[speakerlao]

How long do these take to break in? Get some pain from the clamping after an hour or so of use. Left them stretching over the original box 3 night now, still getting pain using them.

 

[Arunabha Lahiri]

Laptop sound cards are generally not all that great. With low impedance headphones I hear tons of static and even just ABing same song on laptop and my Galaxy S4 I (currently without dac) prefer my phone, but I will get a dac tomorrow and I'm far too excited to get rid of the static!

So in short, you're not crazy!   If you want to listen from your laptop, a decent budget dac like the E10k will help.

Definitely, if you're using a laptop, get a DAC immediately. I personally tried the Dragonfly 1.2 and I wasn't impressed - it wasn't any *significantly* better than my on-board sound. I'd look into a LH Labs Geek Out 450, 1000 or V2 model....or a Meridian Explorer 1 or 2. I personally bought the the Geek Out 450 after trying (and returning) the Dragonfly and it blew the Dragonfly away in all aspects. Of course, there's other DACs out there. Those are just the ones that I'm partial to and have read numerous good things about.

Edit: I should also mention I'm running a Sennheiser HD558 which I guess is the model below the 598. Supposedly if you remove the sticky rubber piece from inside the phones from the 558, you essentially wind up with the 598s. I wasn't that impressed and put it back (the treble/high end was too painful for me) [apparently I'm in the minority on these] but you should have no problem running the 598s on those types of DACs and having them improve it.

Cool as of now I am enjoying them with my ipod. The sound from my laptop is not great. Originally I too was considering dragonfly. Thanks for these amazing recommendations. I will upgrade in near future. That time these will be handy.

Happy listen.

 

[DangerClose]

 
Definitely, if you're using a laptop, get a DAC immediately. I personally tried the Dragonfly 1.2 and I wasn't impressed - it wasn't any *significantly* better than my on-board sound. 

 
Was your onboard sound on an Apple laptop?  Those are known to be above average.

 

[Arunabha Lahiri]

Was your onboard sound on an Apple laptop?  Those are known to be above average.

No a hp pavilion g6.a 5 year old model and a mediocre at best laptop.

I am planning on buying a macbook air 13 inches though. But will have to save up for that. I use an ipod nano and honestly I really like the sound. I guess macbook air too will sound great. Is there any difference in sound coming from macbook air and macbook pro?

Thank you.

 

[Letmebefrank]

Been using these for a few days now with a schiit magni 2 and modi 2U, I have to say they just keep getting better and better. Had a 6 hour Arma 3 wasteland session last night and the spatial awareness is incredible, I can hear helicopters coming from 3km away, before they even render (2km) and know exactly where they will pop into view.

I would have to say the thing I like about these the most is the comfort, they are so light I forget I'm wearing headphones.

 

[Arunabha Lahiri]

Well the clamp of mine is still strong and it is giving me a slight head ache. Wish it would loosen up soon..

 

[kinkling]

So for those of you who have dealt with this already, how does one overcome the 100Hz impedance/bass hump issue?
 
A little background on what I have owned/heard in the past: I'm a mid-range kind of guy.  I have the HiFiMan RE-400 IEMs and love them.  I have the NAD Viso HP50s and love them.  I have the Sennheiser PX-100ii, and occasionally find myself blissing out to them on the Walkman or iPod, unamped, but EQed to boost the treble a bit.  I have a pair of ATH-M50s at my desk at work, which are perfectly fine as a work pair, coming out of the Realtek onboard sound, but can get annoying, especially the high end.  I really like the way the Sennheiser PX-100 sounds, so I figured HD-598s would be even better, and grabbed them during the Black Friday deal, but it seems this 300ohm impedance hump is going to be an issue.
 
Listening out of the work computer, the bass was definitely boosted.  Bass-shy, these phones were not.  Being curious, I stuck a fiio E11 in between the headphone out and my ears, and the bass tightened up noticeably; unfortunately the treble got annoying quickly, too.  I took them home and plugged them straight into my Yamaha receiver and listened to some TV and movies; same thing--too much boom.  Music sounded nice, toe-tapping, but the dialogue was too bassy and hard to follow.  Treble seemed fine, so I am guessing it was the nefarious bass bump again.  Tried it in my home computer and with the E11, the treble was fine, not too hot, not too cold.  Without the amp, the bass got boomy again.
 
Is the only way to defeat it by using an amp with a low impedance output?  I don't mind taking the E11 around with me (it's small enough, after all), but I can just plug the PX-100ii or the HP50 straight into the portable device and enjoy nice sound, so the HD-598s seem kind of redundant at this point.  They're comfortable and nicely styled, but I am not sure what source would work best with them.  Any advice?  They sound nice, and I like the toe-tapping quality I get from 24/96 jazz out of them, so I'd like to keep them around.

 

[Arunabha Lahiri]

I too am experiencing too much boom. Though I am liking them. I was expecting a neutral balanced sound based on the reviews. But there's pretty heavy bass. But the sound's clean and kinda perfect for listening to all genres of music.

 

[MarcoGV]

  So for those of you who have dealt with this already, how does one overcome the 100Hz impedance/bass hump issue?
 
