[buke9]

The widest soundstage that I've heard in headphones that I can remember is a pair of HD 800's powered by the work-in-progress Cavalli Liquid Tungsten.  That really was a magic pairing...

Anything with the Tungsten is magic.

 

[buke9]

Thx man!! I was looking at the bh crack speed or Valhalla 2 amp for it. Gonna keep these at home

I'm kind of partial to the Crack with the 700's myself. The Valhalla 2 was just too SS sounding to me but didn't tube roll so it could get better don't know.

 

[Sundown]

What the flying ****. I'm on my third set of HD700's over the years and never really liked them before. I wanted to try them again because I'm crazy like that. I don't remember the last ones being so neutral in the vocal presentation. I've always said they were dipped and scooped out farther than DT770's. Well. Today I received another pair. Mids are neutral forward like the HD650. However, there is a bit of a dip somewhere. Then that peaky treble. We probably wouldn't notice that treble peak if it wasn't for the dip before it. I'm really liking them. Only if I can find a way to knock out that peak. They'd be perfect. Maybe some type of cloth on that pleather under the pad. I don't want yo team the pads apart and **** up the bass and have thin hard pads pressing against my head. Any solutions to knock out that peak?

 

[dazzerfong]

  What the flying ****. I'm on my third set of HD700's over the years and never really liked them before. I wanted to try them again because I'm crazy like that. I don't remember the last ones being so neutral in the vocal presentation. I've always said they were dipped and scooped out farther than DT770's. Well. Today I received another pair. Mids are neutral forward like the HD650. However, there is a bit of a dip somewhere. Then that peaky treble. We probably wouldn't notice that treble peak if it wasn't for the dip before it. I'm really liking them. Only if I can find a way to knock out that peak. They'd be perfect. Maybe some type of cloth on that pleather under the pad. I don't want yo team the pads apart and **** up the bass and have thin hard pads pressing against my head. Any solutions to knock out that peak?

​EQ? Works well enough if you're comfortable with it. If not, tube amps help a bit, but not quite as well as EQ. If that doesn't help either, just stick with the 650's.

 

[Sundown]

uhhh

 

[aldinho878]

I know this has been addressed many times, but can someone please give me a summary of sound differences between hd700 and 598's? My understanding is 700's are better across all frequencies, more bass, better soundstage, but also more harsh of treble? Are the hd700's much brighter than the 598's?
 
Also that annoying bump inside the hd598 earpads isn't there on the 700's correct?
 
Thanks

 

[DavidA]

  I know this has been addressed many times, but can someone please give me a summary of sound differences between hd700 and 598's? My understanding is 700's are better across all frequencies, more bass, better soundstage, but also more harsh of treble? Are the hd700's much brighter than the 598's?
 
Also that annoying bump inside the hd598 earpads isn't there on the 700's correct?
 
Thanks

You got it except the treble is not harsh on the HD-700, it has a peak at 6khz which bothers some.  To me the HD-598 was a brighter sounding headphone since the upper mids and lower treble were boosted while the on the HD-700 the mids are a little recessed so they don't seem as bright.

 

[kman1211]

.

 

[canon007]

I'm starting to feel disappointed that i spent about $360 for some headphones and they don't sound much better than the m50s i had before. What the freak?! For the price I spent I expected to hear an immediate improvement and I was met with underwhelming performance. Sure the headphones look great and are very comfortable but the sound quality isn't up to par with the price tag. This is my first expensive headphones and im quite saddened by this experience. I use an asus essence stx sound card which is enough to power these cans and I found some eq mods that other users claimed to bring their hd700s back to life after some stagnation. Why am I not noticing the difference? I really hope there is a way to make these headphones to reach their full potentialI disabled the hd audio controller in the bios , installed unified audio driver(already had it apparently) amd played the music on foobar with wasapi. and they dont sound any better than the m50s. How can something that was originally sold for $1000 not be tremendously better than something that is around $100? This is insane, there must be something wrong with the settings, hardware, possible faulty headphones, my hearing or just that the hd700 is no better than the ath m50. What can I do w/o spending extra money? Thanks in advance.

