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How much of that difference is actually audible or noticeable? I haven't heard any changes due to burn and I'm pretty posistive if I spent an insane amount of money recabling my headphones I wouldn't hear any difference either. Whether there is an actual difference or not is a different story. Moving the headphones and earpads around would be the same.
Without moving this into a cable or burn-in discussion, regardless of ones thoughts on that, the matter of repositioning headphones is free to try, instant to ABX, and everyone can do it, so why not try?
I actually mentioned this topic a while ago in the HD650 App. thread when I realized it. The sound had considerable effect depending on where the ear was placed, mostly affecting treble/bass balance/depth and also affecting HRTF (if in the wrong position, HD650 and HE-400 have a nasty habit of projecting sounds from
behind me, it's rather startling to hear some bongo drummer start drumming behind your shoulder
)
Driver placement, especially with non-planar wavefronts (orthos, HD800) since the wavefront is conical in shape and depending on how it hits your ear/earlobe affects how it resonates. With the planar wavefronts it's more likely to baffle naturally. And where you place the pad affects driver distance-to-ear, and if it's sitting on a bone differently affects angle as well.
Consider why all the $1k+ headphones (and some well below that like AT, Denon, AKG) are angling the drivers, angling the earpads, and remember one of the significant differences between HD600 and HD650 was the driver distance in the housing. And consider why many like Denon try to coax you by force into where you put your ear in the cup (with the front-shifted ovoid hole in the pads in the case of Denon.)
The HE-400 has such a huge cup, with the pleather pads on, it's easy to experiment. Putting your ear near the front emphasizes treble but can make it harsh. It makes sense, you're putting the driver closer to the ear, moving your ear away from the center of the airflow (bass weight), and your ear canal entrance is picking up the refractions off the glossy pleather surface directly rather than after some bouncing attenuation. Obviously ergonomics tells us they weren't designed with the idea of your ear being at the front edge, but for the purpose of confirming driver positions effect on sound, it's an interesting test, and easily confirms the potential for negative (and fatiguing!) effect in incorrect positions.