Sennheiser HD-518

Design - The louvered design is something people will either like or hate. I personally like it since it gives it a very engineered look, just like a German car. The color combination is stylish and gives it a high end feel, very nice use of graphite and black with some silver highlights. I personally prefer these colors versus the 598.

 

Comfort - The velour pads have an edge in the inside but are still very comfortable, but the 558 pads are still a little bit better, they're rounded on the inside edges and are not as 'springy'. I can still listen to these cans for hours on end though. I also wanted to add that one of the reasons (I assume, aside from making it more affordable) Sennheiser chose to use plastic versus metal, is because it has less weight and therefore has less stress to the head and neck resulting in hours of listening pleasure.

 

Audio Quality - The mids and highs are clear, the sound stage is excellent! You can actually hear the little nuances in the different instruments being played (Have a listen to the Cure's - A Forest, the acoustic version or something similar) and where they are positioned. In terms of bass these cans actually have good bass, albeit more on the laid back side (also one of the reasons these headphones are not tiring to the ears when listening for hours) when played without an amp. Speaking of amps, when used with one it starts to really shine. I used my fiio E11 and the overall sound becomes warmer and tighter, the bass becomes fuller and deeper. Remember this still has the Sennheiser signature 'veiled' sound but with more presence.

 

Value -  For it's current price of $120 I think it's a winner, though if you could get these for somewhere around the $100 mark you're golden! It sounds fantastic and with the sound quality you won't feel like you over paid (unless you're a bass head that just wants deafening lows). Another plus with these cans is it can be powered by a portable amp with no issues like the Fiio E11. Once paired, you can't go wrong! Remember though, even without one as long as you setup your EQ properly it still sounds excellent (not for bass heads though)!

 

 

EDIT (Jan 6, 2013 update): After 100+ Hours of burning in these headphones, they have definitely improved in the low frequency area making the the bass sound tighter. This applies to people who use no amps at all with these headphones.

 

For people who use amps, please note that there can be a difference how the low end is delivered. My example would come from my experience with the Fiio E11 versus the ZO2. I personally prefer the ZO2 with these headphones since the bass is definitely tighter and it helps the headphones literally cover all music genres I listen to (alternative, rock, classic rock, rap, hip-hop, r&b, punk, dub step, electronica, classical, some pop artists). For the comparison between amplifiers it's broken down into the two below:

 

 

Fiio E11:

Overall sound

Darker and warm overall while giving the HD-518 oomph in the lower frequencies

 

Bass:

When listening to these types of music: Jazz, Pop, and Classical it is perfect and no muddling happens. The bass presented is tight and responds well. It has a tendency to be muddled when listening to R&B (Mary J. Blige), Rap (Dr. Dre and Snoop) and Linkin Park.

 

Mids:

Still presented very well and retains the HD-518 personality here, which is mid forward.

 

Highs:

Still presented very well but slightly recessed and retains the HD-518 personality.

 

Soundstage:

Overall the sound stage is retained with very little loss in placement.

 

Pros:

It helps retain the overall Sennheiser signature while givng it some low end oomph. Awesome for Classical, Pop, Rock, Classic Rock, Metal, Vocals and some Alternative music.

 

Cons:

It muddles the bass when listening to R&B, Rap and some Linkin Park and the likes.

 

ZO2:

 

Overall sound

Warmer and fun overall making the HD518 shine in all types of music

 

Bass:

No muddling of Bass happens here, the issue I had with the E11 when listening to Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre , Snoop and even Linkin Park disappeared with this amp!

 

Bass response was quicker so the Linkin Park songs sounded nicer when the lower frequencies were presented. Bass oomph I wanted when listening to R&B and Rap were tighter and faster with no muddling, making Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre and Snoop music when low frequencies were presented sound outstanding!

 

Mids:

Still presented very well and retains the mid forward Sennhesier signature.

 

Highs:

Still presented well and slightly recessed.

 

Soundstage:

Overall the sound stage is still there but not as open compared to the Fiio E11.

 

Pros:

It makes the HD-518 a perfect all rounder. With this combination I can definitely listen to any type of music genre and be happy with how the High, Mid and Low sound. Bass is tighter and no muddling happens! Makes the HD-518 fun cans to listen to!

 

Cons:

It slightly changes the sound of the HD-518 reducing the veil sound signature of the Sennheiser. Not powerful enough (volume is limited when using LOD) to drive HD-518 and higher impedance cans when using LOD. You need to use the headphone output to drive to make the headphone and the amp shine.

 

NOTE: These cans (as with most 500/600 series HP) tend to highlight poorly recorded or low bit rate recordings. You will hear the imperfections in the track if you don't use flac.

 

Overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars

I had to choose between this and hd 558 ,and after consideration i knew the 558 will take my expenses far ,with the requirement of amp and a new source dap to sound atleast good .Also it was very analytical,neutral ...not for me.

