Review on:

Sennheiser HD448 Around the Ear Headphones

Audio Quality

Comfort

Design

Value

daerron’s Rating

Purchase Date: July 2011

Purchase Price: $120.00

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Community Rating:

(5 reviews)

I mainly bought these headphones for use at work and home use since I was looking for a closed headphone that provided a decent bit of isolation, wasn't too expensive (in my country) and somewhat portable. The HD448 appeared to fit that description quite nicely. 

I ended up suitably impressed by the sound quality of these as they sound very balanced and the sound only improves once they are burned in (+-30 hours). These headphones have fantastic mids and bring out a lot of detail without being overly warm. They work quite well with instrumental and classical music even with the slightly limited sound stage. I also really like them for jazz and guitar based music. The treble is quite airy and nicely detailed and not overly bright and free from listening fatigue. On some tracks a bit of graininess can become apparent in the treble (much like the HD595). The bass unamped, is a bit flabby and lack definition e.g. difficult to pick out bass notes. The bass is definitely present, but the weakest quality of this headphone. There better closed headphones out there for electronic and bass music. These headphones also aren't very forgiving of poor quality source material.

Surprisingly the HD448s ended up being more difficult to drive than I thought they would given their reasonable 32ohm impedance. My Thinkpad workstation had difficulty getting sufficient volume out of the HD448 and only with the Voodoo sound driver could I get good volume on my Samsung Galaxy S. I eventually paired these with a JDS Labs Cmoy headphone amplifier that improved the sound more than what I would have expected. The bass tightened up and the separation improved nicely. It is definitely worthwhile investing in a portable amplifier for these.

I personally quite like the design of the headphone, though the size of earcups could have been a touch more accommodating. I don't have overly big ears, but the top part of my ears do get squeezed a bit and start to feel uncomfortable after an hour of wearing these headphones and have to take them off soon thereafter to give my ears a breather. They do, however, feel very light on the head and hardly noticeable. I am not too fond of the plasticky build, but they do look to be moderately durable. Only time will tell (my HD595 suffered from cracks in the headband, but haven't noticed any on the HD448 so far).

I would recommend these cans to anybody looking for a balanced sounding set of closed cans for not too much money.