[sennsay]

I have an original copper cable from the 540 II that is soldered to a balance jack and connected to the Moondrop Dawn.

I will follow your progress Do you like the 540 II more?

Following Backsplash7's comments, and since you seem to like DIY, you could potentially make your own cables as I and others have. I used Mogami's excellent #2893 quad core microphone cable for all of my headphones and it's turned out quite superior to the stock Senn copper cable and the original steel (with the DIN plug on the end) cable that came with both of my HD540 Ref1s and the HD430. I get stunning results using it single ended and with the wang-yifei pleather pads as mentioned above. The latter pads won't last for years, but they are not particularly expensive and I tend to get more than one set at a time, as I like the variety of two foam sizes that often turn up with them. Choose the thinner ones for best results behind the pads, the thicker foams can be used to replace any decaying outer foams between the driver and the ear cup. They happen to be the right thickness and sound excellent, I've done both my main Ref1s and the HD430s with them. You will probably find that the wang pleather pads will bring you the balance you're currently missing and with the right electronics will not hinder the soundstage.

 

[sennsay]

As for the HD580s, I might have to hunt out a pair, of the two reviews I have read of them so far the one by Stereophile's Wes Phillips praised them highly. The other reviewer complained of easily distorted bass, NOT something Wes Phillips came across at all. Instead, the excellent neutral balance and lack of fatigue - as they do not naturally have a hotted up treble or upper midband, as well as being very comfortable suckered Wes right into buying the review pair. The later version using the silk driver surround instead of the paper is preferred.
Still, in saying all this, we have the same problem again, pads! I can just about put money on it that the lovely original pads will be toast. They also do not have the HD540s very lossy and non-resonant ear cups ... a metal grill, hmm. I'd still like to hear a pair.

 

[lantian]

Hi. Today I tried to restore the original HD540 pads. Replaced foam with a similar, but new. I cut it in half and put this silk ribbon in the way as in the original pads. Stitch this white circle with thread outside and inside. And after all there is no bass at all. Just awful. There are medium frequencies and high frequencies and very clear, but there is no bass. What was I able to do wrong?

Assuming you put the silk strip in between the two foam strips like it was originally, you have done everything correct. My first question would be how tall are the pads now, did a mistake where instead of 2cm made them 2.5cm tall and lost a lot of base frequcies.
Height is important as is the foam itself. Easiest way to get it to fit nicely inside is to cut straight lines and just bend them and cut to shape when fitting in the pads. This way their fit more snugly together. I'll try and take actual pictures next time I'm doing this aswell.
Every time I do something like this or do work on my amp or earpads. I go I with idea to document it, but leave remembering after it's done that I wanted to take some pics...

 

[Backsplash7]

As for the HD580s, I might have to hunt out a pair, of the two reviews I have read of them so far the one by Stereophile's Wes Phillips praised them highly. The other reviewer complained of easily distorted bass, NOT something Wes Phillips came across at all. Instead, the excellent neutral balance and lack of fatigue - as they do not naturally have a hotted up treble or upper midband, as well as being very comfortable suckered Wes right into buying the review pair. The later version using the silk driver surround instead of the paper is preferred.
Still, in saying all this, we have the same problem again, pads! I can just about put money on it that the lovely original pads will be toast. They also do not have the HD540s very lossy and non-resonant ear cups ... a metal grill, hmm. I'd still like to hear a pair.

So did the 580's use to have different pads to the currently avalable 600 series?

 

[sennsay]

So did the 580's use to have different pads to the currently avalable 600 series?

I'll correct a mistake first up, they don't have a metal grill, it's all plastic, my eyes misinterpreted what I saw in the photograph. I've never owned a pair, but apparently they are the top model before the arrival of the HD600 and HD650 and the pads are a plush velour, they look like HD600 pads. One reviewer described a 4kHz peak, yet Wes Phillips found nothing like that .. maybe he had a pair with the silk driver surround. I'll need to find a pair before I can go any further with them.

