[D3soLaT3]

As quickly as I can I just want to share my success that I had "modding" the 580s. I guess you can call it modding but it really as simple as placing a thin (I mean thin) fabric between the driver and outside ear cup. The entire process takes less than five minutes to accomplish. Previously, I had tried a thicker denser foam material approximately 0.1cm in thickness. It was material that came with the pads from my Status Audio CB1s. That dense foam made bass extraordinary but had some negative side effects regarding the mids and treble. Simply, it made the mids bloated and treble became too forward though it did bring out a lot of detail. I believe a lot of people have tried something similar which is why they usually end up putting additional dampening between the cups and their ears. Also, it's probably why people prefer thick aftermarket pads because it gets their ears further away from the drivers which are now harsh because of over dampening. What I found works best is material from some Audio Technica pads. You know that thin material in between most earpads so it's not just an open hole? Yeah, that stuff. It's almost silk like and it's so thin it doesn't dramatically change the sound but allows sound to be directed towards your ears.

So in conclusion, in stock form the sound produced from the open back cups from the 580s are nearly 50/50, meaning sound is coming out almost equally from each side of the earcup. What you want to try and accomplish is getting a 55/45 but no more than a 60/40 split with the majority of sound coming towards your ear. Any more and they get bloated and harsh. You do not want to choke the sound (they need to breathe) or have too much redirected towards your ears. These need to remain open and airy to sound natural because over damping has to many unintentional side effects and creates more problems which you then have to solve. Finally, while the stock pads may not be the most comfortable they are by far, and by quite a HUGE margin, my choice for getting the 580s to sound their best.

I am so happy with these headphones now.

These are just my opinions so please disagree with me if you like. I am just some guy on an audio forum and I am definitely not an audio professional. I believe when it comes to modding there is a lot of trial and error, and collectively after trying so many things, we can discover what works best. I am always up for getting these to sound even more amazing then what they do now. Cheers.

 

[EdenElectronics]

As quickly as I can I just want to share my success that I had "modding" the 580s. I guess you can call it modding but it really as simple as placing a thin (I mean thin) fabric between the driver and outside ear cup. The entire process takes less than five minutes to accomplish. Previously, I had tried a thicker denser foam material approximately 0.1cm in thickness. It was material that came with the pads from my Status Audio CB1s. That dense foam made bass extraordinary but had some negative side effects regarding the mids and treble. Simply, it made the mids bloated and treble became too forward though it did bring out a lot of detail. I believe a lot of people have tried something similar which is why they usually end up putting additional dampening between the cups and their ears. Also, it's probably why people prefer thick aftermarket pads because it gets their ears further away from the drivers which are now harsh because of over dampening. What I found works best is material from some Audio Technica pads. You know that thin material in between most earpads so it's not just an open hole? Yeah, that stuff. It's almost silk like and it's so thin it doesn't dramatically change the sound but allows sound to be directed towards your ears.

So in conclusion, in stock form the sound produced from the open back cups from the 580s are nearly 50/50, meaning sound is coming out almost equally from each side of the earcup. What you want to try and accomplish is getting a 55/45 but no more than a 60/40 split with the majority of sound coming towards your ear. Any more and they get bloated and harsh. You do not want to choke the sound (they need to breathe) or have too much redirected towards your ears. These need to remain open and airy to sound natural because over damping has to many unintentional side effects and creates more problems which you then have to solve. Finally, while the stock pads may not be the most comfortable they are by far, and by quite a HUGE margin, my choice for getting the 580s to sound their best.

I am so happy with these headphones now.

These are just my opinions so please disagree with me if you like. I am just some guy on an audio forum and I am definitely not an audio professional. I believe when it comes to modding there is a lot of trial and error, and collectively after trying so many things, we can discover what works best. I am always up for getting these to sound even more amazing then what they do now. Cheers.

Thank u so much for sharing!
Super-informative!

Just out of curiosity......

On a scale of 1 to 100 how would u rate the 580 prior to ur "thin-skin" mod and what is your rating after said mod?

