My HD 560's just arrived from Amazon via seven oaks. I spoke to seven oaks before I placed this order and they said they hadn't received a single return.
Straight out of the box, my drivers aren't basically hanging off like they were on the last 2 pairs that I had.
If I go to here
https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/ and start at 500hz and work my way down slowly, I am getting some quite harsh buzzing in the right driver and some slightly in the left driver. Is this a fair test? Can anyone else try this?
I would be tempted to take the earpads off and see if the screws are spinning but I don't really want to do that yet
What volume-levels are you testing at? It's good to remember that human ears are far less sensitive to bass and low-mids than to frequencies between 2Khz and 5Khz, so you want to be doing the test at a volume-level where a frequency of around 2Khz to 4Khz is loud, but not excessively/ear-bleedingly loud, if you want to simulate realistic listening-volumes. Of course, to really see what happens when you push the drivers closer to their limits, you
could do the test at louder volumes, but
I'd be careful if you're playing any steady-tones in the low-mids or below rather than just doing a sweep, as apparently you can damage drivers by playing a low-frequency steady tone at very high sound pressure levels. Proceed with caution; if you put the volume high enough that a 30Hz tone sounds TRULY LOUD, then that means it's honestly way too loud since our ears aren't sensitive at that frequency, and at that point you'd find that if you keep the volume the same, turning the frequency up to 2 to 5Khz will seem like ice-picks are digging into your ears. YOU DON'T WANT TO TEST STEADY BASS-TONES AT SUCH LEVELS. Granted, the drivers in the HD560s have a maximum power-handling of 200mW, but steady bass-tones stress drivers more than sweeping, midrange, and treble tones, so you still want to be careful and not test out just how high the power-handling really goes.
It might actually be best to use a SWEEPING tone rather than something like the tool you linked to. That tool is perfectly valid for testing, but as I said, you have to be careful with the bass and low-mids if you have it maintain a steady tone for too long. If you go here instead (link below), you can find some nice sweeping-tone tests. Scrolling down, I'd first try the Driver Matching test to make sure you're using an appropriate volume; namely, make sure it doesn't feel like it's about to make your ears bleed when it hits the upper mids and low treble, haha. Then once you have a reasonable volume, run that same test again and see if there's any shaking/rattle in the bass and low-mids. After that, scroll to one test above that one and try the "Quality" test (file-name "Bass Shaker") that specifically does a slower sweep of the bass and low-mids to test for driver buzz/rattle. Here's the link:
https://www.audiocheck.net/soundtests_headphones.php
Apparently I've missed the return window at BestBuy, so I guess I'll try the for-sale forum. I'll be sad to see them go, they are definitely an upgrade on my 598's, but the subbass on the Sundaras won me over.
Oh yeah, there is NO COMPARISON between the HD599 or the older HD598 that you have, and the HD560s. These are MUCH better headphones than the 598 or 599 both in terms of neutral tuning as well as in technicalities like distortion-levels, detail resolution, etc.
It really impresses me that people keep comparing the HD560s to the Sundaras, which cost almost twice as much! These are very impressive for their price-range. But yes, the Sundaras will in fact prove to be an upgrade over the HD560s, assuming that HiFiMan really has fixed their quality-control issues (people claim they have, but I don't trust that company at this point, haha) and you get a good pair! But it just really impresses me that at $199.99, the HD560s are at all good enough that people would go comparing them to headphones like the Sundaras, the HD6__ series, etc.
I find it interesting that you found the sub-bass on the Sundaras better; do you mean the extension, or the overall quality? The HD560s have REMARKABLE sub-bass extension for open-back headphones, almost completely linear down to nearly 35Hz and with only a few dB roll-off from there down to 20Hz. The Sundaras have excellent sub-bass extension too, but not necessarily MORE extended. The sense in which they have superior bass is that they're planar-magnetics, and planar bass is, as a general rule of thumb (with some exceptions like summit-fi dynamic headphones) better quality than dynamic bass, at least in my experience and that of many others in this hobby.
And yeah, Best Buy's return window is obnoxiously short! Only 14 days, seriously? Ugh.