A little background on what I have owned/heard in the past: I'm a mid-range kind of guy.  I have the HiFiMan RE-400 IEMs and love them.  I have the NAD Viso HP50s and love them.  I have the Sennheiser PX-100ii, and occasionally find myself blissing out to them on the Walkman or iPod, unamped, but EQed to boost the treble a bit.  I have a pair of ATH-M50s at my desk at work, which are perfectly fine as a work pair, coming out of the Realtek onboard sound, but can get annoying, especially the high end.  I really like the way the Sennheiser PX-100 sounds, so I figured HD-598s would be even better, and grabbed them during the Black Friday deal, but it seems this 300ohm impedance hump is going to be an issue.
 
Listening out of the work computer, the bass was definitely boosted.  Bass-shy, these phones were not.  Being curious, I stuck a fiio E11 in between the headphone out and my ears, and the bass tightened up noticeably; unfortunately the treble got annoying quickly, too.  I took them home and plugged them straight into my Yamaha receiver and listened to some TV and movies; same thing--too much boom.  Music sounded nice, toe-tapping, but the dialogue was too bassy and hard to follow.  Treble seemed fine, so I am guessing it was the nefarious bass bump again.  Tried it in my home computer and with the E11, the treble was fine, not too hot, not too cold.  Without the amp, the bass got boomy again.
 
Is the only way to defeat it by using an amp with a low impedance output?  I don't mind taking the E11 around with me (it's small enough, after all), but I can just plug the PX-100ii or the HP50 straight into the portable device and enjoy nice sound, so the HD-598s seem kind of redundant at this point.  They're comfortable and nicely styled, but I am not sure what source would work best with them.  Any advice?  They sound nice, and I like the toe-tapping quality I get from 24/96 jazz out of them, so I'd like to keep them around.

That is one reason I like to use the 598 with the Dragonfly (0.65 Ohm output impedance, according to Stereophile, http://www.stereophile.com/content/audioquest-dragonfly-usb-da-converter-measurements#MJFt0IoGEWfaufSl.97).  It sounds worst with my receiver (a NAD 3130, which has very high output impedance at the headphone output: 220 Ohm, http://www.head-fi.org/t/624407/nad-3130-headphone-section) and non-so-great with my laptop.

 

[SirMarc]

They sound really good with my Asgard 2, not so good with my Sansui 9090, and surprisingly good out of my phone and tablet

 

[ztreb185]

I find my ivory hd 598 clamp to be rather loose and I don't have a particularly narrow head.
 
I'm thinking of upgrading my fiio e10 to a schiit magni 2 + modi 2. I also have a pair x1s and gr07 mk2.  Is it worth getting the Uber versions over the original 2s?

 

[funkisound]

After spending some more time with the 598, and comparing them to a couple other headphones, I'm starting to see the flaw in this pair, which basically is that the sound just not neutral and also not that well balanced, there's spikes all over the place (even the 558s I think are much more neutral sounding). I kinda felt that the 650's were a bit too colored sounding too after using them for a while, but the 598 has even an more colored sound. When I compared the 598 to my DT 250's, I immediately noticed how more neutral the latter sounds while the 598 has this quite uneven sound. The good things about the headphone, the extremely fun and detailed soundstage, I guess kind of conceal the flaws really well. They're not very big flaws though, it's still a decent headphone. I probably would've loved the 598 more a number of years ago, but these days I guess I just prefer a more neutral and cleaner sound, especially for longer listening periods.
I tihnk it's mainly just a good heaphone for casual listening to 'crappy' mp3s since they're quite forgiving and make those files sound quite good and more exciting. However I'm now not completely sure if I want to keep the headphone, especially seeing it also doesn't fit that well on my head..

 

[amnesiac75]

I find my ivory hd 598 clamp to be rather loose and I don't have a particularly narrow head.

I'm thinking of upgrading my fiio e10 to a schiit magni 2 + modi 2. I also have a pair x1s and gr07 mk2.  Is it worth getting the Uber versions over the original 2s?

I would recommend the modi 2 with the Asgard 2 for $350 over the magni/modi 2 uber for $300 I have owned both the original mm stack and the mm2 uber stack and after many hours with the hd598 I find the synergy with the Asgard 2 to be much better than both magni amps same goes for the hd600 and hd650. If you go for a smaller stack go for the modi2/vali.

 

[nbakid2000]

   
Was your onboard sound on an Apple laptop?  Those are known to be above average.

It was an ASUS K53E. Either the onboard in there is awesome or the Dragonfly sucks. Or the Geek Out 450 is just that much better. Never really found out which.

 

[vonseux]

I too am experiencing too much boom. Though I am liking them. I was expecting a neutral balanced sound based on the reviews. But there's pretty heavy bass. But the sound's clean and kinda perfect for listening to all genres of music.

It is best to tell what music are you listening to, and what source
 
This phones can sure drive lots of bass, if yourdevice has a bass enchancer and the music is too, it will pop out.. normally the phone stays on the mid-highs tough
 
As a said some pages above, the music Rattle That Lock from the new David Gilmour album is a SWEET test for this phone, everything fits