Sennheiser HD535 Headphones with DSP-360 Surround Processor

I have that setup.

The HD535 I thought was a very good headphone for the price. I went to a lot of electronic stores back in the mid-90s to listen to headphones, a process that took a while, even brought my own CDs to play, did the same thing with speakers and eventually settled on JBL L7s, but that's a different story. Anyway, I thought for the price the 535s sounded the best, there were a couple of others that sounded a tad better, but they cost a great deal more, and didn't feel they were worth the price. One thing a person learns when auditioning sound equipment is that everyone has different ears, what sounds good to one person may not to another, in my case, the 535s were sounding great, a neutral sound with no bump in bass or in the treble, they gave a great accurate sound. The headphone wire lasted me about 20 years before they started to crackle, I replaced them and the crackle went away and has stayed away, so the weakness on my particular ones was not a huge issue. Now I need a new band cushion and ear pads to restore them to their former glory.

The DSP 360 Surround Sound box was a joke! It never worked as advertised, and it reduced the sound quality of the headphones. Not even sure what they were doing, it was almost like they took the sound source and threw it out of phase, very strange, nothing remotely like what surround sound is supposed to sound like. Even if you kept the headphone plugged into the box and put it on bypass the sound quality was poorer than going straight through my Harman Kardon preamp headphone jack. Not even sure why I kept that stupid thing after all these years. I got the headphones at Circuit City, and the DSP came as a free promotional bonus, I found out why it was free!! If I had to pay for that thing I would have taken it back. I don't understand why it got decent reviews unless I had a bad one, but I did run into another person some years later who had one and he too thought it was junk.