The former reference is still better than what 95% of the planet is listening to and that's the truth, Ruth.
The Sennheiser HD600 headphones came onto
the market about 10 years ago and set off a revolution, or at least fed one.
In a world of competing sounds, CDs,
digitization of just about everything, except our analogue ears; in a world
where speaker manufacturers continued to produce smaller and tinnier or larger
and expensiver units; in a world where personal listening had been growing ever
since the Sony Walkman arrived – in this world, people were primed, were
sitting ducks, were ready for private listening to music that sounded better
than it could on some $25000 speaker systems.
The Sennheiser HD600s came into the world
to throw reviewers into paroxysms of joyful approval. The price, about $550 in Canada,
seemed high at first. Until you clamped a pair on your head for a little
demonstration.
Even as the price decreased with time and
dealer specials, you could count on the sound. Its quality stayed constant.
Before the 600s, no one except those who
could afford hugely expensive headsets had any idea of what good sound could
come through ear cans.
My first experience listening to music with
the HD600s stunned me. Music could sound this good?
Let me summarize without naming a lot of
recordings that you may or may not recognize. Clear, detailed, musical,
translucent, transparent, vibrant, in phase. And that was just through my
Nakamichi RE-1 receiver’s headphone jack.
When I tried it with several different
headphone amps the experience was even more intense. I also had a local hifi
manufacturer construct an impedance matching box so that I could use the
‘phones with my Audiomat. Once again, stunning was an understatement.
There is one major difference between using
the HD600s and a pair of good speakers. With the 600s, you hear bass notes down
to a very low frequency – say, 20 Hz. Sennheiser says that these ‘phones
reproduce frequencies from 12 to 39,000 Hz, both beyond my audibility range. But,
you do not feel the sounds as you do when listening to music through speakers.
With a good pair of speakers, you feel the sound at all frequencies, but most
especially below 90 or so Hz. With the headphones, the experience is, pardon
the expression, uncanny.
You hear with greater musical clarity than
ever before the Liszt organ music that shook the window panes, the hip hop that
vibrated your tie rack two floors away. But this sound does not hit you in the gut. You cannot watch
the speaker cone moving. There are no peculiar buzzing noises emanating from
the cutlery drawer. Your coffee remains waveless.
But you hear as you never have before. To
hear organ music or bass drums or bass viols as the music actually is, not as
your room interprets it, is an amazing experience. That in and of itself is
sufficient reason to buy these headphones.
I have not yet used the new HD650 headset
from Sennheiser, but, if it actually improves on the 600s, it can only add to
excellent. Sennheiser lists the new set at $599.95 USD and the HD600 for
$449.95. Both are a good buy, because you know that, the moment you plug them
into a headphone jack, you are going to experience a revelation.
The Verdict