Refusal to take responsibility.
Hi, Just thought I would make a note here of your handling of my issues. I ordered a pair of HD6xx headphones and then earlier today recieved the package. I drive to go and get it, as I like in the UK I had to pay import tax and handling fees. These total £47.92. The breakdown being £35.92 in tax and £12 in fees. These taxes were calculated of the shipping label of the box, which marked the shipment as the 6xx headphones of $199 value. Before leaving the parcel depot, I open the box to find a $35 lord of the rings mousepad. So now the problem is not only do I not have the headphones, but you have marked the shipment wrong so I have paid £47.92 fees for the handling of the mousepad. Which would have acrued £0 of fees if marked correctly as it is under £135. I go back to the desk but as I have already paid the fees I am unable to reject the shipment, but as the box said 6xx, there was no way for me to know before opening it. I contact support and they offer me a replacement, which...
Jan 17, 2025
So quick background. I will admit I am fairly new to the audiophile scene. I'm a 44 yr old guy who listens to everything....but mostly it's top 40/pop/rock/rap. I am by no means a music snob. I don't listen to classical or instrumentals or crap just to show off my speakers/headphones. I listen to the music I like to listen to when I'm exercising or in the car or hanging out in the yard. I'm guessing that based on my experience below, I'm loosing hearing with age and probably favor a little more treble forward sound. The best headphones I've heard to date are lcd2c's on a good friends setup.
Like most, looking for the best bang for the buck I have purchased the following - M50x's, TacStar Pro 82's, SHP-9500s. Of that bunch I enjoyed the Pro 82's alot and felt that (and still feel) that the SHP9500's were pretty incredible for the price ~$60. But none of those cans felt comfortable to me for long periods. I'd either get sweaty ears or my ears would touch/rub inside. I then decided to give Sennheisers a try and fell in love with the fit. I've got a big melon and big ears and every Sennheiser I've owned feel great.
I've owned now 598's , 579's and 559's. The 598's felt too bright to me and almost uncomfortable high's on certain tracks. The 579's felt like they added some needed bass, but retained clarity and I really enjoyed the grey look. I then decided to give 559's a try on a whim and ultimately liked them the best of the bunch. To me, the 559's have the widest soundstage, the deepest base and with some slight EQ adjustment I was able to get back some desired treble. They are the most plain jain headphones - not cool in anyway, but they were cheap and the ones always went back to.
So then here comes the HD 58x's. I felt like if I was happy with this lower tier product line....these HD 58x's should be amazing right? Like night and day difference. So many reviews and comments seem to imply that. Well, honestly at the end of the day....they had a sound signature very, very similar to these 559's I love. Slightly less bass response and maybe a little more clarity. But A/B testing the HD 58x's against the 559's was not anything special. I also spent alot of time comparing them to the HD 579's as well. Definitely a different sound. I struggled more with this comparison. Many times I felt I favored the more vocal forward, treble/brighter sound of the 579's but in comparison the HD58x's felt....I'm not sure how to describe this properly, but maybe "fuller" is the right word?
How did I utilize all these headphones? Like I would imagine the majority of buyers would....especially these HD 58x's which are meant to be mobile friendly with their impedance. I listened to all of them through my 2011 iMac using itunes and spotify, also used my ipad and iphone. The HD 58x's never felt like they struggled with any of them. They did all require me to run at a higher volume though than the 598/579/559 series.
Lastly to just comment on the physical aspects of these...I think they were decently made. You can tell it's an older design/mold in comparison to these new designs. I was worried that the piano/gloss black would look cheap...but it was fine. Yes you can see mold lines, yes they look like $100-ish headphones. The fit was very comfortable and I can also agree that the clamp was tighter than anything else I've had on my head. However even with my big noggin, they never felt uncomfortable and I wore them several times for multiple hours. I personally was not a big fan of the cord design, I think I prefer the single one-side cable design. The double wires sort of formed this distracting chin strap thing to me and felt like if I was going to keep these HD 58x's I'd probably invest in a little nicer looking cable.
In the end, for the $60 I paid for the 559's they do the job nearly identical to these HD 58x's to my ears so I'll just keep those and I'll sell these HD58x's off. Are they worth the purchase - definitely. These are still very inexpensive and alot of bang for the buck. But there's no way you can convince me that these are incrementally better than what I've tried.
Maybe it's time now to start playing around with an amp and/or some planars. :)
While the 58X isn't as hard to drive as the 6XX/650, 6.3Vrms is still pretty healthy. A good desktop amp would be needed to really push these headphones to their true potential. While they'll still sound pretty good most of the time unless you;re feeding them enough power they won't be close to what they should really sound like.
Even putting in the specs for your HD 559 they have a healthy voltage requirement:
I'm sure there are more recent calcs with newer amps but this paints a picture well enough for my baseline when I pair my equipment off. Hope this helps.
The HD6## series is known for their ability to scale up with better and more powerful gear. I'd say, before you give up on them, check them out on whatever your friend was running his LCD2Cs off of.
Also, maybe check out this link. There is info about modding it pretty simply to get the frequency response curves closer to the 600 and 660.
https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/headphones/measurements/brands-s-se/hd58x-jubilee-massdrop/
And these are a pretty cheap way to mod this series of headphones.
Set a budget, and upgrade, your desire is there, it will be sated.
Move to 24 bit flac & try dsd, bypass pc audio mixer etc. ref: http://m.us.marantz.com/DocumentMaster/US/Marantz_DAC_White_Paper_4_5_2016.pdf
And the whole power/amp thing is even more of a disappointment. Once again feeling the pressure to jump into the serious audiophile world. It's literally splitting hairs IMO from my iMac desktop to both cans vs the amp.
Maybe with different headphones and higher impedance, etc. I could be convinced that the amp will be important. But with these two I keep A/B testing it's made zero impact. If I had to give it any praise, I'd say it's slightly cleaner in sound...but that is a major stretch in my book.
I'm not trying to be a negative nancy or poo-poo this product. If the HD58x were the only headphones I've ever tried I'd love them, just like I think these HD 559's are a tremendous value and suit my needs better. They both sound amazing to me. But the hype on these being significantly better/higher grade experience just doesn't live up to the hype in my book.