The foam inside should be quite hard and under pressure.

If there are people in London, we can organize a HD540 geek meetup and I'll bring mine for a test. I spent a lot of time with these hellacious pads and can share my experience.

 

[Vintageaudioholic]

Ah, many of us long for those delicious original pads, so soft that they could be worn for hours and I did often! Until the second set died some years back and by then they were unobtainable. The second pair of HD540 Refs I bought a couple of years ago came with the same looking pads in your second pic, they were simply awful and have been binned. Yours look better, but the foam in mine was also rubbish and breaking down. The stitching was coming apart as well in places. I have never found anything approaching the original pads and now stick to just the wang_yifei pleather pads. They improve the bass significantly and still allow an astonishing level of out of the head openness, sometimes uncannily so. I've only just received a new set of wang pleathers in the mail today for the second pair of virtually immaculate HD540s. My 35 year old original pair are still going strong and are shod with the same wang pads. I have not found anything better overall ... yet.
Around Sept/Oct last year, some of us were talking about ordering some pleather pads from Ali (non)Express, I did so and they never came, despite emails to said non-express company. Amazingly, until the end of last week when a set of pleather pads turns up in the mailbox out of the blue, no foams, just pads with the net backing and smaller than I prefer ear openings. I'd so forgotten about the Ali pads I wasn't sure where these things had come from and it took me until the arrival of the new wangs to realise .... oh my ... these must be the pads I ordered from Ali non-Express some six months ago! They are a lot like a pair of German Orhpolsters I use on my HD430s in style, but 30mm in depth, some 10mm thicker than even the Orhpolsters (!) and more than that compared to the wang pleathers, which are a little shallower again, while having the benefit of the oval and more spacious ear openings I prefer, some 48mm x 67mm in shape. The Ali pads are more like a 54mm x 35mm tunnel, certainly giving plenty of distance from driver to ear, yet I'd imagine some tunnelling of midrange effects and less expansive soundstage. I'm yet to try them. The shape of the wangs, I find, allows for superb height of the soundstage and images appearing below chin level both centrally and outside of the ear cups, almost as much as the original cloth covered pads but with superior balance. The out-of-head images can be quite uncanny and the same goes for the HD430s with some YouTube videos, REALLY uncanny! Some vocals are so out in space that I'm looking around the room wondering if I've actually got the iMac's speakers on.
So, for me, a good day and they all arrived before we leave this little home for some traveling on the road to find a new home.
wang_yifei was brilliant when I asked if he could expedite shipping the new pads and why, he answered emails promptly and they arrived in 8 days.
More specifically, vintageaudioholic, in answer to your question, dense earpads are NOT music to the ears for the HD540s and most certainly not memory foam. Despite being moderately thick pads, the German Orhpolsters are relatively soft to wear and very comfortable on the HD430s. The wang pleathers are shallower and a tad softer again, the pleather seems to be more pliable. A number of we HD540 fans here use them. They also soften a bit with some use.
I remember when my Senns had their original pads, I could still get bass so deep that it seemed to come from my chest, it may have lacked sheer impact, but the openness was outstanding. Especially with some synth bass. Does any of this help you at all?

Sennsay,
Thanks for the reply, I think I somewhat see your point now, I did some looking into the matter and I think the best thing I can do now is to crush my pads with heavy weights for some time to try breaking them in, I did for the past 2 days and they seem to be working, or it's me accustoming to the sound. To be honest, my headphones are slowly deteriorating like the Bakerloo line , I've kicked way too many problems down the line, I'm glad nonetheless that I've swapped the foam because the old ones weren't even holding their own shape so I had to prop the foam up every single time, this just isn't sustainable. I'm thinking whether it is a good idea to keep the current acoustic foam or swap again, not only because it's a massive undertaking but because it's actually doing decently well for what it is and the best I can do is laser cut the foam to strict dimensions if it actually calls for it, and I doubt it'll change anything apart from the softness. These new pads definitely made me rethink the sound I was used to, I'm uncertain whether the airiness is actually greatly emphasised because the mids and bass were so weak. Now that the bass and mids are back, the highs relatively speaking would sound recessed, and the airiness would be less apparent, I think that is what happened with my earpads. Right now, the sound is far more balanced than before, I might call it muffled sometimes, but I doubt what I used to hear was accurate to start with, I think the best way forward is to listen for a bit and judge again.

 

[sennsay]

Can someone give me a link to these wang_yifei pads? I seem to have bought them from this seller, but they turned out to be thick, bigger than the diameter of the headphone cups and sounded terrible. Maybe I ordered something wrong? In my opinion, pads cannot be made of leatherette, but only of something resembling velor. The foam inside should be quite hard and under pressure.