 

[Backsplash7]

I decided to replace the rear dampening and rear driver foam tonight, as a separate session to the earpads, to get a more granular idea of what was going on. The earpads are still to come, going to give it another couple of days to a colour comparison with the sun exposed foam strip first. Plus, all that sewing... it can wait a minute. I've been using the 540II 's to listen to some blurays over the past week to acclimatise myself to their sound again, as it's been a while and I needed to get used them ahead of time to help me identify any changes.
So, I chose an album I kow pretty well but haven't listened to for a while to get myself tuned in to the 540, then after about 8 tracks felt like that would do. Repeated that last track a couple of times just know what to expect from it, and proceeded to switch the foam out. Only noteworthy thing here is that the rear-foam discs are a bit wider in diameter this time, I don't think the last ones were a snug enough fit looking at them now.

I did hear a difference, so that's good, but it wasn't immediately obvious what had changed. After a while though it reminded me of when I took the suggestion to put denser filter foams in the front of my 560II 's, the staging seemed to have clicked into place a bit better, a bit more focused, and it felt a pinch warmer and less analytical. I feel like maybe the dampening foam is maybe a bit too thick, but I'm not sure why it is that I feel like that, perhaps there's slightly less air, but its marginal if that is the case.
Honestly I am struggling for words this time around. Overall it's subtle at first glance, but at the same time it feels more natural now. I hate to just say something as vague as
"it sounds better", but it does.
That stage focus makes everything seem a bit tighter. Some elements are more obviously closer to me, and some elements are slightly further away. I'm at a disadvantage here, as I'm pretty sure my dac is exceptionally 2-dimensional, but I think for those whose setup projects more depth would likely have a much easier time picking up on what I'm getting just a flavour of.
One slightly annoying thing though is that one side of my cable has developed a loose connection. Curses.

 

[Backsplash7]

Its been 6 days since I left some of the white foam on the windowsil ,and thought I'd share the progression, and put it alongside different levels of discoloured original foams from other 500 series headphones. Interestingly, the texture is different now, feels more grippy when I run a thumb along it, and feels more similar to the darker foam. Obviously this isn't the same type of degradation, but just goes to show that this material goes through some interesting changes as it breaks down

 

[Backsplash7]

They're finally done. Here's a comparison, newly foamed pad on the left, my first attempt on the right.

I'm not sure how well it's going to show in the photos, but the pads now look much better to me, almost passable as new ones in the flesh. They came out better than any I've done before, at the very least. With my first attempt the foam was only half the thickness that it needed to be, as I was still working largely on guesses back then, being my very first earpad refoam ever, and I got quite a lot of things wrong. No rear angle on the foam, straight cuts on the end creating a visible seam/gap through the velour, and I'd seated the foam too far back into the velour on the bottom, so that the pleather crept over the seamline; creating a more squared-off bottom shape to the bottom of the pad. Oh, and a thinner needle helps with the stitching too, I wasn't snagging and pulling that super delicate pleather this time.

I took some extra time to massage the foam into the right place, so that the bottom of the foam lined up with the pleather underneath. Took some time to massage the foam into the material full stop, given the extra thickness compared to before.

First impressions. They are certainly more comfortable now, softer, and not so thin and pointy against my head. My sound impressions were confusing at first, but it made sense eventually. I'd decided to pick a different artist and album to listen to this time around, so when I settled in to listen to my minimum half an hour warm-up before doing the sewing, I was surprised that the headphones sounded far more forward to me, with a restricted soundstage, less clear highs and less open altogether.
I didn't remember them sounding like that last night, which is pretty recent, but okay I guess? Were my impressions really that wrong? I could only carry on and see what happened.
Listening again afterwards, I had really hoped that they would open up again and get their usual sound back, but that didn't happen. However, they no longer sounded so aggressively forward, they sounded more like where they ought to be in that regard, and the imaging seemed to improved a bit, with perhaps with just a little smidgen more of that 3D suggestion, but otherwise the cramped and muffled feeling hadn't gone.
The biggest difference turned out to be something I least expected; timbre is now far more realistic and true to life. Acoustic guitar strings and bells are now sounding like they should do, and I grew up with a parent who played guitar all the time, so I reckon I knows what that sound ought to be. Even the vocals though, sounded much better in timbre. Natural vocal timbre is something I had only ever previously noticed with the HD520 I, and had until now assumed it to be a characteristic that was unique to their copper voicecoils. I'd wished the 540's could have that characteristic, so I'm pretty pleased with that outcome.

