eric343
Member of the Trade: Audiogeek: The "E" in META42
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2001
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I wrote the following before I had to send the Baby Orpheus headphones back to Jatinder. As such, it's highly unbalanced -- far more is dedicated to the flaws of this headphone as should be in a proper review. In addition to taking it with a grain of salt, it can only be viewed as impressions of the HE60 in reference to the HE90 -- no other headphones were used. However, if you read it in conjunction with the "First Impressions" I posted awhile back on the HE60, you should get a half-decent impression of my opinion of this awesome little headphone...
There is something in the Sennheiser bloodline that infuses their electrostatic headphones with a kind of magic unheard anywhere else in the headphone world. They simply and effortlessly get out of the way of the treble, allowing it a kind of space and headroom that I’ve seen nowhere else. The result is the sensation of listening to the music live – in an actual venue, with room acoustics properly rendered and without the hint of a suggestion that there is a recording and playback chain in the mix. Granted, they render any imperfection in said chain with as much fidelity as can be imagined, but somehow the brain excuses those imperfections as if they lie in the instruments or vocalists themselves.
If each component in an audio system is a window on to the world of music, the flaw of the Baby Orpheus is that it is made out of plastic. High quality plastic indeed, but a plastic that manifests itself whenever bass comes into play. Whereas the Baby’s elder brother allows not a single note to get in the way of another, the Baby has a tendency to bloom. A bass-note with any kind of midbass content is always brought front and center in the soundstage, and once it is there the note proceeds to open up its peacock’s tail and obscure our view – like the play of a bright spot of light on a slightly cloudy acrylic window-pane, the blooming mid-bass of the Baby Orpheus reduces the contrast of the surrounding notes.
There is something in the Sennheiser bloodline that infuses their electrostatic headphones with a kind of magic unheard anywhere else in the headphone world. They simply and effortlessly get out of the way of the treble, allowing it a kind of space and headroom that I’ve seen nowhere else. The result is the sensation of listening to the music live – in an actual venue, with room acoustics properly rendered and without the hint of a suggestion that there is a recording and playback chain in the mix. Granted, they render any imperfection in said chain with as much fidelity as can be imagined, but somehow the brain excuses those imperfections as if they lie in the instruments or vocalists themselves.
If each component in an audio system is a window on to the world of music, the flaw of the Baby Orpheus is that it is made out of plastic. High quality plastic indeed, but a plastic that manifests itself whenever bass comes into play. Whereas the Baby’s elder brother allows not a single note to get in the way of another, the Baby has a tendency to bloom. A bass-note with any kind of midbass content is always brought front and center in the soundstage, and once it is there the note proceeds to open up its peacock’s tail and obscure our view – like the play of a bright spot of light on a slightly cloudy acrylic window-pane, the blooming mid-bass of the Baby Orpheus reduces the contrast of the surrounding notes.
