They are indeed the HD700's, and the only pair in North America, according to the gentleman to my right. I want to answer detailed questions about the quality of the headphones, but they were open-back and I was in a video game convention hall, making it difficult to properly evaluate them. They put on some Pink Floyd, but I kind of regret it in retrospect, given that it's a studio album, with all the baggage that comes along with that.
If I had to summarize what I was able to get out of them, it would be an immediate presence. They were super-comfortable, with velour-like cups that reminded me of the Beyerdynamic DT770s. It wasn't too tight, either, though I wasn't wearing my glasses as I normall do. The bass was punchy without being overpowering, though the vocals were too muddied by ambient noise to give them a real evaluation, so I'm not going to comment there. There was zero sibilence, which was nice, and each cymbal crash was nice and defined without making me wince, even at high volume. Pretty nice looking aesthetically, too.
The HD800 was right there next to them, but I didn't bother given the setting. They had a fancy solid-state amplifier with a built-in DAC and storage, but I don't know which one it was off-hand (I was a bit overstimulated at the time). I might know it if I saw it; it was blue, about two inches high, had smaller digital readouts on the front, and two 1/4" stereo jacks on the front.
I didn't hear anything that blew me out of the water. The sound reminded me a lot of the Grado 325is, which is by no means an insult. This is probably more a failing of my ability to critically hear: Once I get beyond a certain threshold I have a tougher time discerning the difference, and that's been about the level of the Denon AH-D5000.
Lastly, one thing that irked me was that Sennheiser is marketing the vented magnet structure as if it were some huge advancement, despite that vented magnets have been around for decades. I mentioned as much to the rep, and he said it was the first time it was being used in headphones. If this really is novel in headphones, I'm surprised it took them this long to catch up to something you might find in a mid-level home speaker or most any car subwoofer!
I hope you've enjoyed this little tease of the HD700's. It was a pleasure to listen to them, and the Sennheiser folks were great.
Happy gaming,
Boz
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