In response to all the posts commenting about the sonic quality differences between the beige 598 and the black special edition, I just received my SE (special edition) today, and I'm pretty sure I hear a difference. First some history. I bought my first 598 (beige) about a month ago from Amazon. I loved them upon first listen. I was especially pleasantly surprised with the decent amount of bass after reading so many reviews here and on Amazon that say they are bass light. My only major complaint was the cable length and the silly 6.3 mm to 3.5 mm adapter (instead of 3.5 to 6.3), which makes a connection to my iPhone 6 look ridiculous due to the size. I was planning on buying a shorter cable, but then I saw the black friday special on Amazon for the SE for $95 with shorter cable and jumped all over it. Even though I prefer the beige look, the SE was $45 cheaper and with 2 cables. I had to return the beige before the SE arrived, so I couldn't do side by side comparisons of sound, but here's what I hear:
First thing I noticed is less bass on the SE. The beige, that I put maybe 50-100 hours on before returning, was fuller and more prominent in the bass with more impact that resonated. The next thing I noticed is that vocals on some songs were slightly hissy and ever so slightly sibilant on the SE. I never heard even slight hissiness or sibilance on the beige 598. As I'm listening to the SE now, they sound brighter and thinner than the beige ones I returned. I remember the beige ones sounding warmer and fuller with slightly more relaxed upper mids and treble. The overall sound signature is similar with similar soundstage, however. The biggest noticeable difference is the lack of warmth and fullness in the bass and lower mids.
Regarding the comments about authenticity, I checked mine on Sennheiser's site and they checked out as authentic.
So, do you guys think that the difference I'm hearing is due to break in of the phones? Can I expect these SE's to get fuller and warmer sounding over several hours of use? The only issue I have with the break in possibility is that the beige never sounded like this even from day 1 from what I remember. Also, I'm using the short cable with the SE. Could the difference in sound be due to the different cables? I'm going to try the long cable with adapter and see if I hear a difference. Also, is it possible that the exact same model headphones can differ in sound due to slight manufacturing variances?
I have found that no two headphones sound exactly the same, even within the same model number. Most people don’t have multiple pairs of the same model headphone so believe they all sound the same. I’ve had ten or twelve pairs of the Senn PX 100ii which I modded for friends or sold……and I found they all had the same overall tone but each had slight differences in treble, midrange and bass.
Right now I have two modded SennGrado's (PX100 in tone-wood cup), one that has a nice mid-bass hump and another that has a more balanced frequency response.
All that to say……they can be using the exact same driver even though you are hearing differences between the Burl wood and the black HD 598s.
Indeed!
The fact that Grado goes to the trouble of matching transducer pairs with each other points out this variation quite prominently, I think.
Also, I once read about an experiment where people were listening to the exact same speakers for each listening session. Not just the same make and model, but the exact same speakers in the exact same room with the exact same upstream chain and source material. The
only thing that changed was the
color of the cloth covering the speaker grilles! And yet, across all genders and age groups, there was a significant difference in the perceived sound, especially with certain colors. And, black didn't fare that well, actually! IIRC it came across as cold and thin. Blue and red did better. Yellow was harsh. Etc. Anyway, point is that it really is crazy what kind of subjective stuff can happen in this realm. And in this case, maybe the brown and beige vs. the black color is having an effect! (Maybe! Or maybe not, since you can't see the cans when you're wearing them.)
And yet, despite stuff like this, we all make comparisons against cans we've heard before but not longer own, or never owned, etc. I do it. It seems necessary. It feels reasonable. I made a bunch of comparisons between the Grado RS2e's and the SR225e's, despite the fact that I had only auditioned the 225's in a Stereo store for 2 hours a week before.
And I still think there was something objectively true in this. Certain parts of certain songs were physically painful on the 225's (upper treble) which didn't stand out much at all on the 2e's, and so on. That seems to be more than just subjective. But then, on some days our ears and hearing is different than on others, depending on how much sleep we got, whether we are hungry or not, stressed or not, happy or not, etc. So who knows!
In any case, I will be interested to see if a consensus develops here in regards to SE vs. beige. Unfortunately, I only own the 595's, so my comparison will be between that and the 598SE's.
