Rant post ahead.
I give up... I tried,I really really tried to like these headphones but I cant.Since the first day I got them,I was constantly trying to come up with EQ curve in Windows APO equalizer that would make these headphones not sound like sonic equivalent of cancer.I spend 6 hours a day,every day,listening criticaly and trying very complex EQ curves,I tried my best and I failed.
Last ten days I had bipolar mental disorder like feelings about them.On one hand,I read so many people praising them,saying how bright and non-veiled they are,how similiar are they to HD660S,I saw multiple measurements with good results,I viewed Massdrop as company that have spot on headphone tunning for their exclusive models,I saw Sennheiser as best headphone company ever with best reliability,driver matching and headphone to headphone consistency.
On other hand was the hard fact,the harsh reality that my particular headphone was unbelievably bad.Before I got them I was almost sure that I would like them,I had massive expectation bias,the placebo forces were strongly In favor of liking the headphones.But no amount of placebo,expectation bias and cognitive dissonance could overpower the ultra crappy sound of my HD58X.It was like trying to make your highschool bully eat sun dried dogschiit by hidding it in normal food except the turd was size of hot dog sausage and only "camoflage" food avaliable was ounce of ketchup,no matter how evenly and intricately you tried to spread it,nothing could hide the fact that it was piece of excrement.
I had this strong belief that something that have same pads,headband and cups as HD6X0 could not sound too different.I felt the torture device clamp,I felt the familiar earpads on my temples,I heard the click of headband as I have many times before,I connected the asymetric connectors like all other HD6X0 have,apart from slightly different color it felt and looked the same,my expectation bias that I would love these just as much as I do all other HD6X0 was astronomically high.
I kept going back and fourth between reality and dreamy planes of placebo land.They sounded so bad,but I always was thinking that maybe if I EQ them just little more,little better than they would become good.Even through the harsh reality was constantly apparent,I refused to accept it.That state of cognitive dissonance that held my judgement as prisoner in strangehold of placebo tentacles could not last forever,even through my "gas" tank of expectation bias was full at first,it was being emptied,reduced to nothing at rapid rates everytime I put them on my head.Finally,today,10 days after recieving them,last remnants of positive expectation bias and hope left my soul.
These headphone sounds like schiit and I cannot stand them no matter how much EQ I trow at them in futile attemps to salvage my investment.The painfull truth is,I made big mistake buying them.I can see what you think,"oh,its just 149$ headphone,no big deal,just buy another",the problem is that I am poor as funk,I am poor person even for the standards of my poor country,what 149$ is for you, is 1499$ for me.After I pay rent and food,these 149 bucks is about all I am left with to spend on stuff for month.I paid the shipping to EU and import tax so it was 189 euros total or 215 dollars,you Americans are lucky bastards,I am very jealous that you can shop Massdrop without import tax and going through the whole customs torture process.
I would like to describe in more detail the sound of these headphones,I already wrote about the sound previously in this thread but I will write it again,all in one place and really describe every aspect.These sound super bad,unbelievably bad,these are so bad that if your familiar with HD6X0 and put these on it would take days before the reality birch slaps the last remains of expectation bias out of you.They are one of worst headphones I ever heard in my life,they are so bad they make your average mid-fi purgatory cans seem like TOTL ultra high end in comparsion.
Where do I even begin? Lets start with only positive thing about these headphones : sub bass extension.These extend deeper than all other HD6X0,its not big difference,but not small either,its nice and instantly noticable.It does have bass hump,but to me it sounds like its deeper in center frequency despite measurements showing its same shape and frequency as HD650.Less upper bass warmth,more sub bass.
The bass is ok,no weird frequency peaks or dips,no audible distortion but I listen rather quiet.Bass appears less distorted than HD600-650 that have this second and third harmonic distortion thickening.Despite that,I prefer any of the HD6X0 bass to my HD58X bass,the former sound better to me but I cant quite explain why,I would say it appears "tighter","faster",more "clear" despite the HD6X0 being less extended and more thicc in terms of low order harmonic distortion.I know these subjective terms are useless but since I dont have measurement gear its best I got.My guess its becose of lower driver resonant frequency 75Hz vs 100Hz for HD6X0.
The mids... I would describe the mids as shouty and uneven.I know what your thinking "shouty mids,thats like HD600",no,its nothing like HD600.I have read many times people describe HD600 as having little shouty upper mids.I have heard three new HD600 just in last month.I understand how someone could say that,I can see how someone could dislike their upper mids and describe it as shouty,but the thing is,isnt shouty as a shouty,the shoutiness of HD58X is something else entirely,its whole different level of "shouty".
Uneven.You remember what is the most praised atribute of HD600/650? Its the even,smooth,dip and peak free midrange.The HD58X doesnt have any of that,the mids sounds very bad,too high in certain places,absolute brutal dips in another places,harsh and fatiguing yet distant and unclear.Certain sounds are hardly audible,strongly recessed while others present neverending onslaught of fatiguing ugliness.
One of the things I love about HD6X0 is their transient response and their detail retrieval.They all have this incredibly crisp,sharp but smooth and harshness free midrange.The transient are so crispy and clear yet never fatiguing,the vocals... Do I really need to explain how HD6X0 are at vocals? They are legendary for their midrange and how good they handle vocals. Also the microdetail,the "plankton",all the HD6X0 that I tried were outstanding in this regard even from ****** tablet,their midrange performance could not be obstructed by using bad source.
