i recantly bought a pair of sennheiser HD-580., used but in perfect condition, for 1/3 street price.

Do someone know if there are som tweaks to improve the performance of the headphones (DIY cables. etc)

also
i really like the quality but the open design annoys my wife. Women *sigh*
Can i exchanege the open desing to closed desing ? and would it decrease quality. ? Is there another pair with the same quality but closed design ?

No.

No. Yes. No.

I suggest exchaging your wife.

Oh what we men must sacrify for our wives...

The only tweak I'm aware of for the HD580 is to replace the cable. Cardas, Clou and Equinox are the leading brands recommended over at head-fi.org. I got the Cardas cable and could hear improvement in the sound. $135.00

I won't forget that one for days.

Could you please elaborate? I'd like to know what kind of improvement you could hear.

...especially given that you can buy a new pair of HD580 for that price.

...and that you're implying Sennheisers own cables are less than steller.

IMHO, expensive cables are (nearly) always a waste of money. Gold plugs, directional audio cables, etc. have (to my knowledge) never been proven in a double-blind test to actually make a damn bit of difference. By expensive cables, I mean ones worth more than $20 or so BTW.

I am sure I will take heat for saying this

Cable-Schmable!

I don't believe it

lol
oh nos...
teh humor from head-fi.org hath ariveth to HA

The things I'd do to ameliorate the sound of headphones are:
- changing the cables
- buying a nice headphone amp

If you're not happy with the heaphones, and the two solutions you propose both cost more than the headphones themselves, it begs one question: why did you buy these headphones?!


FWIW, I love my HD580s just as they are. Great recordings sound great. Bad recordings sound bad, but that's not the fault of the headphones!

Cheers,
David.

In most cases, cables make a difference only in some people's heads, but not in the real, actual sound. That's the placebo effect that we talk about so much here.

But there are some cases where cables do make a difference, as I suspect is the case of some Sennheiser replacement cables. In these cases the cable does make a difference in the sound, but... just by means of "coloring" it, same way as an equalizer would do. Why? Because Sennheiser "default" cables are common cables that don't color the sound at all, they are transparent, as any regular cable is. So, if those replacement cables do sound different is because these cables are no more transparent, they "do" something to the sound that arrives to the headphone drivers.

Do you like that sound? Fine, but probably you could achieve a similar effect playing with some equalization. It's possible that those cables do something else, such as adding some harmonic distortion that adds warmth to the sound, same as some tube amplifiers do. But I go for transparency, so I consider that kind of tweaks that in fact distort the sound, unnaceptable.

Using a power amplifier headphone output instead of a headphone output from a soundcard or a CD Player can improve the sound of such big headphones. Higher levels, more bass (?, I felt).

I never wrote that I plan to buy these things, it was just a proposal by myself in order to help one member of HA's community; actually, I am quite happy with my Sennheiser HD600

I do not claim to be an audiophile. I trained in voice for some years when younger so I believe I can here some difference in the quality of sound. Judge from that.

I hear a somewhat wider soundstage and more detail, and somewhat deeper tone, with the Cardas cable. I use a META42 headphone amp which has a very clear sound, and am fortunate to have a very good amp, a vintage Yamaha CA-810. The headphones, replacement cable and amp were a considerable investment, about US$450 in total. But living in an apartment, this setup allows me to enjoy very beautiful sound without disturbing my wife in the next room when she's asleep.

I know there are many people here who are adamant that cables make a difference, but I sure am one of those who firmly believe the opposite, given what I have learnt so far.

Whatever that's travelling down these headphone cables is just electricity, and if there is nothing in the cables that changes the *whatever that codes for audio signals, be it voltage, current, frequency, amplitude of the ELECTRICal current*, what heck difference would there be between a good cheap cable and an over-priced, over-hyped audiophile cable???

I wonder if any of these people actually think that sound actually travels down these cables.

In this forum, we firmly believe that ANY opinion about sound quality MUST be backed up with conclusive, without-a-shadow-of-doubt double-blind (a.k.a. ABX) testing. If you have not ABX your claims that the supposedly-superior cables are superior, we don't believe you. Period.

Btw, I trained in common sense and logical reasoning. Judge from that.

To be exact, ABX does not imply double blind, and double blind doesn't imply ABX.

Double Blind means that not only the sources are hidden from the subject, but they are also hidden from the operator. We achieve this using a program choosing randomly the samples, instead of a human switching an A/B button.

ABX means that we must recognize X comparing it to A and B. This could very well be done in simple blind.

Also, we require the stitistic analysis of the ABX sessions performed : confidence must be >95 %. This is achieved for example when 7 sucesses are got out of 8 trials, or 13/16, IIRC.
The ABX programs available compute it automatically.

Sorry, but I think people still get the point .

Hmmm . . . my speaker cables have resistance, inductance, and capacitance.
But like you said, these properties don't effect electricity.

Dex

Edit: (That came off sounding a bit more sarcastic than I intended!)

Well, resistance, capacitance, inductance and others do have an effect on the electric signal that the cable carries. The point is that this effect is so little that it is not audible by far in most cases, being headphone cables one of the cases where this effect is less important.

But the key point has already been made: don't these "upgrade" cables try to counteract the perceived colouration of the HD580s with their own colouration?

I may just be repeating a myth here, but if it's true, then there are better ways of doing it. It doesn't mean it's a bad thing though.


It's got to be said: if you have a good source, good amp, HD580s (with or without some extra filtering via special cables) you've got a very nice, transparent, musical audio set up which I'm sure gives you many hours of pleasure.


Cheers,
David.