Wondering what to listen to next, I selected a different album by the same artist, one that I'd listened to last night before I slept, just incase something was different with that album. Well now, isn't that interesting. Not muffled. Clarity is restored. Stage is no longer constricted, and maybe even a little taller than usual. It was a difference in mastering that was throwing everything off.
I hadn't expected that to be such a big factor, but it really goes to show.
On this album, with a far less restricted sound, these sound very nice. That sense of extra depth and layering that I can't quite access, is tantalisingly out of reach, but I can tell that it's there waiting for a dac that can properly show it off. The improved imaging is a small, but welcome addition alongside that more layered stage, but the timbral accuracy really steals the spotlight: I'm not as good of a romance writer as Sennsay, but I know that this will be right up his street! I can only describe the sound as more inviting because of that added realism.
The only single downside from this weeks tweaking is that it's not taken away the sibilance, but I'm convinced that its a "me" problem at this point, and not the headphones.

I'll need more time to give a more nuanced insight, but I can confidently say that all of this work seems to have paid off. I still think that the dampening foam in the back of the cups would be better off being somewhere between 2-4mm, instead of the 6.3mm that I'm having to use at the moment, I think that'd be enough to give that tiny bit of air and openness back. But otherwise this low density polyurethane upholstery foam seems to be a winner so far

 

[greenhorn]

Hi all. I am selling my HD540 600 Ohms in the « classifieds » section:

https://www.head-fi.org/classifieds/sennheiser-hd540-reference-the-600Ω-version-hd-540.37170/

Please PM me if you want to buy them.

 

[sennsay]

A surprise out of the blue: after recently writing about the joys of rediscovering my FrankenZero DAC (the Tianyun Zero), I was contacted by John Burson to see if I'd like to try one of their opamp modules in Frankie. Since no-one has ever offered me anything like that before, I jumped at the chance to hear one of these renowned opamp replacement modules! I chose the Vivid V6, knowing that the Classic version would be too bass heavy and possibly soften the already very smooth FrankenDAC. The HD540 Ref 1s opened up to yet more music to an extent I'd simply not heard elsewhere.
For anyone interested, the review is posted here on this site:
https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/burson-audio-and-the-evolution-of-the-tianyun-zero-dac.26558/

 

[Vonx]

Today, I got to hear my first pair of Hd540s ever, a 600 ohm ref 1. Man, these things are fantastic.

I've been a big Senn collector and have owned many baffle and SN permutations of the HD6X0 series and 800 series, and had always had a passive interest to try these, and wow what a treat.

They have a bit of a diffusive stage, although one that still allows a lot of focus on particular instruments, with a quick, articulative, and highly dynamic sound, possibly some of the strongest macrodyamics I've ever heard. Very tonally convincing, highly emotional, and a tad bit dreamy sounding due that mild bit of diffuseness and floatiness in the presentation. There is definately a little "spice" in the upper midrange, but it's a a more tasteful upper midrange push than any of the HD600 versions I've heard. It also has better resolution than any HD600 I've ever heard, and on par with the best 580 I've tried, where it trades blows in different areas.

The bass is slightly relaxed but still onnipresent with decent extension (for vintage senns) and great tightness and articulation, not lacking whatsoever per my tastes. I bet I can get more slam and thickness out of it with a higher impedance output tube.

This is all with the stock steel cable and no internal foams too! What a great headphone. These are keepers.

 

[sennsay]

Today, I got to hear my first pair of Hd540s ever, a 600 ohm ref 1. Man, these things are fantastic. I've been a big Senn collector and have owned many baffle and SN permutations of the HD6X0 series and 800 series, and had always had a passive interest to try these, and wow what a treat. They have a bit of a diffusive stage, although one that still allows a lot of focus on particular instruments, with a quick, articulative, and highly dynamic sound, possibly some of the strongest macrodyamics I've ever heard. Very tonally convincing, highly emotional, and a tad bit dreamy sounding due that mild bit of diffuseness and floatiness in the presentation. There is definately a little "spice" in the upper midrange, but it's a a more tasteful upper midrange push than any of the HD600 versions I've heard. It also has better resolution than any HD600 I've ever heard, and on par with the best 580 I've tried, where it trades blows in different areas. The bass is slightly relaxed but still onnipresent with decent extension (for vintage senns) and great tightness and articulation, not lacking whatsoever per my tastes. I bet I can get more slam and thickness out of it with a higher impedance output tube. This is all with the stock steel cable and no internal foams too! What a great headphone. These are keepers.

