Well @TylersEclectic and @pwjazz one of my very favourite songs st the moment is on Spotify and is Wicked Game - Live Acoustic by Stone Sour-Come What(ever)May. I am sorry I can’t link Spotify from my Phone as I don’t have it installed on this one. Unless there’s another way of doing it. A lot of Acoustic songs I have downloaded from Spotify and are single songs but another playlist/Spotify download I like is Don Ross-A Million Brazilian Civillians. This was a recommendation I took off Reddit I forget who. But it’s got lots of great guitar work and is mostly instrumental. There’s also an Acoustic album by Maroon 5 called 1.22.03 Acoustic. Sorry for the total mess re the format of recommendations. I use my phone for browsing.
The Wicked Game song I love. The guitar work is awe inspiring I just love it. It has real zing and bite to it.
That must of been an experience! Kind of jealous, I’m not the biggest on concerts I tend to like small venues where I’m not rubbing up against ten different people at once. Not a big fan of crowds you might say.
this is a really cool playlist of all the singles… I think a lot of headphones can appreciate this selection but since it is vocal and live acoustic focused I think the 58X will shine on a lot of the songs
I’m really enjoying these headphones. They certainly seem more lively than my 650, but to my ears the 650 is more resolving, more nuanced. I wish I could combine the best aspects of both of them into one headphone.
Yes, I’ve listened to them enough now to strongly agree with this. For my review I will call them Jack off all Trades, Master of One. I have yet to find anything on which they sound bad, on most things they sound very good and on intimate vocal and acoustic recordings they sound downright great. It’s the same niche on which the HD600 excelled for me, but I find that with the improved bass and imaging the HD58X works well on a broader range of genres.
Thanks for the link to this thread BTW. …not sure why I didn’t see it before.
I’ll have the 580s tomorrow and without even listening I’m sure that I’ll like them.
Several years ago, when the HD800 came out and I heard them, I was somewhat underwhelmed for the cost (back when they were “only” $1000 US).
Don’t get me wrong, I liked them a lot but felt they were kind of the definition of diminishing returns.
I got a kick out of some of the comparisons in this thread as it often seemed many were forgetting that the cans cost a buck and a half!
It made me feel like my sense of diminishing return was vindicated.
For normal humans with bills to pay, some luxuries are simply out of the question (and some are simply not worth the $).
I was happy when I heard Tyll Hertsen’s retirement comment/request to manufacturers that they try to keep the blessed prices down!
I just received the 580s so haven’t had time for a thorough comparison.
The one thing I noticed right out if the box (ie no burn in period for the driver/diaphragm) is that I had no impulse to reach for the 650s.
I was actually expecting to like them slightly less as I’ve owned 600s and sold them out of preference for the 650s back when funds were tight.
It was mostly the lack of weight or fullness in the 600s that was the deciding factor back then but I don’t sense that in these. Perhaps my memory deceives me or, more likely, they did a great job tuning these newer drivers.
I’ll post a more thorough review (and comparison to the 650s) when I’ve done more listening to different music from various sources.
Bottom line atm though is that I couldn’t be happier with this Sennheiser/Massdrop purchase
Something that continues to bother me about the HD6?? series is what I call grain, though that’s probably not the right term. It reminds me of a photograph that was overexposed and has too much detail in the shadows and not enough contrast in the subject. It’s less of a problem on the HD58X than I remember it being on the HD600, but I still notice it. Wondering if maybe it was a frequency response thing, I used Toneboosters Morphit to emulate the response of headphones like the LCD2 (known for its smoothness) as well as the HD800, Beyerdynamic T1 and Hifiman HE-6, but in all cases the grain remained, so I doubt it’s frequency response.
@Torq 's uses Along This Road: Kono Michi by Ottmar Liebert to evaluate blackness of background and it turns out that in addition to bring a lovely song, it helped me gain insight into this “grain”. Specifically, it’s a very sparse song with just one part, the guitar.
When the guitar is in full swing, I hear the grain
When the guitar is silent, I hear nothing. So the grain is not noise.
The song begins with some very high picking, and during this part I hear no grain. The grain only becomes audible once there are low notes played on the guitar.
This makes me wonder if what I’m hearing as grain is just the result of bass distortion intruding on the higher fundamentals? The HD58X measures with lower bass distortion than the HD600 and its bass sounds cleaner to me, so perhaps this accounts for the reduced grain? My reference for smooth, grain-free sound is the LCD2C which has exceptionally low bass distortion.
I had to concentrate…but yeah I hear the “grit” almost, but only on the faster strumming parts. It is just perceptible to me, but I have to really listen for it. A/Bng with the HD800…and I must say with these tracks it is pretty close…something to take into account the way a headphone fits and or how it “feels” on the head can account for some levels of how you hear tracks I think. The HD800 has “huge” cups and adds to the airy wide sense you get from them. While the 58X and 6xx series have a more clampy and intimate fit on the head and around the ear, and I think that adds to the intimacy of the music coming out of them. So with the HD800 it feels like he is strumming in an amphitheater and I’m the only one there listening. While the HD58x feels like either at a campfire in the woods, or on the back porch of a country house while we are both sitting either across or aside each other.
Side note check out Ottmar Lieberts Binaural album such a cool experience!
Funny, I’m jealous of you living in Seattle! We took our son there a couple of summers so and stayed right by the Pike Street market- which was just amazing.
An acquaintance of mine spends about half the year in Seattle and the other half in Austin, you can guess which
Let me know if you’re ever in town, we should catch some live music together!