 

I don't know how it fares with different sources but i use it with a mobile[no amp] and it sounds good,but not so with my desktop[onboard].My motherboard is from 2009, so may be new motherboards can provide good output.

Voices ,both male and female sounds very good,  and it has bass but not the deep rich bass sound the packaging would led you to believe. .I had a denon  d310 before it and i thought it had good bass but after spending time with hd 518, the denons sound boomy[anyways they are not comparable].
 

I don't know whether to place soundstaging in pros or cons department because its a step above good, but not great,certainly not the best thing about these.You can still feel and hear it though and proper equalization helps too .

Now the treble ,its present but sounds like its being strangled by Agent 47.Its like tweeter is covered with cloth.

instrument separation is average..

Good part is u won't feel like you 're missing something and u can enjoy music [don't use <256 Kbps(min ) and with 320 u're all set..I don't think FLAC makes a difference with my mobile ] and that's  what matters and if you have dedicated source u will be happier than me.I hear few notes i didn't in cheaper HPs.

Genre wise from what i listen hip-hop/rnb/club songs sounds best >pop(very close to best)/Indian Pop>rock

u can't go wrong with these.

 

thanks everyone who read this.

Hello,

 

I would like to share my impressions of my first a bit more decent headphones - Sennheiser HD-518. I'm no audiophile, so this review will be more for a "normal" people, who want to use it not just for music, but for games and movies too.

 

Build quality and design

 

  Headphones is all plastic, so no suprises where. It have strange grills that could look a bit silly, but hey, you will not go out with them outside. You could and I did it few times, but cable is just too long, you end up in wire mess + headphones are open, so no isolation from outside noise, you just don't enjoy your music with these outside.

  Pads are made just for me. They just perfect, they are a bit stiff, but this is what i like, you can wear them for hours and just forgot you have headphones on your head. I usually listening for music while I'm laying in bed, no problem with these being on your head ( I fall a sleep few times with headphones still on my head, glad didn't brake them ). They fall few times from a table, still in one peace. They are ready for some brutal force.

  Cable. Cable is long, 3m to be exact. I can walk around in my room with no problems at all, and I live in not that small of a room. I can see having a problem using a laptop, but these are perfect for a stationary pc use.

 

Audio Quality

 

  I must say, then I first heard hd 518, I thougt I just wasted my money. They sounded dirty and kinda bad. I was dissapointed. But I read about burn in thing, so I said I give them a chance. And my God they sound wonderful now. I had quite a journey these headphones, so read on if you wanna know that a life changing journey I had. I will talk about music, games and movies.

  Music. As they advertise, sennheisers have deep bass. And yes, yes they have. The bass is thigt and pretty bad ass. If you looking just for a bass, look elsewhere, at closed headphones, because the bass is there it should and is not overwhelming. After going to sens from closed headphones it was strange at first, but i'm loving it now, it is big then should be, like in electromusic, but then listening to AC/DC for example, it doesn't overwhelm other instruments. Lets say bass knows its place . The soundstage is big and wide, if you wanna know that people talking about, then they talking about soundstage, listen for these headphones . But it took headphones(or me to get use to the soundstage) to open up, because just recently I started to enjoy my music in all different way. It was quite an exiting journey too, to rediscover all the music for the third time. As good as these headphones sound in a music department, then we talking about instruments, but they have one big flaw for me, and it is vocals. To discribe how vocals sound in hd 518, it will be if the band is all in one room with you and singer is behind the wall singing. It sounds a bit distant, a bit too quite, sometimes hard to understand. I guess you can fix it with a EQ, but I had no luck. Everything else changed in these headphones drammaticly from a day I bough it, but vocals stayed the same way, distant, and a bit hard to listen to. I read few other reviews saying the same, so it is not just me.

  Games. Games sound wondifirus. You can hear everything around you. In skyrim I never got attacked from a back, because you can just tell then your enemy coming from behind. With these your oponents don't have a chance to attack you from behind. Explosions in company of hereos sounds powerful(deep) and i will never getting tired to listen to machine guns shooting at enemies. So for games, I say YES to HD 518. But keep in my mind it is not a gaming headset, if you looking just for it, look at gaming companies like razor or such. Games sound good and open design helps a lot, but I imagine on dedicated headphones it will sound even better.

  Movies. Strangly enough, I don't have any problems with actors sounding bad, as singers sound in music. You can hear everything. I mean I watched scott pilgrim vs the world for the 5th time with these. I can say it was like I watching it for the first time. So many things I missed just because I watched it with cheap headphones. You can hear everything clearly, every little sound Edgar Wright placed in their. And now, with new XBMC Frodo realese and new audio-engine, that reproduce 5.1 surround in a way it should sound and opened soundstage of sens, I can hear everything so clearly it makes me cry .  While watching transformes I could pin point from that side every explosion coming from and it really makes you appreciate sound in movies. For movies these headphones gets a HELL YES from me.