Congrats You've nailed most of the finest attributes, include very fine and natural timbre to that. I'm getting more micro dynamics now that I'm using a Burson Audio Vivid V6 'discrete opamp' in my DAC, makes me love the Senns even more. Much of what else you ascribe to them are due to the stock cable, which adds grain and that 'push' in the upper mids, but I lived with that for years and still chose them every time over HD650s. No internal foams will create a loss of focus, but hey, that problem is easily sorted. Strangely, I didn't like mine that much with an OTL Schiit Valhalla 2 amp, bit thin and hard in the mids, so I sold it after some months as it just didn't grab me emotionally. I've heard of much better results with other tube amps. I imagine yours may not have the lovely original cloth pads on them?

 

[sennsay]

Well dammit. My new pads have somehow got very lost and ended up well over 1000km away in South Australia, apparently landing there on June 1st and I still haven't received them. It's taken longer for them NOT to reach me within OZ, than it took for them to be shipped from China in the first place! I've contacted the seller, wanting more of the same pads. How on Earth they got to SA, when the address to me in Queensland was correct on the order, I have no idea. These pads, I still want to try them.

 

[sennsay]

I am still discovering yet more ravishing brilliance from my HD540 Ref1s! The Burson Vivid V6 opamp module in my FrankenZero has now gone over the 100 hour mark and I am revelling in this DACs ability to get right into the heart of the music and reveal details in albums I'd not listened to for years as they just didn't sound good. Kate Bush's Hounds Of Love being one of them, it's gone from being a somewhat hard, grainy and sometimes edgy digital recording (the LP too) and is now transformed into something that is truly mesmerising, despite being able to note the digital-ness of the technical recording aspects, though the irritation of it to my ears has been so greatly reduced I can just relax and listen in. Kate's humanity shines through it and the music now has truly memorable rhythms, exquisite details I've just not heard before (this applies to sooo many other albums!) and a technical wizardry from Kate that is simply masterful. A revealing of the music behind the recording. Extraordinary.
In general, the ambient detail retrieval has been extended in both the lower bass and high end, percussion and cymbals, bells etc, shimmer with detail yet are never unnaturally brightened at the same time, it literally is just as if a veil has been lifted from the music, to use an oft quoted term, but it's a perfect way to describe it.
The Vivid V6 just allows the DAC itself to shine at a level I didn't think it had in it and I'm in awe at not only at what the upgrading work has revealed, but that it was only $130NZ in the first place when I bought it back in 2008! Shows what good basic bones and design layout can do. And a great DAC chip!
The HD540 Refs just keep showing me every little detail of whatever changes I make before it and all hail to the brilliant Schiit Magni 3+ amplifier, it too just lets through all that goodness without brightness, edge, grain or dynamic compression, remaining balanced from top to bottom even as the volume is lowered. Well done Schiit, with your mini Vidar amplifier! I can lower the volume with the 600 ohm Senn HD540s down to the 10:30/11PM level and still hear everything from lowest bass, micro dynamic shifts, 3D vocals and soundstaging, right on upwards to the shimmer of high hats in all their ambient glory.

 

[ArChaos]

Well dammit. My new pads have somehow got very lost and ended up well over 1000km away in South Australia, apparently landing there on June 1st and I still haven't received them. It's taken longer for them NOT to reach me within OZ, than it took for them to be shipped from China in the first place! I've contacted the seller, wanting more of the same pads. How on Earth they got to SA, when the address to me in Queensland was correct on the order, I have no idea. These pads, I still want to try them.

Sorry to hear that. I hope you eventually get them and that they actually ARE the right version > Gray1).

AS far as I know, you cannot presently order the Gray1 model - the seller does not have them in stock any more - the alternative is inactive when you try to choose the model.
If he somehow agrees to sell you again, make sure he sends you the right model, and not the Gray2 that he usually keeps in stock.