My 598 Ivories are also in need of a new headband. Nice pictures.
One question. To replace the headband, do you loosen the 2 screws on either side to remove the old headband, then attach the new headband and re-tighten the screws?
My 598 Ivories are also in need of a new headband. Nice pictures.
I was referring to SE that you supposedly returned because of in your opinion much inferior sound quality than ivory edition....I'm not sure which black edition you're referring to. I said Ivory was superior to Cs, but you prefer Cs. And I do understand; that's why I said "we'll leave it at that." Plus, I've made my comparisons between the 2 clear here and in other threads, some of which you previously commented on, so no need for me to repeat myself.
Yes, that's true. The SE, which is only a black version of the original ivory, sounded very different, and in my opinion, inferior, to the Ivory. They are supposed to be identical except for color, and others have reported them sounded the same, so I can only assume the one I got had some quality/manufacturing issues. My 2nd Ivory pair, sounded like the first. The SE was the outlier.I was referring to SE that you supposedly returned because of in your opinion much inferior sound quality than ivory edition....
I don't think opens are technically worse nor better than Cs. Despite some differences they are on the same league to me, but yes for music I prefer the latter. For gaming, movies and comfort I prefer the opens.
Yes, that's true. The SE, which is only a black version of the original ivory, sounded very different, and in my opinion, inferior, to the Ivory. They are supposed to be identical except for color, and others have reported them sounded the same, so I can only assume the one I got had some quality/manufacturing issues. My 2nd Ivory pair, sounded like the first. The SE was the outlier.
Nope, no need to unscrew anything. The old headband is held on with some relatively strong adhesive, which requires some tugging force to remove, but then you can just spread the headphones apart and align the new headband into place.My 598 Ivories are also in need of a new headband. Nice pictures.
One question. To replace the headband, do you loosen the 2 screws on either side to remove the old headband, then attach the new headband and re-tighten the screws?
The sort of stuff I'll listen to more carefully is Ry Cooder's Talking Timbuktu
Glad I reminded you of it - it's a really nice set of recordings and performances.Oh I have not listened to that ever with headphones... only with my old speaker system that I left behind when moving from the states to the uk. I did bring all my cds... going now to bring it down and rip it to Flac...
Thank you!
Love me some pad rolling.Glad I reminded you of it - it's a really nice set of recordings and performances.
So, I sat down and did a bit of a listen, and made two discoveries as well as getting a feel for how they sound.
First, the listen: They sound very good with the new pads. The tonal balance is pretty comparable to the loudspeakers in the office and free of nasty "that sounds like a speaker saying 'look at me' rather than music" artifacts. So, the sound balance is pretty comparable to what it was before I made the change. I'm comparing them against a pair of Gallo CL-1s (nice speaker, I got mine via ebay on closeout from Gallo. There are a few available at A-gon as well. It's a conventional 2 way speaker, doesn't have the fancy tweeter that the boxes up the price chain have, but is supposed to have a pretty interesting crossover layout, a first-order crossover only for the tweeter.) I would give the edge to the Gallos for soundstaging - but that's been true for some time, they're surprisingly good at that. Both the headphones and the speakers get the benefit of a subwoofer in the room - full range signal from the receiver goes to an old Velodyne, and from there to a Monoprice desktop amp. Source is FLAC to a Yammie RX-V1200 av receiver with the bells and whistles off - cheap on Craigslist, can handle 4 or 8 ohm speakers, has an FM tuner as well as both optical and coax digital inputs and a variable gain analog stereo output intended, I think, to feed a second amplifier but handy for feeding a sub.
discovery 1: Your amplifier's headphone jack can make your headphones sound pretty bad. In the course of looking at how to quickly
swap between headphones and speakers I thought "this amp cuts the speakers right away when a headphone jack is inserted. I'll see if what they say about
receiver headphone jacks is true."
Boy howdy is it. Overwhelming bass and a seriously rolled off high end. Just miserable sounding.
- I am uncomfortable trying to snap the original earpads back into place. It's the weirdest thing - I did a test remove-and-replace before trying to fit the new pads. And getting the original pads back on took some effort but worked out fine. The new pads went on so easily, I initially thought something was wrong. Today, I removed the new pad to get a photo of it alongside the original, thinking I'd put the originals back on and do some additional listening. I'm no longer willing to - they simply won't snap on easily enough compared to the new pads. You can see the difference in the geometry below - the plastic ring that clips the 650 earcup into place has a wider diameter than the ring on 598se that I received.
The 650 earpad is also slenderer
I may, at some point, get around to forcing the 598 pads back on. Probably not Right Away, though - doing it won't let me be a whole lot more precise than I am now, even if I sit and take notes.
