Sennheiser HD600 Review at Stereophile

Wicked!

THanks for the heads up!

dammit..who wants to take my 580s and cash for a nice set of 600s?

lol.
I'll keep my 580s. For the price I paid I can live with 90% of the 600's sound.

Good job of finding that review.

Yeah, it's typical for stereophile.

For them, 1% better sound is like a technological milestone.
I don't know, I think the 580 and 600 are pretty close, but
I still prefer the 600

Bye

Redwoood

That review is from February, 1998

This article by Wes Phillips should be noted by owners of Senn HD580 which are giant killers at their price, but the HD600 is noticeably superior and able to resolve even finer detail. The good
news is that HD600s have never been cheaper, new models are available many places at under $275.

I will say that HD580 with Clou Blue Jaspis cable is equal/better than stock HD600, but put the Blue Jaspis on HD600 and you are at a new higher level of performance, slightly more detailed and deeper bass, mandatory upgrade in my book.

If you like Wes Phillips he has his own review site at www.onhifi.com His review of Bel Canto DAC caused me to try one
out, best upgrade I have ever made to my system.

Not sure I agree with Sam Tellig and his comparison of Grado RS
to Senn HD600.

Eh, I'm still in no big hurry to replace my 580s w/ the 600s. I'd rather try out some I haven't heard at all, like the CD3000 or RS-1.

That's the first time I've seen that. Wow. I'm very pleased. I respect Stereophile for their unwaveringly snobbish attitude and their strict aherence to testing ludicriously unaffordably priced products - and really damn glad that for once in my life I can say I broke into "Class A". Now, I can retire (Except I still need my Cosmic!)

Hehehe, yeah no sh*t!!! Aint life grand!

Brian.

Why Stereophile's reviews are for ENTERTAINMENT only!

I quote from the review " heard a pair at Sennheiser's factory in Wedemark and was stunned by their lowered noise floor, impressive gains in perceived bass response, and a sense of air and sparkle that the regular HD-580s had never quite achieved".

NOISE FLOOR!!?? F###in' NOISE FLOOR!!!?? If you can read the above and believe that Wes Phillips has ANY understanding of how the hell headphones (let alone other equipment) work, then you deserve the consequences! For the neophyte let me explain why I am so FURIOUS about the above (and was when I read it in '98). Dynamic headphones are purely passive devices. They can produce NO SOUND OF THEIR OWN, whether "noise", or music. ALL a dynamic (moving coil, as opposed to electrostatic 'phones which are "active" devices") headphone or speaker can do is reproduce (with varying degrees of accuracy) signals which are fed to them. If you hear noise through a dynamic headphone, it is present in either your source or amplifier! PERIOD! All headphones have a noise floor of ZERO! The cheapest 9.95 "buds" at Wal Mart have a noise floor "lower than 24 bit!". LOL. Headphones HAVE NO NOISE! It isn't possible!

No wonder J. Gordon Holt, the founder of Stereophile, left the place in disgust last year, and now writes for the Absolute Sound, along with Anthony Cordesman, and several other of the really GOOD, KNOWLEDGABLE writers who used to work at "Stereofool". With apologies for anyone on the other side of the "pond" I'm about to offend, unfortunately the purely subjectivist BULLSH*T that so infects British hi fi publications has crossed the Atlantic (along with many of the WORST writers of the breed), and taken residence in America's audiophile publications, such as "Stereofool"! What a sad comment on the American audiophile community that Audio magazine is dead (and buried), but "Stereofool" thrives! ARRRGH!

Do we REALLY want to get audio ADVICE from people who have no idea how the equipment they're evaluating works????? If Wes Phillips is qualified to offer advice on audio equipment, I submit that Stevie Wonder is qualified to offer advice on camera equipment, and George W. Bush should follow his "true calling" and become an English professor!

Mike: That reminds me of something that happened to a former loudspeaker manufacturer (in fact a one man company) I know from Munich. He once sent a pair of his small bookshelf speakers to a well known German audio magazine. Later on he drove there to see what was going on and take his speakers back. The editors complained about his speakers having too little highs. So he had a look - and found out that they had oviously driven his speakers to the max in their overdampened, huge measuring room and blown both tweeters. And on the side he caught some others editors making up a cable test: Apparently they had no time left or something better to do, because they judged the cables fom the looks and price only. So much for that...

Greetings from SF!

Manfred / Lini