 

[D3soLaT3]

Thank u so much for sharing!
Super-informative!

Just out of curiosity......

On a scale of 1 to 100 how would u rate the 580 prior to ur "thin-skin" mod and what is your rating after said mod?

Before the mod I said the 580 was a step under the Hifiman Sundara and that I would take my iSine 10s over it too. You can check this forum I know I said it somewhere, but after the mod I won't hesitate to put the 580 above both. If you need an arbitrary numerical value I would say an 88/100. Deducting points because they are quite heavy and do not have a huge soundstage. This is a very capable driver, I doubt anyone could argue that, the issue is with the housing. That's probably why Sendy and Blon charge so much more for their versions because they have tried to manufacture a housing that does not hinder the driver.

 

[ftoss]

I’m curious how good are this Takstars for heavy metal especially compared with other planar headphones.

 

[MarCo7]

As quickly as I can I just want to share my success that I had "modding" the 580s. I guess you can call it modding but it really as simple as placing a thin (I mean thin) fabric between the driver and outside ear cup. The entire process takes less than five minutes to accomplish. Previously, I had tried a thicker denser foam material approximately 0.1cm in thickness. It was material that came with the pads from my Status Audio CB1s. That dense foam made bass extraordinary but had some negative side effects regarding the mids and treble. Simply, it made the mids bloated and treble became too forward though it did bring out a lot of detail. I believe a lot of people have tried something similar which is why they usually end up putting additional dampening between the cups and their ears. Also, it's probably why people prefer thick aftermarket pads because it gets their ears further away from the drivers which are now harsh because of over dampening. What I found works best is material from some Audio Technica pads. You know that thin material in between most earpads so it's not just an open hole? Yeah, that stuff. It's almost silk like and it's so thin it doesn't dramatically change the sound but allows sound to be directed towards your ears.

So in conclusion, in stock form the sound produced from the open back cups from the 580s are nearly 50/50, meaning sound is coming out almost equally from each side of the earcup. What you want to try and accomplish is getting a 55/45 but no more than a 60/40 split with the majority of sound coming towards your ear. Any more and they get bloated and harsh. You do not want to choke the sound (they need to breathe) or have too much redirected towards your ears. These need to remain open and airy to sound natural because over damping has to many unintentional side effects and creates more problems which you then have to solve. Finally, while the stock pads may not be the most comfortable they are by far, and by quite a HUGE margin, my choice for getting the 580s to sound their best.

I am so happy with these headphones now.

These are just my opinions so please disagree with me if you like. I am just some guy on an audio forum and I am definitely not an audio professional. I believe when it comes to modding there is a lot of trial and error, and collectively after trying so many things, we can discover what works best. I am always up for getting these to sound even more amazing then what they do now. Cheers.

Any pics of the process or end result?

 

[haudaikuwa]

I was thinking about getting these but with the reputation AliExpress has I don't know.

 

[theangelboy]

I was thinking about getting these but with the reputation AliExpress has I don't know.

I personally think the negative reputation Aliexpress gets is unnecessarily harsh. I have ordered close to 100 items and have only had 1 item get lost, and that was the fault of the shipping company, not Aliexpress or the seller. However, I got my money back, no problem.

Also, keep in mind that you can (and should) buy these from the official Takstar Audio store on Aliexpress. They aren't going to damage their reputation by messing around and even the free shipping option has global tracking, at least on the one I ordered from them. Basically no risk, IMO.

The only real downside is the relatively slow shipping (compared, to like, Prime shipping). Mine should arrive this week and I'm pretty stoked!

 

[haudaikuwa]

I personally think the negative reputation Aliexpress gets is unnecessarily harsh. I have ordered close to 100 items and have only had 1 item get lost, and that was the fault of the shipping company, not Aliexpress or the seller. However, I got my money back, no problem.

Also, keep in mind that you can (and should) buy these from the official Takstar Audio store on Aliexpress. They aren't going to damage their reputation by messing around and even the free shipping option has global tracking, at least on the one I ordered from them. Basically no risk, IMO.

