Raynald
Addicted Member
I had posted about these a while back. I used to sell them when they were current way back in the mid/late 80's. It has been a very long time but I seem to recall that they left me cold, that being pretty much their sonic signature.
Fast forward several decades and I picked up a pair from a former customer. They are in excellent cosmetic condition but the soft facing is completely gone from the pads and the inner foam was dissolving into gunk. With some help from members here I got them apart, cleaned them up and ordered a set of replacemnt inner foams from ebay as I could not find any originals. I received the foams a while back and installed them. The sound before was definitely on the bright side, as I remember. The foam seems to have tamed them a little bit.
I recently acquired a SMSL to run my desktop system. The headphone out is just about powerful enough to drive this 300 ohm version of the 540. It is highly program dependent. When listening to my FLAC collection via Music Bee through USB some files are plenty loud, others are not. Same with the radio, some stations are great, others not though using the High Level out when has twice the output takes care of that (or will when I fix the one wonky one).
So I don't know if I am getting used to the 540s or if they are running in after not being used for many years but I am liking these more and more. The sound is definitely on the light and bright side as I remember but the resolution and transparency on some tracks is amazing. They certainly do no favours to a bad source or recording but on good recordings they sound superb. I think part of the reason these sound good is that they still have the original pads. Apprently the condtruction was fairly unique and replacing them with pads form other Sennheiser models essentially ruins the sound. That may acount for some wildly differing opinions, besides their refusal to make bad input sound good.
Reading the huge thread over at Head-Fi you get the impression some people are completely out of control when it comes to ranking these but when I listen to a good recording I can understand how some can get a little carried away. These are darn nice headphones. They are also super light and supremely comfortable, apart from the scratchy fronts on the pads, I will have to put some soft material there at some point.
Anyone else have any experience with these or other 540 variants?
Fast forward several decades and I picked up a pair from a former customer. They are in excellent cosmetic condition but the soft facing is completely gone from the pads and the inner foam was dissolving into gunk. With some help from members here I got them apart, cleaned them up and ordered a set of replacemnt inner foams from ebay as I could not find any originals. I received the foams a while back and installed them. The sound before was definitely on the bright side, as I remember. The foam seems to have tamed them a little bit.
I recently acquired a SMSL to run my desktop system. The headphone out is just about powerful enough to drive this 300 ohm version of the 540. It is highly program dependent. When listening to my FLAC collection via Music Bee through USB some files are plenty loud, others are not. Same with the radio, some stations are great, others not though using the High Level out when has twice the output takes care of that (or will when I fix the one wonky one).
So I don't know if I am getting used to the 540s or if they are running in after not being used for many years but I am liking these more and more. The sound is definitely on the light and bright side as I remember but the resolution and transparency on some tracks is amazing. They certainly do no favours to a bad source or recording but on good recordings they sound superb. I think part of the reason these sound good is that they still have the original pads. Apprently the condtruction was fairly unique and replacing them with pads form other Sennheiser models essentially ruins the sound. That may acount for some wildly differing opinions, besides their refusal to make bad input sound good.
Reading the huge thread over at Head-Fi you get the impression some people are completely out of control when it comes to ranking these but when I listen to a good recording I can understand how some can get a little carried away. These are darn nice headphones. They are also super light and supremely comfortable, apart from the scratchy fronts on the pads, I will have to put some soft material there at some point.
Anyone else have any experience with these or other 540 variants?
