[bergman2]

After living with the 595's, enduring the SA5000's, and kicking around with the PX100's, I decided to take advantage of the senn rebate deal....yes, I bought the 650's...some impressions with an eclectic mix of rap, rock, classical and jazz....

out of the box....bloated & muddy, 2 dimensional, hard at the top, narrow, unengaging, and, as others have noted, a vice like quality atop my noggin' (i'm doing the book thing to stretch them out as they break in)

50 hours...bottom end coming into its own, separation begins, extension at the top and bottom, less shrill top end and more of a pleasant sheen, appropriate attack and decay (things begin and end where and when they should), some good air between instruments....

i'll update after 100

 

[progo]

Interesting. I had pretty different kind of impression when I took a first listen to my pair. Amped by Corda Arietta, they sounded very full (ie. the body was enormous, the sound thick and balanced). And they didn't use that much burning: only subtle improvements over time.

Have fun with your pair!

 

[Palantiri7]

Thanks bergman2. I had that very same impression of a new HD 600, probably with less bass than a 650. Although it did improve, I've sent it back and I am now eagerly awaiting a 650. Yum.

 

[nor_spoon]

I can not recall that my HD650 have changed at all with break-in. But then again, I have swapped some gear along the way.
With the RS-1, there was a very noticeable change which happened overnight with high-volume break-in. I think most of HD650's problem is in the bass, which can be overwhelming, bloated and muddy, depending on the rest of the system. The dark tonality will always be there, but with a good setup, the bass tightens which again lessen the veil on the cans.

 

[Jaawa]

Heh, I'll quote myself from my headphone diary, this is what I wrote about the Sennheiser HD 650 one night, after using them for years, unamplified:

"The soundstage is big, of course this is one of the main traits of top-class open cans.
I can feel the large room where the instruments play, and I can also pick them out with delightful ease, so instrument separation is very good.

But the veil is there, the dark that prevents you from hearing the truth behind it.
This I believe, is 100% because right now, I’m running these without an amp, I wanted to review the sound of the HD 650 with using only a good source, which now is the M-Audio Audiophile USB.

I feel tremendous balance within the frequencies, the lows, mids, highs.. they all work together so well, I feel this is because I’ve used these headphones for four years now, and they surely have reached their destined quality in unamplified sound. The flow from a frequency range to another is slick and smooth, these cans really treat your ears like a gentleman, pouring audio whisky into your glass, presumably peaty islay goodness."

 

[bergman2]

i agree....already at this stage of the break in I am impressed by the suppleness of music reproduction and the ease with which sound is presented...these cans are just so easy to listen too, I love it...they don't do anything at 10/10 but its 9/10 across the board so far---a great all around performer...the vise is also easing up...with reference to your veil comment I am assuming that you haven't taken the plunge and upgraded the cable which is usually the culprit in that department....

 

[Jaawa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bergman2 /img/forum/go_quote.gif with reference to your veil comment I am assuming that you haven't taken the plunge and upgraded the cable which is usually the culprit in that department....

I "know" the veil is there because I'm not using an amp right now, once my OPERA gets here, I'll post how I feel about the "dark" or the "veil" that often is synonymous with the HD 650 sound's elusiveness. I really think that a proper combination of a source and an amp will get rid of this.

And yeah, I haven't even thought about "upgrading" the cable. I'm not much of a believer when it comes to changing cables on your headphones, so the only cable upgrade I'm ever going to make is changing to shorter, balanced cables, probably Cardas.

 

[donunus]

the sennheiser veil in my opinion is their diffuse field eq. It makes things sound natural to me but veiled when directly AB'd with other cans like grados with bowls. It is not good to AB headphones though because instead of being focused on the natural presentation of a certain headphone, the brain focuses on what is lacking from the headphone playing before it. This is not good because the headphone that was playing before it could have unnaturally bright highs and because of that, listening to anything natural will sound veiled. Try it for yourself guys. Even a top tier hd650 will sound like mush coming from a cheap bright headphone. Ive noticed that if you let more than a minute pass between headphones, the results are less deceiving and the less bright headphones can still shine if it does things well enough to make your ears adjust fast to their sound sig.

 

[Jaawa]

I must say donunus, I don't really agree with your opinions. If one uses the same proper source + amp combination for both headphones A and B, the differences experienced in comparison will stand out clearly, especially if one uses the same music for the benchmarking.

Although I might be misunderstanding the concept of "the veil", but I think it means the overall cold and dark in the sound of the headphone, making it sound less clear and less warm.

Therefore I think that with the HD 650, the veil is there only if they're not run with the proper source + amp.

 

[Shahrose]

Quote:

Originally Posted by donunus /img/forum/go_quote.gif the sennheiser veil in my opinion is their diffuse field eq. It makes things sound natural to me but veiled when directly AB'd with other cans like grados with bowls. It is not good to AB headphones though because instead of being focused on the natural presentation of a certain headphone, the brain focuses on what is lacking from the headphone playing before it. This is not good because the headphone that was playing before it could have unnaturally bright highs and because of that, listening to anything natural will sound veiled. Try it for yourself guys. Even a top tier hd650 will sound like mush coming from a cheap bright headphone. Ive noticed that if you let more than a minute pass between headphones, the results are less deceiving and the less bright headphones can still shine if it does things well enough to make your ears adjust fast to their sound sig.

i agree...matches my experience. although, i've found that there are times when it's beneficial to do a head-to-head comparison.

