How open are open headphones?

[oqvist]

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By definition, open headphones sit against your ears and mash them into the side of your head, rather than engulfing them in giant pads.

You are mixing up supraaural and circumaural with open/closed.

 

[Conrthomas]

 
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You are mixing up supraaural and circumaural with open/closed.

Oh shoot you are right. Noob mistake. Sorry.
 
In that case,
Are we sure the OP was not asking about that instead?

 

[Rankiz]

 
Quote:

 

Oh shoot you are right. Noob mistake. Sorry.
 
In that case,
Are we sure the OP was not asking about that instead?

I asked about how open the Senns where and I have no idea of what you guys are talking about, tihi. ):

 

[B0b]

You do hear yourself speaking while listening at a reasonable volume with the HD595; however, people tend to speak much louder than usual while wearing them: as a result of the fact you won't hear yourself as well as usual (such as people speaking on a cell phone in a crowded/loud area). Your voice does leak quite a bit through the HD595.

 

[Conrthomas]

Quote:

 

I asked about how open the Senns where and I have no idea of what you guys are talking about, tihi. ):

How open as in how open they sound, how open the ear cups are, or how open is the back of the driver?

 

[krmathis]

That sure depends on the headphone itself.
Some are very open by design, like ex. the K1000. While others isolate a lot more, like ex. the SR-007.
 
I sit here in my second floor apartment, with the window open a couple of meters away from me. I can easily hear people walking by on the pavement. While wearing the K1000.

 

[p a t r i c k]

I have never used the Sennheiser HD 555 or 595 headphones but I do use a pair of Sennheiser HD 540 Ref Golds and these are of an open design. The headphones do make communication difficult. I sometimes listen to music with a friend also wearing open type headphones and even when not listening to music we need to speak a bit more clearly than usual in order to communicate.

 

[Rankiz]

Is the bass in HD 595 good enough for casual listening to music? I say casual, since I listen to everything, except metal/punk and that screaming stuff.

 

[hodgjy]

I much prefer open and semi-open headphones to closed.  For me, closed headphones tend to induce tinnitus, but open phones don't as much.

 

[TheWuss]

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Is the bass in HD 595 good enough for casual listening to music?

of course.
why wouldn't it be? 

 

[Rankiz]

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of course.
why wouldn't it be? 

Because many say they are very bass light and dark sounding.

 

[TheWuss]

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Because many say they are very bass light and dark sounding.

i wouldn't say they are very bass light.
they have more bass than the ad700 or k701.
 
dark sounding.  i wouldn't go that far either.
they have a rolled off treble.  but i wouldn't call them dark.
i'd, instead, call them warm.
 
however, they are a little "polite" sounding.
for casual listening, i think they'd do quite well...
 

 

[Bilavideo]

Open headphones sound a lot less canny at a lower price point.  They do leak sound in and out, but whether that's an issue depends on how loud or quiet your surroundings are.  If you're in a noisy environment, it'll ruin your enjoyment of the music.  Most environments - including parks, lakeside walking paths, doctors' offices, etc., aren't really a problem.  On a rumbly vehicle, like a bus, your bass will get canceled out.  In extremely quiet environments, the sound you leak could be a problem.  You could easily listen to open headphones in a library as long as you didn't have the sound up too high.  The hardest sell is bed.  My wife hates it when I wear my open cans to bed (so I don't).  But I can listen to my music in the living room while she's watching TV and neither of us are the worse for the wear.  It really depends on how invasive either sound is, but the fact that the driver is so close to your ear tends to make your music sound a lot bigger to you than to anybody around you.
 
The idea that open cans are useless or invasive in all but the most secluded environments is an exaggeration parroted by people who don't wear them.