If there are people in London, we can organize a HD540 geek meetup and I'll bring mine for a test. I spent a lot of time with these hellacious pads and can share my experience.

Hi IgorUA, I buy from this seller, it may be the same as you've tried before. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/261338110308?var=560432574135
I now only buy the pleather pads with the oval ear openings and ONLY the 3mm foams, which I ask for and which he sent me a few days ago. Often he will send a selection of 5mm and 3mm foams, 5mm is too thick for using behind the pads. I've never had a fitting problem with these pads, otherwise I would have never bought any more, these are my fourth set of the wang pleathers, the latest ones being for my second pair of HD540s. I used a couple of the 5mm foams to replace the crumbling outer foams behind the drivers next to the ear cups, they work well there. I did the HD430s as well. Great results.
Initially, on first buying the wangs, I bought a pair of the velour pads as well, yuk! The ear openings are too small, weird things happened to the midrange, the bass faded off and they didn't last long, maybe even less than than some memory foam jobs (Dekoni included) and that's saying something!. I have a second brand new set purely for absolute emergency reasons, they may never be used. The pleather pads are a little thinner, have much better ear openings, are far better balanced "in my systems", (I must add) and are comfortable on my head, give superb 'out of head and cans' soundstage, even as not minutely focused as a pair of Focals and the like. My main DAC, the FrankenZero, is more like a good valve device in comparison to the more transistor-like Schiit Modi Multibit (although I've loved using it for years until 6 months or so ago), better depth, natural vocals and more fluid and fuller bass lines, more organic. The beauty of the HD540s is that they will reflect what is before them with insight (though not ultra-detailing the modern sense) and retain that glorious instrument and vocal timbre that we love about them.
Unfortunately, I may not get to hear the system with the new Burson Vivid V7 Pro and Classic V7 Pro modules (the latter are single channel modules for the Stello amp), as the package was stolen from my mailbox shortly after it was delivered!

 

[IgorUA]

Hi IgorUA, I buy from this seller, it may be the same as you've tried before. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/261338110308?var=560432574135

Thank you very much for your answer! I will order a pair to try. I don't use foam in front of the drivers at all - only a very thin cloth. To my ears, anything that covers the center of the driver kills all the magic of the sound.

 

[sennsay]

No 2 HD540 Refs have received their new wang pleather pads now, plus one of the thin foams each side, 3mm, same as for the No1 HD540s.
There has always been something a little different about these No 2 540s, they are the same impedance at 600 ohms and even using the same Mogami cable, foams and pads they are still not quite as smoothly intimate and unfatiguing as the No 1 versions. Two possibilities: one being that I have applied a very specific dampening material in small amounts across both of the input pins on each channel and on the back of the driver magnets (No 1 540s); and secondly, the outer foams on the No 2 540s are original, not the 5mm newish foams I have in the No 1s. Maybe the newer outer foams are a tad denser, although out of head soundstage focus is unaffected in height or depth. Possibly just a tonal balance smoothness, top end detail though still shines through though without a trace of edge or grain. There might also be a factor in that my original 35 year old HD540s have had a great deal more use than the second set.
Despite all this, the 'newer' HD540s have very good central focus and are slightly more forward in the mids, a tad more exposed, although nowhere near as much as if I was using the original cable. I'll continue to use them for a while and give my original pair a bit of a rest and I might just add some of that dampening material (it's removable) once we move on from this current home and find some settled moments.

Addendum a day later: the No 2 HD540s are definitely different. The top end is certainly less favourable to dodgier and edgy recordings, being noticeably brighter (if not by a large amount), even a little splashier on cymbal work, bass speed and overall quality is similar but not as warm from low right up to mid bass. We're not talking a lot here, but again, noticeable. It really is as if I've plugged in the original cables, but have more bass definition and weight with that. I have discovered before that the stock cans seem to marry better with the stock cable, despite the upper mid grain and less transparent natural openness with that. And then there's the lighter bass weight.
The Mogami cable has that same dampening material on the main plug end, surrounding the inner terminals - it's totally non-conductive. It seems that the dampening material needs to be maintained from amplifier plug end all the way to the drivers and that pathway is broken when using damped cables and undamped cans, or the other way around.
Returning to using the Mogami with the undamped No 2's, there is definitely a better balance tonally, but not the completely organic non-artificiality of the No 1 HD540s with the Mogami.
More experimenting is required.