{"id":944,"date":"2018-02-12T23:54:43","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T23:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/?p=944"},"modified":"2023-02-23T15:19:59","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T15:19:59","slug":"back-to-the-hd-580","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/2018\/02\/12\/back-to-the-hd-580\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the HD-580 &#8211; For a While"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My Audeze LCD-2 fell off my desk at work and got pranged so they&#8217;re going back to Audeze for repair and, incidentally, upgrade to the 2016 drivers. My home pair has\u00a0 these drivers and they are a subtle improvement over the 2014.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, I&#8217;m listening to my trusty old HD-580s. Original 18 year old drivers, though I&#8217;ve replaced the headband and ear pads, and the cable, a few times over the years. They&#8217;re clean and play, fit and look like new.<\/p>\n<p>First impression: these HD-580s are nice headphones! Smooth mids, nice timbres, well balanced. They really were the very first audiophile headphone, SOTA for 1999, a whole different league apart from Grados and the like. But compared to the LCD-2:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The low bass is rolled off<\/li>\n<li>The bass is not as tight<\/li>\n<li>The mids are a tad boxy, not as open sounding<\/li>\n<li>The high treble is rolled off<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Overall, they sound a tad muffled and slow compared to the LCD-2. Conversely, the LCD-2 has:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wider bandwidth: deeper bass, higher treble<\/li>\n<li>Better detail &amp; articulation throughout the range<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One advantage the HD-580 has over the LCD-2 is comfort. The HD-580 are lighter and breathe better. That better breathing is due to having velour earpads instead of leather, which is more comfortable but it doesn&#8217;t seal as well which likely contributes to the bass attenuation.<\/p>\n<p>Another advantage of the HD-580 is their midrange linearity. The LCD-2 has a response bump in the mids (600-1200) and a dip in treble (3-4 kHz). If you don&#8217;t have EQ to correct this, the HD-580 can actually be better than the LCD-2.<\/p>\n<p>A gentle parametric EQ helps widen the HD-580&#8217;s apparent bandwidth:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>+6 low shelf @ 100 Hz, Q=0.67<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m enjoying this trip down memory lane. I listened to these same HD-580s during most of the 10,000 hours I put into Octane Software back in the day. They sound nice, but I will be happy to get my Audeze back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Audeze LCD-2 fell off my desk at work and got pranged so they&#8217;re going back to Audeze for repair and, incidentally, upgrade to the 2016 drivers. My home pair has\u00a0 these drivers and they are a subtle improvement over the 2014. In the meantime, I&#8217;m listening to my trusty old HD-580s. Original 18 year &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/2018\/02\/12\/back-to-the-hd-580\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Back to the HD-580 &#8211; For a While<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3106,"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions\/3106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mclements.net\/blogWP\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}