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When you listen to the HD 595, could you say to yourself, "This isn't audio nirvana, but I think I can see it from here."? If not, then there would in fact be a pretty big difference betwixt 595 and 650.
That just made my head spin. I read that sentence about ten times before I could make some sense out of it. I think it's a pretty clever of putting it, but how could you know that if you didn't hear the 595?
When I listen to 595 I know almost exactly what I want to be different: more bass, with better attack, slightly less piercing trebbles (It seems that I'm starting to catch on the lingo after reading a couple thousands posts here). More soundstage; ok,
some soundstage, as I'm not sure there's any with the 595. Instrument separation.
The more reviews I read, the more I think the HD650 are what I want.
.. except when I read about "the veil"... what's with the veil? I don't want the veil.
To me, the veil simply means that the highs don't pierce your eardrums. To my mind, in a live performance the highs, because of their short-wavelengths - they hit 'faster' but with less total power than the mids or the bass. High frequency sound waves decay rapidly over space. If you're seated or standing over the violin, you'll hear much more urgency to the highs, but your sense of the spaciousness of the arrangement is diminished because you are right in the midst of the orchestra - your vantage point is not the ideal vantage point to which the composition is 'aimed' by the composer. To me, this helps create the spaciousness of the soundstage. A 'good' rock or pop producer recreates this by the mixdown sometimes, actually.
What is your ideal vantage point? Do you want to feel like you are playing with the band? Grados are said to achieve this by the immediacy of their sound. Truly, even just with the SR80i - the 'immediacy' of the sound is intense. The mids feel lightning fast and the highs are right there in your face (truth be told, I always had to EQ the highs down on the SR80i). That immediacy sacrifices a 'big picture' idea of the composition. By contrast, the HD 650 makes you feel like you're actually in a space listening to the band. I can't compare soundstages except with the cans I've heard and that list is shockingly small. Senn HD 497 (older discontinued can), Grado SR80i, Ety 6, Shure E2, and some crap bluetooth 'headphones' (Bah! Hate to use the term to grace these Jaybirds - the bandwith is too small for any sort of fidelity with BT, IMHO).
So, take into account - my opinion is, to use an audiophile term, quite 'colored' by my limited experience.
The lowdown is this - did the HD 595 give you a 'revelatory' experience? Did they make you think that, by God, you've not been hearing half of your music? Or are they just a clearer version of whatever you'd listened to before? The SR80i were that for me - a clearer, slightly different version of what I'd heard before with diminished (but not completely unsatisfactory) bass and very 'fluid' mids. But they didn't make me fantasize about how much BETTER it could be like the HD 650 - I'm already plotting out a budget for LCD-2s and maybe the Icon HDP DAC/Amp/pre-amp - this is only because the HD 650s make me realize just what is possible.
In my opinion, all cans below the quality (but not necessarily the same house sound) of the HD 650 should just be burned (except maybe for 'fun' experiences with techno or something). I say that because before the HD 650, I wasn't really listening to any sort of even semi-accurate representation of the music. I hear breath intakes now, whole subtle vocal underpinnings below the prominent vocals of a track, percussive emphasis where another, sometimes odd, percussive instrument emphasizes parts of the percussion (I'd have been able to hear it with worse phones if they were off-setting the main percussion, but with worse phones, they get buried in the 'broad strokes' of the main percussion if they're played in sync with it).
So, if you're going to that level of expenditure I really don't know if the other cans at that price point match the 'bang-for-the-buck' in just getting one excited about music and the sheer possibilities.
Keep in mind, I haven't heard the other players in the field, though. If you like the 'Senn sound', the HD 650s are definitely more and then some. Space is introduced. There is clarity of all ranges of the music without bass and mid-bass muddying up the middles; highs that, although they don't soar to Grado-levels of ear-splitting-ness, are still quite 'detachable' from the rest of the arrangement in a good recording. There is the first recognition of spaciousness around the different instruments and frequencies.
If you have 128k mp3s, though - just delete them. The HD 650 is forgiving, but even with the supposed 'veil', the highs are ragged, the mids washed out, and the bass is floppy or ..... 'fuzzy' with lower quality files. My friend has better ears and she could hear the difference between iTunes tracks and Amazon tracks where I never could - now with these cans, it's frustrating to listen to 128k mp3 or aac.
I hope I haven't revved you up to hear a super-sonic miracle with the HD 650s - but if you get them, I'm pretty confident that you'll at least have an inkling of what a sonic-miracle of reproduction may sound like.
, you really need to learn a lot before you can appreciate the more expensive ones. 
