[Midgetguy]

 
Thanks for the nice output. Yeah I'm expecting the Purpleheart soon, probably in a week or two. I will definitely compare between them, with the hope that I'll still use my HD600 after (haha).
 
I agree with the vocals part. So damn good, better than all the gears I've ever had. I will keep it for my vocal & rock songs. True, especially mainstream music, everything is bass nowadays.

You'll be switching between the TH-X00s and the HD600s afterwards if I'm anything to go by. I've got the TH-X00 Mahongany and an HD600. They're both very good headphones that I think do equally well as all-rounders. It just depends on if it's a day where I want more bass or one where I'm feeling like listening to stuff with a lotta vocals.
 
And then there are the days I don't put on either of them and listen to speakers

 

 

[Sonic Defender]

  Finally received my HD600. It's absolutely amazing. Good enough even from the Grace M9XX for my noob ears. I can't take it off my head like seriously (although the clamp pressure is kinda stressing).

The Grace M9XX is reputed to be excellent sounding so no surprise that you are enjoying it.

 

[Marc Lian]

Anyone feels the HD 600 are soon falling behind in light of the new offering from the likes of Focal being released recently?

 

[Liu Junyuan]

This is the best I can do in describing the sound of the ZDS w/ my HD600 : 

"To these ears" this amp is the best I've heard; it's detailed, clear, musical, warm not harsh, without sibilance, I think some use the term organic (??????) or this : I feel I'm not missing any details yet the sound isn't clinical.  I can't remember which song I was listening to yesterday but it struck me that when the drummer was hitting the tom, the deep reverberation from the deepest bottom inside of the drum could be clearly heard and I know I've never heard that from any other amp before.  Just one of many little gems this amp is able to replicate.

I've been trying to get an amp that gave me complete satisfaction when listening to my favourite HPs which happen to be the HD6X0 siblings & the T1 Gen. 1.  I've owned a few very good amps over the years e.g. Headlamp GS-X MKII, Auralic Taurus MK2, The Bryston BHA, etc. & there always seemed to be something missing which I could never put my finger (or ear) on.  

I've read some of the posts & comments from different members on this thread following my post above announcing I was getting my ZDS on Tuesday.  I certainly didn't mean to cause such a stir & I agree w/ all of the opinions that followed because they are all based on individual tastes, choices, opinions, etc.   By no means am I well to do money wise BTW.  What I am is obsessed but admitting that I am has helped me decide that this was/ is my final attempt - big money wise - to find what I've been looking for & it appears that Divine Providence heard my pleas because not only is this the amp but I've felt, in the last few months, that after five years of buying, selling (at a loss), re-buying, re-selling, hoping, being disappointed, currency difference (live in Canada), etc. has taken it's toll on me, mentally & fiscally.

I'm retired and although I have a comfortable pension I'm not rich by any means.  Now it's time to pay what I owe & enjoy what I have & I feel I'm one of the fortunate ones.  I'll finish by saying that the HD600 qualities really burst to the forefront with this amp.  These are really, really very good headphones.  

Beautiful post. I agree 100%, and this very frank set of impressions resonates with my experience with the pairing.

 

[Liu Junyuan]

Anyone feels the HD 600 are soon falling behind in light of the new offering from the likes of Focal being released recently?

Nope.

 

[Tayyab Pirzada]

I just ordered the HD600's. Looking forward to hearing them.

 

[Argyris]

   
That will only make the HD600 louder, it's not going to actively cancel the noise coming in getting between you and the music, while broadcasting what you're listening to to everyone around you, increasing your chances of having a knuckle sandwich for lunch.

 
Hey, he could be one of those people who visit dead malls. Nobody around to annoy, and dead quiet, too. Also, creepy. I wouldn't take anything expensive into one of those places. 

 
Assuming this isn't the case (as cool as having an urban explorer in the thread would be), your advice is spot on. Open headphones + crowded public spaces = no go.
 