 

Conclusions

 

It was a great jorney with sennheisers and now, then they reached the point of a maximum performance(if not, edit is coming), they are just amazingly amazing. Yes, these are my first mid-fi headphones, not even high-fi, but I'm guessing I will not change my headphones for a long long time. So if you are like me, want a great quality and don't wanna cancel your christmas, get these and don't look back. For a closer, I will say a quote that made me buy these: " If you wanna buy high-fi headphones just because they are high-fi and you really don't know that are you going to do with them, don't waste your money and just buy sennheiser hd 518". Quote might not me that accurate 

First of all, I still didn't have the opportunity of using an HD 598, which is the 500 series flagship. So I can only compare what I know about the 518 with what people talk about the 598.

 

Many reviewers say the HD 598 has a great soundstage with beautifully fluid highs and mids, but lacks punch in bass. A lot of users say these same things about it, so I assume these characteristics are true. The 598 was my first option, but sincerely I think those body colors are ugly, and they still cost too much for my possibilities. So, when I saw the 518, with the same appearance but nice design/colors and promise of almost same sound quality without spending too much, I didn't think twice.

 

It's hard to explain how awesome these headphones are. It's hard to believe how well he behaves with ALL music styles (I'm a music lover, I listen to almost every genre), and boy, he really delivers the bass, opposing what people talk about the 598. I saw in another website that his sound signature was kind of "tuned" for bass, that makes him different from the 558 and 598. Probably lost a bit of soundstage in exchange of it.

 

Hip-hop and electronica? The beats will punch your face. Classical? Aerial soundstage, flawless separation of instruments. Rock/heavy metal? High volumes, no distortion. You can listen to the bass lines even in the most chaotic death metal. Jazz? I'll just say this: if you get the 518, listen to Dave Brubeck's "Take Five". You'll understand. And all this with default EQ settings and no amp. Make some EQ fine-tuning plugged in an headphone amplifier and these headphones will definitely blow your mind.

 

Extremely comfortable, thick wires that can be easily replaced, beautiful grilled design. All this for less than $150. This is really precious, Sennheiser impresses me more at each day. These headphones are the ultimate definition of "bang-for-the-buck".

I was initially confused between HD 558 and HD 518 at the time of buying, but then some articles and forums on Head-fi helped me to decide for HD 518 as these were best bang for the buck and HD 558 did not justify their cost premium over these in terms of quality. Out of the box they did not sound boring. After few hours of burn in the became a little bit more tighter in sound. I tried them with Fiio E10, did not feel the significant change apart from tighter bass, so i think they might not necessarily require Amp/DAC to sound great. Any ways my impressions on the basic metrics of headphones review goes like this:

Design : For some it may look ugly but i liked the industrial looks of these over too much sophisticated design. Cord is detachable so that also adds value to design. Body is made up of plastic, so they are very light when you compare them with their looks. Plastic used for these is good quality plastic. Head band gives a little scare but you have to handle it roughly to snap it. It's not delicate, just not as strong as it should be. The grilled design is unique and looks charming according to me.

Comfort: Head Band cushion and ear pads are very soft and you won't feel sweaty or uncomfortable for listening sessions even more than 3-4 hours. So pretty much comfortable.

Audio Quality: Bass is more in presence considering Audiophile standards but it's deep and perfectly rich. Does not sound too aggressive so these headphones won't be fatiguing to ear drums for longer sessions. Bass heads won't like it but these are entry level audiophile headphones so should not expect colored music from them. Treble sounds slightly recessed but that's how i prefer anyways. Bass and midbass are just excellent. Lows of bass not so prominent. HD 518 is also good for movies. So in terms of Sound quality, it's genuine all rounder. I did not feel them significantly different with Fiio E10. The Mid bass improved slightly and Treble too, but only slightly, not so significant. So i do not know whether Fiio E10 are not good DAC+Amp or HD 518 does not necessarily needs an Amp or DAC to shine or the Amp/DAC in my laptop is of sufficient capability to drive these. Any ways, in short these headphones are just good enough as they are out of the box.


Value: 5/5 without a doubt. I got it just under 100 USD so it was a steal for me. Very nice pair of cans for those who do not want to invest a fortune but still want audiophilic standards. By no means these are the best around, but there are no best headphones. It's your budget and liking and kind of music you mostly prefer that dictates best choice for you. If you are not sure which headphone is good for your type of music go get these ones without doubt. Coz i listen to many genres and these are always up there in terms of quality irrespective of the music i throw at them.

Hope to see these headphones ranked in top 100. Soundmagic E30 is ranked higher than these which is injustice to these wonderful headphones. Not saying E30 are not good but HD 518 are definitely better on all grounds than E30.