Sennheiser HD 700 Impressions Thread
Jan 11, 2021 at 12:14 PM Post #8,956 of 9,291
I Love the HD 700, and it is a bargain at the current price. I believe the 700 will be one of the iconic HP which will be value years to come. I did purchase a cable from Moon and it truly made a difference. My only complaint is shortly after purchasing the black coating on the internal section of the headband started to peel off which made a huge goo mess. In the end, I removed the coating completely and it is fine. I can only suspect this coating's purpose was to protect the headband felt for longevity. Eventually, may need to purchase a new headband, which I am open for suggestions.
reach to your local sennhieser or get this https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001135168799.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.581a4c4dx18dGi , this one is thinn but comfortable enough for the price

here is picture of my HD700 with it, i also changed the earpads
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Jan 31, 2021 at 6:45 PM Post #8,957 of 9,291
Revisiting HD700

I love this headphone's bass, but the cups are resonant to death to my ears without the literal Sennheiser veil that keeps dust out and partly covers up the devs' mistake(s) at the cost of overall fidelity and clarity.
I previously used fiberfill to try and remedy the situation, but this time I decided to try some 3M Transpore medical tape, going from others' T50RP modifications experiences, and I am extremely happy with the result, though there is room for improvement:

IMG_4456.JPG

Tape only on the upper half of the cups, and only on most of the flat surfaces. Now the sound is much more open, less colored and more transparent and resolving, soundstaging much improved, I really should have done this last time. There is room for improvement as it is still not quite as open-sounding as my modified Beyerdynamic T90, but at least the lower mids do sound more open than even my K701. I tried cutting some holes in the earpads before trying the tape to see if they improve the sound a bit, and they did, but not as much as I hoped. Open-back headphones usually have earpads with perforated inner sides. Fiberfill tends to leave debris behind, it is more often used inside of studio speaker cabinets. I use it inside of closed-back headphones as they often lack acoustic treatment on the inside, which is why they often sound "closed" or like they are playing back music inside of a hall of some kind compared to open headphones (and music already comes with its own reverb).

edit: I forgot to mention, I didn't put tape on the lower half as that is sure to hurt bass, in my experience, the upper half is the critical portion to overall midrange, treble, and soundstaging quality, the upper half of the outer ear is what picks up higher frequencies, the lower half is mostly for bass
 
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Jan 31, 2021 at 9:50 PM Post #8,958 of 9,291
Not sure if anyone has brought this up, but having once owned the HD700s, I found the peaks in the high frequency somewhat problematic and fatiguing. However, I loved so many other things about them - their holographic presentation, clarity/articulation, and overall transparency - that I felt it worth it to try to improve them. The most rewarding and fruitful upgrade was ditching the gem silver cable and replacing them with pure copper cables. This is HIGHLY recommended for anyone with high frequency sensitivity.
 
Feb 4, 2021 at 11:15 PM Post #8,962 of 9,291
Not sure if anyone has brought this up, but having once owned the HD700s, I found the peaks in the high frequency somewhat problematic and fatiguing. However, I loved so many other things about them - their holographic presentation, clarity/articulation, and overall transparency - that I felt it worth it to try to improve them. The most rewarding and fruitful upgrade was ditching the gem silver cable and replacing them with pure copper cables. This is HIGHLY recommended for anyone with high frequency sensitivity.
Sennheiser's silver-plated copper wires are simply awful. I tried making a 3.5mm interconnect from a left over segment from a cable retermination I did for another head-fier a long time ago to compare against an older, plain ol' Mogami cable of equal length I had made, and Sennheiser SPC is colored to death versus Mogami, a common music studio wire and popular DIY material among us cable builders. For shame.
 
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Apr 2, 2021 at 7:42 PM Post #8,966 of 9,291
Anyone knows where I can get a replacement earpads for the HD700 now? besides the ones from Dekoni Audio? And Are dekoni audio earpads any good?
HD700 is a very good headphone flawed by a huge treble spike. Ways to mitigate this issue is using thin pads which I enjoy more than thicker (dekoni) ear-ads. The big difference is EQ, and sonar works indeed has a very good eq profile that, imo, is necessary.
 
Apr 3, 2021 at 10:26 PM Post #8,969 of 9,291
Sennheiser's silver-plated copper wires are simply awful. I tried making a 3.5mm interconnect from a left over segment from a cable retermination I did for another head-fier a long time ago to compare against an older, plain ol' Mogami cable of equal length I had made, and Sennheiser SPC is colored to death versus Mogami, a common music studio wire and popular DIY material among us cable builders. For shame.
totally agree, the stock SPC cable is the main reason it sounds terrible. a well run in Mogami cable fix almost everything bad of HD700 sound. a perfect match with StxII or ROG mother board for music and game.
Since HD700 already discontinued, I am worrying what headphone should I get once mine pair reach its end of life.
 
Apr 5, 2021 at 1:19 PM Post #8,970 of 9,291
totally agree, the stock SPC cable is the main reason it sounds terrible. a well run in Mogami cable fix almost everything bad of HD700 sound. a perfect match with StxII or ROG mother board for music and game.
Since HD700 already discontinued, I am worrying what headphone should I get once mine pair reach its end of life.
Can't recall where I saw this, but I remember someone measured capacitance of stock cables and senn HD650 was orders of magnitude higher than the others, so I imagine it is possible the HD700 cable has the same issue. Wish I could recall where I saw, but I think it was in the sound science area here. Or perhaps R*ddit?
 

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