drandall
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2009
- Posts
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so, thanks to many people here at head-fi, i pulled the trigger on a new pair of sennheiser HD600's. below are a few basic thoughts for those who may be considering it...
1) i was glad to see the strength of the hinged box the phones came in. fully padded and very nice. great for storage after the fact
2) at first, i thought they hadn't included a 6.5mm to 3.5mm plug adapter. i felt like an idiot when i found it was already attached. d'oh!
3) the cord is really long. i have no idea HOW long, but it feels like miles. better to have too much than too little i guess
4) the L and R notations are so small and subtle that they're virtually invisible. annoying. forget reading them in low light (unless you're young).
4) with 320kbps AAC's through a nuforce Udac, the initial sound was better than any of my other headphones, but the highs were sharp and brittle, to the point of being harsh and the mids were forced and tense. bass was tight and shallow. i wondered prior to plugging them in whether i was going to detect what so many others had heard at first. i did. it's pretty apparent.
i loaded up a WAV playlist of 10-30000khz ramps plus some pink noise, courtesy of Burn-in wave files: white noise, pink noise, frequency sweep, channel mix and let it loop for a couple of hours. when i came back, i could tell that profound changes were happening. the sharpish highs were beginning to mellow and the bass was beginning to plump up and get rounder and fuller
as the night progressed, the sound got even better. the Udac is able to drive the 600's pretty well, but to fully immerse yourself in sound, you need to keep twisting the volume around to about the 2pm position which around 75% of its total output.
i plan to buy an amp to pair with the Udac. my initial feeling is that to maximize the quality of the DAC and bring out the best in these phones, i'm gonna need something with a bit more push.
that being said, i'm absolutely delighted with them. they're my first open headphones and i understand now why they rock...the airy, open sound is so listenable, so relaxed that it really makes for a great experience. i can't wait to see how these phones mature with more burn-in time and some additional power. my music collection never sounded better.
BTW, i sampled a variety of material. diana krall, dire straits, steely dan, alison krauss, armin van buuren, kaskade, anita baker, miles davis, EBTG, fleetwood mac. it all sounded great. haven't tried any harder rock yet...but i will this weekend.
1) i was glad to see the strength of the hinged box the phones came in. fully padded and very nice. great for storage after the fact
2) at first, i thought they hadn't included a 6.5mm to 3.5mm plug adapter. i felt like an idiot when i found it was already attached. d'oh!
3) the cord is really long. i have no idea HOW long, but it feels like miles. better to have too much than too little i guess
4) the L and R notations are so small and subtle that they're virtually invisible. annoying. forget reading them in low light (unless you're young).
4) with 320kbps AAC's through a nuforce Udac, the initial sound was better than any of my other headphones, but the highs were sharp and brittle, to the point of being harsh and the mids were forced and tense. bass was tight and shallow. i wondered prior to plugging them in whether i was going to detect what so many others had heard at first. i did. it's pretty apparent.
i loaded up a WAV playlist of 10-30000khz ramps plus some pink noise, courtesy of Burn-in wave files: white noise, pink noise, frequency sweep, channel mix and let it loop for a couple of hours. when i came back, i could tell that profound changes were happening. the sharpish highs were beginning to mellow and the bass was beginning to plump up and get rounder and fuller
as the night progressed, the sound got even better. the Udac is able to drive the 600's pretty well, but to fully immerse yourself in sound, you need to keep twisting the volume around to about the 2pm position which around 75% of its total output.
i plan to buy an amp to pair with the Udac. my initial feeling is that to maximize the quality of the DAC and bring out the best in these phones, i'm gonna need something with a bit more push.
that being said, i'm absolutely delighted with them. they're my first open headphones and i understand now why they rock...the airy, open sound is so listenable, so relaxed that it really makes for a great experience. i can't wait to see how these phones mature with more burn-in time and some additional power. my music collection never sounded better.
BTW, i sampled a variety of material. diana krall, dire straits, steely dan, alison krauss, armin van buuren, kaskade, anita baker, miles davis, EBTG, fleetwood mac. it all sounded great. haven't tried any harder rock yet...but i will this weekend.