The only real downside is the relatively slow shipping (compared, to like, Prime shipping). Mine should arrive this week and I'm pretty stoked!

Thanks for the info that's good to know. I've been tossing back and forth between these, the Verum 1's, and the Thieaudio Phantoms.

 

[theangelboy]

So I just received mine this morning after DHL took 12 days to get it from LA to Salt Lake (-_-) so these are my super initial impressions. Cord is long but decent quality and fairly flexible. Probably not going to bother recabling it unless the wire breaks. Also, these are quite heavy, but well built.

I didn't even bother with the pleather pads and switched straight to the cloth ones since I hate pleather.

I'm listening straight out of my LG V20 in "normal" because I'm too lazy to dig out my adaptor to trick it into high impedance mode.

It sounds good. Really good, in fact. Especially considering I'm driving them from a phone. Most importantly, though it has good timbre out of the box. That's the sign of a good driver. It has a warm, pleasant sound signature. Nothing jumps out as me as being harsh. I was worried that these wouldn't have enough bass for me without modding but they have plenty extension and punch even out of my phone. Soundstage is surprisingly wide and deep for having such shallow pads. I can see why so many companies jumping at the chance to use this driver (with Monoprice being the latest).

Even straight out of the box they compare favoribly to the HE4XX. But I will do some more listening/burn in before I say anything definitive. I will make a more fleshed out review later, as well. But the future is looking bright!

 

[stimuz]

eq the bass bro, it will surprise you. using same settings on my m1060c I can barely hear the difference toggling my eq on and off (thx 788 shelf eq) but with the 580 it's night and day.

 

[PurpleAngel]

Have any used Takstar HF580 headphone come on the market?
Guess it a good way to judge if people who buy the HF580, think it's worth keeping.

 

[heavyharmonies]

Have any used Takstar HF580 headphone come on the market?
Guess it a good way to judge if people who buy the HF580, think it's worth keeping.

I think there were one or two people in this thread saying they didn't like them and were going to sell them. Outside of those, no I've not seen any.

Keep in mind though, that these are available for purchase exclusively in Asia, so unless you're perusing used sales at ebay.cn, I don't know that we in the so-called Western World can use the lack of used cans as any sort of accurate quality indicator.

 

[Sourcesys]

I think there were one or two people in this thread saying they didn't like them and were going to sell them. Outside of those, no I've not seen any.

Keep in mind though, that these are available for purchase exclusively in Asia, so unless you're perusing used sales at ebay.cn, I don't know that we in the so-called Western World can use the lack of used cans as any sort of accurate quality indicator.

I'm going to sell mine. I dont like how hollow they sound. Something about them doesnt sound right to me, I think its the mids.

A real shame since the soundquality is superb and they sound really clear and detailed.

 

[theangelboy]

Just to give a quick update on my HF 580 experience. After I tried running more music on them off of my THX 789, I started to notice the hollow/honky midrange that's been mentioned by a few on here. It bothered some enough to sell their pair. I also found it really annoying with certain music.

I tried some pad rolling, including some Brainwavz oval hybrids, and monoprice oval velours designed for their version of the Hm5. Bot made the sound inferior to the stock cloth pads, less natural sounding. After that I decided to spend the $25 on Sendy pads based the positive experience of several posters on this thread.

The pads arrived yesterday and I tried the pads this morning. The pads remove most if not all the honky midrange! They make the HF 580 brighter but also more clear but it still is a mid centric headphone. I think I'm going to play with some dampening down the road but right now I'm pretty happy with just the pad swap. If the stock sound bugs you, these pads are definitely worth a try!

 

[Sourcesys]

That sounds interesting. I havent sold my yet, bause damn, these sound just too good for the price. For me the stock pads sound the best also! I tried many other pads, but all were inferior. Maybe I should try the Sendy Aiva pads.

Do you have a link for the Sendy Aiva pads? Google doesnt spit out any results for me, maybe because I'm from the EU.