And it doesn't make a huge difference - these sound fine now and are more comfortable than they were.
Oh, I see. Thanks for the information.Nope, no need to unscrew anything. The old headband is held on with some relatively strong adhesive, which requires some tugging force to remove, but then you can just spread the headphones apart and align the new headband into place.
From what I've read, most recievers have a high impedance at the headphone jack output. Oddly enough, the HD 598's (and hd 518, hd558) don't seem to be designed for use with recievers (or any device or source with a high output impedance). That's because they have a huge rise in impedance in the bass frequencies.Glad I reminded you of it - it's a really nice set of recordings and performances.
So, I sat down and did a bit of a listen, and made two discoveries as well as getting a feel for how they sound.
First, the listen: They sound very good with the new pads. The tonal balance is pretty comparable to the loudspeakers in the office and free of nasty "that sounds like a speaker saying 'look at me' rather than music" artifacts. So, the sound balance is pretty comparable to what it was before I made the change. I'm comparing them against a pair of Gallo CL-1s (nice speaker, I got mine via ebay on closeout from Gallo. There are a few available at A-gon as well. It's a conventional 2 way speaker, doesn't have the fancy tweeter that the boxes up the price chain have, but is supposed to have a pretty interesting crossover layout, a first-order crossover only for the tweeter.) I would give the edge to the Gallos for soundstaging - but that's been true for some time, they're surprisingly good at that. Both the headphones and the speakers get the benefit of a subwoofer in the room - full range signal from the receiver goes to an old Velodyne, and from there to a Monoprice desktop amp. Source is FLAC to a Yammie RX-V1200 av receiver with the bells and whistles off - cheap on Craigslist, can handle 4 or 8 ohm speakers, has an FM tuner as well as both optical and coax digital inputs and a variable gain analog stereo output intended, I think, to feed a second amplifier but handy for feeding a sub.
discovery 1: Your amplifier's headphone jack can make your headphones sound pretty bad. In the course of looking at how to quickly
swap between headphones and speakers I thought "this amp cuts the speakers right away when a headphone jack is inserted. I'll see if what they say about
receiver headphone jacks is true."
Boy howdy is it. Overwhelming bass and a seriously rolled off high end. Just miserable sounding.
- I am uncomfortable trying to snap the original earpads back into place. It's the weirdest thing - I did a test remove-and-replace before trying to fit the new pads. And getting the original pads back on took some effort but worked out fine. The new pads went on so easily, I initially thought something was wrong. Today, I removed the new pad to get a photo of it alongside the original, thinking I'd put the originals back on and do some additional listening. I'm no longer willing to - they simply won't snap on easily enough compared to the new pads. You can see the difference in the geometry below - the plastic ring that clips the 650 earcup into place has a wider diameter than the ring on 598se that I received.
The 650 earpad is also slenderer
I may, at some point, get around to forcing the 598 pads back on. Probably not Right Away, though - doing it won't let me be a whole lot more precise than I am now, even if I sit and take notes.
And it doesn't make a huge difference - these sound fine now and are more comfortable than they were.
From what I've read, most recievers have a high impedance at the headphone jack output. Oddly enough, the HD 598's (and hd 518, hd558) don't seem to be designed for use with recievers (or any device or source with a high output impedance). That's because they have a huge rise in impedance in the bass frequencies.
I have actually made some crude frequency measurements with an spl meter, held close to the driver; with the 598's plugged into my objective 2 amplifier, as compared to plugged into my Yamaha reciever.
The bass response starts to rise at 40hz , peaking at 7db to 8db, between 70hz and 125hz, then levels out by 250 hz, when plugged into my Yamaha. That is a huge bass boost.
This doesn't happen with any of my other headphones, because none of them have extreme variations in impedance , like the 598's do.
Before I got the objective 2 amplifier, I plugged all of my headphones into the headphone jack on my Yamaha reciever or my Samsung tablet.I have not tried my 598s (or any of my headphones with our A/V receiver (was an Onkyo recently replaced with a Denon).
I have used it with all of these except the Nobsound(copied from my profile page):
Fiio E12A Mont Blanc (portable)
SMSL M6 Dac/Amp (for desktop pc)
Nobsound NS-01E mini hybrid black (also on desk but only fed by Daps)
xDuoo ta-03 tube amp in living room
I have used it the most with the portable one as I have had that the longest and only recently got the tube amp. I have been happy with it with all but I have never tried to measure anything. I just like to enjoy my music and not concentrate too much on the equipment. The equipment is a tool. If I am enjoying the music that is all that is important to me. Having said that, I do enjoy different sound signatures. The Sennheisers are not my only headphone (headfi's fault).
I think I will plug it into the little Nobsound later...