I've used HD650s with six different cable arrangements, as follows, Cardas pins on everything but the stock cable.
•..The stock ¼" TRS.
•Trim all-silver cable with both RCA terminal and minimally resistance-augmented speaker amp (bare wire) connections.
•Less trim copper cable with RCA connections.
•1-meter 10-gauge copper-silver interspersal cable with RCA connections.
‼1.5-meter APureSound V3 Balanced cable custom ordered with same RCA plugs as previously mentioned cable
Now I didn't put a great deal of care in the durability of the four intermediary cables, not devoting proper tools or much time to them and using them for test purposes, but the signal paths at the time of testing were whole and wouldn't have altered much with greater anchoring.
I own both the HD595 and HD650 Senns, (a couple of the most commonly discussed headphones here, so I doubt my observations will be revelatory, so... perhaps this will be of use to those who like to read lots and lots of the same general views about the same headphones, whether to acquire them or.. um. ..think about them?)
..So's, anyway..
Even with the stock cable it was always evident how much potential the latter have, and yet.. before receiving Alex's cable I usually preferred listening to the 595s, as the 650s, even though they possessed quite a bit more detail and finesse, they just sounded.. .very.. .uncalibrated.. with the stock cable.
The soundstage very thrown off, a sort of non-commital and amorphous sound with frequencies cancelling each other out half the time, hinting and kind of teasing with a rich fidelity between this 'Sennheiser veil' thing, which I believe is a poor-cable-related phenomenon..
Now I'm far from knowledgeable gear-wise, I'm a kid with a ratty little rig that primarily involves (guess, c'mon guess) RCA/phono jacks, common in many DACs and headphone amps a bit more downscale than exclusive XLR hookups and the like.
Every one of these cables was a clear improvement from the TRS, except ..of course. ..in some of them more than others the signal would flicker with excessive movement. (which, in retrospect, probably could have been fixed, had I stopped messing with a glue gun and invested in a soldering iron)
The APS cable, aside from ..just. .being built well/strong.. it's leaps and bounds ahead sound-wise.
Even with the stiff, bulky, extremely inconvenient 1-meter cable I'd been using for reasons that can only seem plausible from an audiophile perspective, which was the previous best of the lot, the APS cable won out due to its sheer quality and craftsmanship. (and I tested this thing side-by-side, ear-by-ear, simultaneous with the APS cable)
The detail, or, rather.. the information was there in the previous cable.. but it wasn't there in perspective. It was flat, and hard, and the timbre and soundstage suffered. There were details the stock cable wouldn't convey, but the sound became.. I wouldn't say 'bright' but.. just overmodulated and subsidized, subtracting from the overall sonic imprint.
The APS cable is extremely, extremely neutral. You'll get all the details, and the details about the details.
It's like hearing the sound untangled.
The overall responsiveness accelerates beyond a lot of non-Sennheiser headphones, that. judging only with the stock cable, were 'quicker' if not as rich.
Properly cabled, everything flows naturally in liquid clarity.
I don't know what else is out there, but I'm sure this cable is tough to match, and I believe it will complete the sound signature of, not just the difficult package of the Sennheisers, but any high end headphone.
I'm very pleased with the V3 cable.
And the APS team is very up-front and friendly, quick on the uptake, and good at thoughtfully answering a host of very weird questions.
(I also received my cable fairly quickly and paid $10 less than the standard termination price due to the nature of my custom order)
</endorsement-speak>
