Regarding the two straight cables, imo the black cable without the mic will generally work better, it's very slightly bit warmer sounding but seems to have more depth to the soundstage as well, that's about it, nothing huge but still, I tend to get "sucked in" to the atmosphere of the tracks better on the black cable as a result. It's a shame as I like the feel of the soft, thin, flexible mic-inline cable, perhaps there's some aftermarket alternatives which would be similar out there?
I tested other pads today, I mostly have some chinese knock-offs so can't really say what pads they are but I also tried the beyers for DT770 and DT990 both velours and leather and the biggest problem I see is the foam pads on those pads are overly thick which adds both distance to the soundstage and blocks so much sound you have to raise the volume A LOT but still it wasn't the best result.
The Hifiman leather pads I tried worked decently and those are huge in circumference so brings much space around the ears but it also tamed the bass response quite a bit and felt that sucked a bit too much fun out of the headphone but both soundstage and overall mid-highs balance was quite nice.
However I decided to properly install the SRH440 Shure pads this time as I thought those were the most promissing and was only prepared to EQ out the shoutiness I talked about earlier. To my suprise though, they change quite significantly once installed securely onto the cups and these fits perfectly, like they were made for the headphone but they are pretty shallow, almost more shallow than the stock pads just measuring by the eye but they don't compress that much but have a different kind of softness to it than the stock pads in the sense, the stock pads compresses quite easily when pressing softly but at some point there will be significant resistance to the press when pressing harder on it. The SRH440 pads again has more linear compression to the pads so as you press harder, they just continue to compress so to speak without any huge resistance so this is why I feel it works quite decently still comfort-wise. It's not ideal but manageable so far but have to update on that with long-term use.
But the shoutiness was somehow gone now that I spoke about earlier and they sound very balanced out of box in the mids & highs with no EQ needed. Very detailed, on the edge of getting shouty but not quite, it's a pleasant listen still but has so much more details than stock pads as the sound has cleared up in all ways, bass is noticeably more controlled too but still offers a lot of punchiness though. No matter how much I boost the bass it doesn't seem to lead into any muddy mess, it just seems to retain the control and I've never experienced something like that before, after all I'm talking about above 10dB boosted bass on the DAC + AMP, it's like the excess bass is getting sucked out into a blackhole, weird.
With the stock pads you will definitely get to hear that added bass boost but it won't sound that good or clean obviously when doing a very large amount of boost, thought that was interesting to point out as a testament in terms of how controlled the bass will sound like with these pads. Possibly the basshead in me thinks it might be too controlled? But audiophiles would rejoice for sure. Soundstage is very wide with these pads, it's neither very in-your-face or very distant sounding, somewhere in the middle, decent depth.
