Tonight I did a pretty long A/B comparison of the Hemp vs the HD700. I am not sure I can keep both in the long term because tonewise to me they sound to be in the same ballpark; if you like the Hemp you'll probably like the HD700 and vice versa (assuming good gear match). They are like within 25% of each other soundwise IMO. Most of the material I compared centered around female vocalists, electronic music, rock, and metal.
They both sounded excellent, but here are my takeaways using Musical Fidelity MX-DAC and Liquid Platinum w/ stock tubes
- Hemp sounded significantly more "congested" than HD700
- HD700 had overall more convincing mids than Hemp, though the hd700 soundstage and air may have biased me on this
- HD700 had more extended treble, but also had more instances of being too bright at high volumes - although this was very rare for both headphones with my gear setup
- HD700 soundstage sounded both much wider, deeper, and more convincing than Hemp; hemp smaller, more intimate but still believable. This is a huge differentiator between the two.
- Hemp sound was more immediate, HD700 had more reverb
- Bass was relatively similar between the two
- HD700 sounded significantly more polished, Hemp more raw
- HD700 had significantly more air than Hemp
- HD700 was significantly more comfortable to wear than Hemp
- But, Hemp's shorter cord and smaller size was a bit easier to manage than HD700
- It was easier to forget I was wearing headphones with HD700
- To be frank, in almost every instance I overall preferred the sound of the HD700
- There is no doubt Hemp looks nicer