 

[Xamdou]

I'm starting to feel disappointed that i spent about $360 for some headphones and they don't sound much better than the m50s i had before. What the freak?! For the price I spent I expected to hear an immediate improvement and I was met with underwhelming performance. Sure the headphones look great and are very comfortable but the sound quality isn't up to par with the price tag. This is my first expensive headphones and im quite saddened by this experience. I use an asus essence stx sound card which is enough to power these cans and I found some eq mods that other users claimed to bring their hd700s back to life after some stagnation. Why am I not noticing the difference? I really hope there is a way to make these headphones to reach their full potentialI disabled the hd audio controller in the bios , installed unified audio driver(already had it apparently) amd played the music on foobar with wasapi. and they dont sound any better than the m50s. How can something that was originally sold for $1000 not be tremendously better than something that is around $100? This is insane, there must be something wrong with the settings, hardware, possible faulty headphones, my hearing or just that the hd700 is no better than the ath m50. What can I do w/o spending extra money? Thanks in advance.

Have you let it burn in yet? The HD700 sounds like crap straight out of the box for me
 
Edit: I own the M50 too, HD700 sounds waaaaaay better for me

 

[canon007]

i bought these used from ebay, owner claims to have owned these for couple months and about 15 hours of use. Additionally there was some fraying on the outer shell of the cable that was removed by melting the plastic material and none of the internals were damaged.

 

[canon007]

  Have you let it burn in yet? The HD700 sounds like crap straight out of the box for me
 
Edit: I own the M50 too, HD700 sounds waaaaaay better for me

i bought these used from ebay, owner claims to have owned these for couple months and about 15 hours of use. Additionally there was some fraying on the outer shell of the cable that was removed by melting the plastic material and none of the internals were damaged.

 

[DavidA]

I'm starting to feel disappointed that i spent about $360 for some headphones and they don't sound much better than the m50s i had before. What the freak?! For the price I spent I expected to hear an immediate improvement and I was met with underwhelming performance. Sure the headphones look great and are very comfortable but the sound quality isn't up to par with the price tag. This is my first expensive headphones and im quite saddened by this experience. I use an asus essence stx sound card which is enough to power these cans and I found some eq mods that other users claimed to bring their hd700s back to life after some stagnation. Why am I not noticing the difference? I really hope there is a way to make these headphones to reach their full potentialI disabled the hd audio controller in the bios , installed unified audio driver(already had it apparently) amd played the music on foobar with wasapi. and they dont sound any better than the m50s. How can something that was originally sold for $1000 not be tremendously better than something that is around $100? This is insane, there must be something wrong with the settings, hardware, possible faulty headphones, my hearing or just that the hd700 is no better than the ath m50. What can I do w/o spending extra money? Thanks in advance.

Curious as to what is wrong with the sound of the HD-700?  Lacks bass? recessed mids? sibilant highs?  Another thing to consider is the genre of music that you are playing, if its pop or R&B where the recording are not that great the differences might be little, if jazz and classical are your genres of choice then the HD-700 will be a noticeable improvement.  There is also the possibility that you could also have a defective headphone.
 
I used to use a STX sound card with my HD-700 when I was gaming so I know its like night and day different from the M50x which I also still have.  One thing I didn't do was use wasapi or foobar, I got better results with WMP and the Asus software which was a bitch to get working correctly under windows 7 ultimate but once working it was great.  I've since sold the STX and use a cheap DG sound card and it works just as well as the STX for music but not was well for gaming.

 

[Bacci]

The sound is only as good as the weakest link in your setup. I don't hear much benefit from plugging HD700 over HD598 into my portable rig, but my higher end desktop rig makes the HD700 sound amazing, with fantastic hard impact and detail on all frequencies.

 

[dazzerfong]

  The sound is only as good as the weakest link in your setup. I don't hear much benefit from plugging HD700 over HD598 into my portable rig, but my higher end desktop rig makes the HD700 sound amazing, with fantastic hard impact and detail on all frequencies.

​Have to disagree with you there. Mastering quality and the transducer will always be the weakest link in the chain. It's only when you get to like 1980's electronics that amps start to impact is significant enough to not warrant a higher-end setup.