This thread just remainds me that I have sold my HD580 just to get K501 solely based on discussions on this forum few weeks ago. And I have already been a new owner of K501 for few days.
Meanwhile I thought about what was the real "issue" with HD580 and if there even was any.
My experience with HD580 was almost purely singular i.e. except short comparison to HD600 I did not have any opportunity to compare them to any other good headphones. So the decision to sell them was based solely on the feeling and sound they provide and not on comparison to something better. One thought that struck me recently about that feeling was:
Does HD580, accidentally, contradict themselves? They seemed to me to be very detailed headphones, it was even easy with them to pick up each individual instrument or voice. With such a level of detail I however felt simultaneously missing something. Because I do not have my English rich enough I had picked up "veiled" as close adjective, even if that is probably not the exactly right one.
More likely I would describe the whole phenomena like this:
"Wow, I am hearing all different sounds and instruments with such detail, how is possible that it also looks like all the sounds seems so distant? Isn't it that such details can be percieved only from very close distance." "Lesser" phones do not suffer from that effect IMHO because they are simply lacking the convincing detail first. But HD580 and possibly HD600 too - though after I heard HD600 compared to my HD580, HD600 are still the option for me - produce to much detail and do not come with enough forward sound to back up. So in the result - they probably sound
unconvincing compared to Real Life Sounds(tm). I simply cannot sit 10 meters from the source and hear details that are possibly percievable from one meter only. It is probably not very technical explanation, but I hope at least someone will understand what I meant
.