RIP Denon AH-D7000...

Sigh, after 14 years (and about 4000 hours), my beloved Denon AH-D7000 headphones bit the dust...

The right driver was already sounding flabby with the bass since the beginning of the year. Today, it exhibited nasty crackle whenever a bassy note was played. I opened them up, and the reason was obvious: the rubber suspension of the driver has become brittle with the years, and developed a hairline crack at its perimeter so that the microfiber membrane is now loose and uncontrolled when loud bass is played.

I would have never changed these perfect headphones... but I have to.

Now I am listening to my "backup" Sennheiser HD-595 and the comparison is depressing: good orchestral mids, but no soundstage, boxy vocals, less detail, and no true bass.

I can't live without decent headphones, so I ordered the Denon AH-D7200. Expect a detailed review from this weekend! Hoping, of course, that they stand to the glorious legacy of the 7000...

In the meanwhile, as a memento: sometimes you read very contrasting comparisons on turntable cartridges on the Internet. For some, a cartridge is perfect, for some others it's a mess. Well, since now I am using the Sennheisers, I can say one thing for sure: ANY cartridge sounds OK with them. All the flaws I was hearing on my records (surface noise, mastering errors) can't be heard with the Sennheisers. It makes no difference whether I am using the Ortofon 2M Black or the Grado. It makes me think how much the Denons were revealing!

That's got to be frustrating. I hope the new headphones meet your expectations. They certainly look very nice.

I don't use any high end headphones, but personally find most difficult to listen to without some kind of EQ correction. I only use headphones for digital music at my desk or on the go.

At my desk I currently use the Math Audio plugin for Foobar2000 to EQ correct my headphones. The ones at my desk are just Senn 58X, nothing super fancy. They sound okay normally but are much better with EQ correction IMHO.

For high fidelity on a budget, I would use a pair of Alpair 10P (paper) on cardboard baffles at nearfield distance instead. Much much better than a headphone. Close proximity means you can achieve bass dB SPL without it spreading to other rooms.

But these are open solutions... I absolutely need closed headphones because the two females in the house complain about the sound leakage from ANY open-back headphone...

And this is to show how much more bass the Denon has compared to the HD800s (and a smoother high frequencies response):