My HD58X have zero of that lovely midrange goodness,absolutely nothing at all.The transients doesnt sound crispy and clean,its maybe hair above the Denon HP1000,a rebadged Audio Technica closed can I bought 10 years ago.This isnt just subtle downgrade,this is day and night difference.The resolution,the transients,the plankton is horrible,its nothing like HD6X0.Its low fidelity unresolving crap thats in league of 29$ closed headphones and not 149$ open back Sennheisers in 2018.
One particular thing that I found interesting in last 10 days of constant equalizing is that they are very shouty in the 1000 - 5000 Hz region.I saw the measurements and it showed that this region is recessed about 3db compared to HD650,HD660S also have this region recessed.If you compare the measurements of HD660S and 58X,you find that the mids match so closely that the difference is not bigger than difference from headphone to headphone of same type.I expected them to sound like HD660S in mids yet they sound about as similiar as octopus is similiar to elephant.
Treble... this headphone is so veiled it goes to old driver HD650 and asks "Do you even veil bro?!" This headphone is so rolled off up top it makes new driver HD650 seem like total face tweeter.This headphone is very dark and veiled.Now you might think "dark you say? I like Audeze",the thing is that while Audeze is dark,its also clear sounding and pleasant,my HD58X is the worst kind of "dark" that can be.This headphone have 0 air,from 14KHz up the frequency response drops off like car from cliff.
When I was young teenagers long time ago,I remember the first and only time I heard 96kbps MP3.What I remember to this day was the non existant top octave,that schiity low fi garbage quality sound.My HD58X makes EVERYTHING sound like that,its like analog FLAC to 96kbps MP3 converter.This is one of my biggest issues with this headphone,this kind of treble takes all the joy of hearing music away,no matter how I EQ it,it never goes away.
I did some more testing with sinewaves I made in Audacity and I found the roll off up top isnt so sharp as I have previously thought,I could hear up to 16KHz with volume at very high level and about 15KHz at normal listening level.I suspect there are some sharp peaks and dips in treble but my judgement is not good enough to pinpoint them if I dont have other reference headphone at hand for comparsion.
I read many reviewers describing it as "V shaped" and "brighter/less veiled" than HD650 ( not sure if new or old driver) I read its treble is very similiar to HD660S,"fresher" and with "more bite",my headphone is much darker than any HD6X0 and is ultra veiled,I never heard headphone this veiled in my life.I needed on average +6db boost to everything past 7 KHz to make it kind of like HD6X0 and it was still uber veiled.
That extreme veil,I am not even sure what frequency is causing it,nothing helps,not even little bit,I even tried +20db high treble boost,it did nothing to that veil.My guess is the headphone is already 6db too dark past 6 KHz,the treble starts rolling off fast past 13.8KHz but at 16KHz the driver goes "nope!" and wont play anything no matter how much juice your amp pumps into the headphones.
Soundstage and imaging... I have one good news,the soundstage doesnt sound small and claustrophobic as HD6X0,becose it doesnt have any soundstage.Also it have imaging capabilities of potato.To put it simply,the soundstage and imaging are of cheap closed headphone.This headphone combines the worst atributes of both closed and open headphones,it have poor soundstage and imaging of closed back with non-existant isolation of open back.Its like "best of both worlds" thing in some reversed mirror anti matter universe,you get worst of both worlds,no benefits,only negatives.
How it can perform so poorly is flabbergasting,look,I know HD6X0 were never known for wide soundstage,it was small soundstage,but it had proper soundstage.Also I found HD6X0 imaging rather precise,not the most precise but pretty good.My HD58X have highly diffuse,imprecise imaging,only when some sound is way to the side I notice the position change.Its tiny bit better than my old Denon HP1000 which is some rebadged closed Audio Technica,but its worst soundstage and imaging of any open back headphone I ever heard.Any of the HD6X0 is far superior.
I contacted Massdrop and I am praying I get refund.These headphones are so bad that there is higher probability that Elvis is still alive somewhere than probability of selling these with low loss to another person who isnt deaf.What puzzles me is,why me? On Massdrop it shows it sold over 17k,vast majority love it,all the reviews,all the measurements describe and show a completly different headphone than what I got.
My theory is that for some reason,the HD58X have very high inconsistency from headphone to headphone,much looser quality control limits for drivers.I have read many reviews and while most say its more or less bright,I found couple reviews that were highly negative,they described the same faults as my headphones have such as : 1. Very veiled. 2. poor soundstage/imaging. 3. inability to EQ out the bad sound quality.
It seems there are two types,the majority is of the praised bright good type,and unknown lesser number of the bad dark veiled ones.
But even that doesnt explain everything,since my headphone is even worse than the bad veiled type other people got.Its like mine is third category,super rare and super bad.Its like I have won lottery for worst HD58X ever made.Since both drivers are matched,it seems unlikely the drivers are damaged but I dont dismiss that possibility completly.Maybe the vibration on the way from USA to Europe could have done it,I have no idea.
I cant believe Sennheiser,my most favorite headphone manufacturer would let them leave factory.I also found some white foam on my drivers,other people dont have that,maybe Sennheiser was in hurry and made the quality control limits less tight? Maybe it was just one bad worker at Sennheiser who made some mistake.Maybe they knowingly made two versions,a silent revision.
I am not some spoiled little (insert bad word) with problem glasses nitpicking at slight differences in tonality.If my headphone was 60% as good as any of the HD6X0 I would be enjoying music right now and not writting this gigantic butthurt post.The headphones I got are so bad they could be used as torture device for terrorist prisoners in Guantanamo,I bet not even Chuck Norris could enjoy them.
My headphone sound so bad,its like if Alex Grell took all his know how,all his skill and knowledge to develop worst possible driver that fits inside HD6X0 cups.
