Honestly in some ways I found the shift between the HD 600/650 era to the HD 660S/S2 and the HD 560S era a bigger change than what happened to Beyer oddly enough despite Beyer having bigger changes to their FR response than Senn. But I’ve always been someone that often focused more on subtle changes than big FR changes some reason.
There was a shift from the HD540/560/250 / early 580 sound to the newer 6 series which had more emphasis on vocal forwardness and mid bass hump, then nowadays they have infused with more sub-bass presence.
The tighter tolerances do result in much better fit and finish, and possibly less odd resonances and/or mechanical vibrations.
The 770/880/990 (vintage and newer ones) seemed to have some issues with drivers being not always "vibration free" and you would get buzzing with some units.
I never had an issue with a buzzing Sennheiser (besides the hair being stuck on diaphragm)
Early Sennheisers like 540/560 could be insanely bright or you get one of the lucky ones; hence, why you still see ppl rave on about the 540/560/
and there were a few hd250 which seem to defy the laws of physics as they were bu tt ugly , yet could sound absolutely stellar.
That is true, consistency has definitely improved. I found new Beyers more consistent than new Senns honestly, owned a lot of both and compared multiple of the same model. Though this is personal experience only.
Yeah I’ve come across a few of those unicorn headphones. Problem with getting old headphones is they may have issues of some sort sadly. Usually cabling issues but sometimes driver issues, etc.
The S2 is a solid headphone grown to like it more and more, the tautness it had new is easing up nicely. I may end up tweaking my HD 650 but don’t want to do anything that I can’t reverse easily. I don’t do irreversible mods anymore. The S1 some strange reason loves being powered straight from a phone dongle, it’s a strange headphone to amp as half the time it feels like it’s hindered dynamically and limp sounding but oddly it’s capable of pretty good dynamics on other systems.
Not sure how but I managed to make my DT 480 a genre master with a huge soundstage; it has plenty of bass though pads and drivers need to warm up from wearing them to get the bass going, always astonished at the bass quality of the headphone. But vocals and mids are still its star of the show, still makes things intelligible that other headphones won’t, I still often have moments where (“Oh that’s what they were saying”) with them. Honestly I’ll be upset if something ever happened to the headphone, spent years tweaking the thing off and on.
I've noticed a lot of smaller issues being negated by implementation of a tube buffer (ifi itube w/ WE2c51/396A) with my Sennheisers hooked up to the woo wa6. Smaller issues being using the same chain for many different impedence headphones (from 5 ohm to 2000ohm)
I've been on a Cranberries/ Dolores O'Riordan binge lately since the addition of the buffer tube as her voice has just laid hooks on my psyche.
Whereas I'm lost in the music with the Sennheisers, the Beyerdynamic dt48/480 allow as you say a deeper dive into the vocal/breath information
Which in turn has allowed me to really appreciate the complex nature of the vocal delivery
My favorite Beyerdynamics were the 2003 DT880, to my ears the trailing end of "Golden Era".
Its quite amazing how many different versions were out there when you factor in the vintage 600ohm versions... then you have the 32 ohm, 250, and newer 600 ohm versions
Dt48 being 5,8,25, 200 ohm, dt48 also 5,8,25,200 and the dt100 being 16, 400, and 2000ohm
The Linear Sennheiser being 300 or 600 , HD 414 i believe had a 2000 ohm version as well
but going down the vintage lane has so many risks.... and often a PITA cleaning some of them ... the horror.
opening some vintage headphones that come in the mail
