Don't forget the waifu boxes.

EQ

So, how do they sound?

A playlist of about 30 /r/symphonicmetal songs, but most importantly, Cryovile - Providence.

Forget new wave, sine wave is where it's at.

My wireless daily drivers are ATH-M50xBT2, which have all of those things except ANC. They sound indistinguishable from the original ATH-M50x (as far as I can tell) when using wired mode or LDAC.

According to this post, a Beyerdynamic DT headband will fit.

I'm on Apple Music free trial right now (I got a company issued MacBook Pro at my new job, so I figured it's a good opportunity to try) and I think I'll go back to Tidal once the free trial expires. The UI is awful, as are most things Apple - for one, I can't even find a way to disable autoplay.

Thanks for the detailed post! This is plenty of useful info for me, who's never experienced summit-fi yet. For reference, what cans do you own or have owned (besides HD600) and what music genres do you listen to?

This is too specific for anyone to provide a meaningful answer.

Something, something, HD 820

I barely use any in-ears/earbuds since I got the Audio-Technica ATH-M50xBT2 wireless headphones for my portable needs.

I agree with your objective observations but my subjective opinions are the exact opposite of yours. I think the 560S has great bass while the 58X has bad bloated bass, and the 560S has exciting treble while the 58X has poor treble and is too dark as a result.

The 58X were some of my first open-back headphones and I liked them at the time, but they haven't really held up against my later purchases and I'm considering selling them. The 560S is still my favourite neutral reference and an excellent all-rounder, if no longer the best headphone I have.

Bottom line, the beauty of headphones is really in the ear of the beholder.

Sennheiser switched to a different earpad vendor some time ago; ASR measured the 600 series with new earpads, and they sound brighter than old pads like you mentioned. The way they can be told apart is that old pads have black mounting rings on the back and new ones have clear mounting rings.

The same applies to the 500 series, as seen in this video. There's still plenty of new-old-stock pads on the market (at least for the 500 series) so that might be the difference between the ones you have.

Depends on the specifications of that motherboard DAC. I'd expect the E30II to be more transparent than most, if not all mobo DACs (I also have the E30II, and it's better than my mobo's Realtek ALC880 at least with some of the more power-hungry headphones), but then you might just like the coloured sound of a mobo DAC more; more transparent does not necessarily mean better sound, as evidenced by tube amp users and the like.

I get that you're streaming music on Tidal. I asked because the UI looks weird, like there are elements intersecting each other - it looks better than that on my devices, I can tell you as much.

When you say "retired", does that mean you're going to sell some of the headphones? I might be in the market for a few (though probably not in a while, as I recently splurged on a lot of music CDs).

Also, what's up with the Tidal UI?

How about some Beyerdynamics? They're generally good at bass and soundstage, although the treble peaks can be offputting to some.

HD 560S owner here. I think they're great headphones, but I'm not sure if they're really what OP is looking for; they definitely don't have as much bass as XM4 or ATH-M50x.

I think your cats want to try the Sennies too.

I downloaded the latest version of TT DR Offline Meter (which the database entries for this album claim to be measured with, or compatible), and here are the results for my personal lossless rips of the CDs. The results for the remastered album (NB 5062-0-1 and NB 5062-0-2 acoustic bonus CD) match the database, but not the results for the original album (NB 2345-2 standard edition, not the limited edition). I double-checked the discs to make sure that the catalog numbers match the database. I don't have the old measurement tool or the results I got originally, so I'm not sure if the results were the same (I don't think they were the same though).

Most people I know who have heard both versions of the album agree that the remaster sounds better than the original (if you're curious, you can listen to those MP3s you've got or the YouTube playlists above), while the DR Database would suggest it sounds the same or worse. This is not the only case where I found DR Database entries to be misleading in the past, which is why I stopped caring about DR measurements when purchasing music, but I don't have the time to analyse my whole album collection right now.

I'm pretty sure it's the database's fault because what I am actually hearing is more in accordance with my own measurements than the database (here are the original album and the remastered album if you want to listen for yourself - I haven't noticed any difference between the CDs and streaming releases apart from compression).

And this is just one of the many cases where I've found what the database says to be inaccurate - I can't remember anymore right now but I can run that measurement tool on my albums again if you want.

I don't know the technical details behind it, but DR values for the same master can vary when measured with different tools or versions of the same tool.

For example, Epica - Design Your Universe (2009) is one of my favourite albums, and it was re-released with a remaster in 2019. According to the DR Database, the remaster is worse than the original, yet I have the exact same CDs and to my ears the remaster sounds better (which is what one would expect of a remaster). I'm also pretty sure that the last time I ran a DR measurement tool on those two CDs, the results I got made more sense than what the database says.

I agree that the majority of people can't tell the difference, but 99.9% is an exaggeration.

The Dynamic Range Database is (unfortunately) so unreliable in my experience that I'm not sure if it's worth bothering at all.