 

[donunus]

Jaawa,
Thats what i said, I do agree with you 100% that you can tell the differences in sound doing an A/B test. It is not good however to do this to check for naturalness of sound IMO

 

[parhelictriangle]

I probably have about 100 hours on mine now. I never noticed a veil from the get go (unless I ran straight from an iPod, in which case, gawd yes there's a bit of a veil) although the bass was perhaps a bit boomier initially. Not boomy now. Being burn-in agnostic, all I can say is they sounded amazing on the first day and I like them even more now.

One thing I can say is that there's a lot less clamping force, although still plenty. Going back, the 595s feels pretty unsecured (and, in fact, are: lean back a bit and the 595s nearly slide off. That was annoying).

I did some AB-ing with the 595s a while back, powered and sourced by the Apogee Duet, lossless files. I had some truly surprising results. There wasn't a single genre that I preferred on the 595s. The supposedly forward sound of the 595s didn't really materialize; instead, instruments seemed unnaturally large but congested within the soundstage. The 650s in comparison located instruments in an incredibly realistic way.

This was pretty apparent on Brubeck's Time Out (figured I'd AB with at least one old standby). I was expecting the 650s to have slightly overpowering bass coming from my old cans, but the opposite was true. On Take Five, the 595s rendered kick drums and other percussion in a very uncontrolled, boomy fashion: some of those kicks sounded more like little, nearly painful, explosions. I have a lot of experience listening to live unamplified percussion (I'm a [crappy] amateur musician) and I couldn't find fault with the 650s rendering of percussion. The attack, decay and resonance were as perfect as I've ever heard.

There were even bigger differences with the other instruments. Pianos I always felt were a negative on the 595s, but the 650s were so tonally accurate I grinned for about 5 minutes straight. In comparison, the piano on the 595s sounded plasticky and unnatural. The 595s do brass rather well, but the 650s do it better with none of the grain, and unlike the 595s the breath noises are there but not distracting.

The upright bass, of course, is so much better on the 650s with wonderfully detailed texture. And for the first time, I was hearing fret noise come from the instrument itself and not just some disembodied detail.

I threw electronic (some psy trance but mostly expiremental/IDM in the vein of autechre), some hip hop (de la soul, dalek), lots of metal (for lack of a better term; both fast and detailed and slow and doomy), Secret Chiefs 3, Dead Can Dance, Mr. Bungle, etc etc at the 650s in those first few days, and I was pleased--completely--with their performance everywhere.

I think the Duet synergizes wonderfully with the 650s for my taste (I don't like muddy bass but I hate overly strident highs), the Duet being a solid state, pro-audio oriented device (nice and neutral and detailed and not unnaturally warm). I guess I'm not going to be a tube man, after all. But the way this is presented right now sounds right to me where nothing else ever has.

I'm a proud 650 owner, that's for sure. Doubtless they're not for everyone and my setup probably makes these sound more like 600s than anything, but I'm satisfied with headphone sound reproduction for the first time ever, and that's a good feeling. Found my sound sig!

 

[donunus]

shahrose,
yes i do ab tests still to do tonality and detail comparisons. The problem with abx is like you become deaf of what sounds natural because your brain is just being shifted to adapt. Some headphones might win in an abx battle but lose when it comes to what I'd pick to listen to in the long term. Only the long term tells us which colorations we can bare and which ones we cant stand at all IMO

 

[parhelictriangle]

Final thought: on bright recordings (say, Can's Tago Mago) the 650s sound plenty bright and are certainly not bass heavy. I've heard someone say the bass on the 650s is so overwhelming that it'll essentially envelope every bit of the sound spectrum, but I sure haven't found that to be the case, unless we're talking about really muddy recordings.

But on something like Boris' Amplifier Worship or something by Sunn O))) (you know, a lot of low end that you're supposed to feel) the 650s are astounding in the extension, control, and physicality of the bass.

So I'm not really getting the oft-mentioned "650s will make everything sound sweet and smooth like 650s" business. Sound to me like they're doing what the music calls for.

 

[donunus]

I need to hear hd650s. I love my hd600s so much and think I owe myself the pleasure of listening to the flagship.

And about the AB test thing....

I might add that this would be a good trick for selling headphones. If one wants to sell a bright sounding headphone where frequencies really pop out, ab test them against a neutral one with the bright sounding can first then the neutral one then back to the bright one. The customer will say wow, what detail

Even experienced speaker audiophiles will be fooled by this because they are new to this very fast switching between signatures. Normally in a high end speaker listening comparison, the system is setup before listening which usually gives a few minutes break between listening to both speakers making the listener hear the speakers for "what they are" instead of "what they lack".

1 hour or so later of listening to the worse quality cans (which were picked due to the tricks ive been talking about) people get tired of them because they soon find out that they sound simplistic. The more complex yet less bright cans get more listening time in the long run due to its complexities and lack of overly pronounced colorations.