Quote:
Originally Posted by nothing101 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
does it sound any different to the 580? i hear they are basically the same hedfone with different casing.
|
That's the HD600. The '590 was the top model of their (problematic) late-'90s "mainstream" line, replacing the HD565 and later superseded by the HD595.
This gift definitely was a nice trait. I got my HD590s for Christmas 6 years ago, and they've certainly served me well. A new headband padding would be in order (#59184), that's become quite thin in the middle and lost in 'comph factor' accordingly. (That's nothing compared to the entirely flattened HD580 padding, which however has been fixed with a patch job involving some foam and tape for now.)
If you should ever encounter strange vibration noises on bass notes, Don't Panic[tm] and take off the earpad and foam inlay instead - most likely there'll be a hair in the foam or stuck in the driver itself. The opening is quite large (on e.g. the HD580 it only covers the center part of the driver) and thus debris is more of a problem than with some other cans.
Comparing HD590 and HD580 sonically, I think they are technically about equally good but different, a matter of taste really. Neither is entirely perfect in terms of balance, the '590 has the known recessed upper midrange and elevated bass and highs (a "general public" signature), and the '580 exhibits a slight coolness by having recessed low mids and elevated upper highs (classic early-'90s audiophile-friendly "studio-ish" signature, though a comparatively fairly harmless case). Additionally, HD590s with their lower impedance (100 ohms vs. typically a bit over 300) are more sensitive to high output impedance. I wouldn't call their soundstaging "unnatural" ("natural" cannot be achieved with classic headphones anyway); anyway, natural or not, it does allow judging sources' soundstage width quite well, and I haven't had a reason to complain about coherence. These phones can really pull off some magic with low-density acoustic recordings. Very open sound generally, and subjectively more sensitive to covering the grilles than either HD580 or HD650. Nice at low volumes, too.
Part of the HD590's problem was that the HD580 tended to be less expensive without being technically inferior, and that people for some reason expected the HD590 to be the replacement for the HD580 and were promptly put off by the entirely different sonic signature. (Actually this seems to be pretty much the inverse of the HD565's.)
But hey I'm a guy, I can handle it.