That said, I actually used my HD 600 portably for a little while before I found some IEMs that I could live with. I live in a quiet neighborhood, so I didn't have to turn the sound up any louder than usual, and the situational awareness of having open headphones was great (something the FiiO EX1 / DUNU Titan 1, my IEM of choice, has going for it as well). Plus, I'm not especially self-conscious about my musical taste and thus didn't mind if people on the sidewalk caught quick snatches of what I was listening to. They're too busy wrestling with their dogs to much care, anyway.

 

[Argyris]

  Anyone feels the HD 600 are soon falling behind in light of the new offering from the likes of Focal being released recently?

 
Not unless you've got a minimum of $1,000, and just shy of $4,000 for the top model. I'd be far more interested if somebody released an open headphone in the HD 600's price range that addressed a few of its shortcomings, not yet another four figure flagship that, for all its virtues and superlatives, represents just a different set of compromises. HiFiMAN had a go at it last year with the HE-400S, and Audio-Technica's R70x looks pretty decent on paper. What sets the HD 600 apart from contemporary "mid-fi" (ugh! I hate that term!) offerings is that it was always intended to be a flagship, whereas new headphones released in its price range today are going to be artificially gimped so as not to compete with higher end models from the company.
 
There's always going to be the hallowed revolutionary headphone. This year it's Focal's new cans. Next year there'll be another contender, another pie in the sky product that will promise to make us forget all about that tatty old HD 600, will convince us that we need to spend four figures minimum these days to get good sound. And it will be yet another product that fails to make anybody forget about anything, except maybe putting the kids through college once its relative handful buyers have spent four figures on it plus additional thousands on back end equipment.

 

[siwolfman]

Beautiful post. I agree 100%, and this very frank set of impressions resonates with my experience with the pairing.

Agreed. Love this post and feel the same.

 

[Liu Junyuan]

Not unless you've got a minimum of $1,000, and just shy of $4,000 for the top model. I'd be far more interested if somebody released an open headphone in the HD 600's price range that addressed a few of its shortcomings, not yet another four figure flagship that, for all its virtues and superlatives, represents just a different set of compromises. HiFiMAN had a go at it last year with the HE-400S, and Audio-Technica's R70x looks pretty decent on paper. What sets the HD 600 apart from contemporary "mid-fi" (ugh! I hate that term!) offerings is that it was always intended to be a flagship, whereas new headphones released in its price range today are going to be artificially gimped so as not to compete with higher end models from the company.

There's always going to be the hallowed revolutionary headphone. This year it's Focal's new cans. Next year there'll be another contender, another pie in the sky product that will promise to make us forget all about that tatty old HD 600, will convince us that we need to spend four figures minimum these days to get good sound. And it will be yet another product that fails to make anybody forget about anything, except maybe putting the kids through college once its relative handful buyers have spent four figures on it plus additional thousands on back end equipment.

The difference is that this time it is a dynamic driver that is disrupting things rather than the same-old -yawn- planars.

There absolutely has been an influx of headphones, way overpriced, with crippling weaknesses that inevitably compromise tonal balance and cohesion, both of which the HD6x0 largely has. These weaknesses are responsible for the ephemeral appeal and constant updates to planar drivers we see numerous times a year.

The hope is that Sennheiser rises from its idle digressions into non-audiophile toys or indulgent excesses into marble vanities and decisvely updates their lineup with something truly remarkable rather than a slight update to the HD800.

Even if that does happen, I do not think the HD6x0 will be displaced. The Elear in particular seems to be worse than the HD6x0, and even if the Utopia does rival the HD800(S), it would be threatened by a new balanced Sennheiser phone that is half the price of that, if not more than half, something which the gigantic company should be able to muster based on the economies of scale and funding for R & D it is capable of leveraging. The issue is that if this did happen, it will be some years ahead, and until then, staple your HD6x0 to your head or win the lottery and buy the Utopia.

I do not have much hope for the Elear at this point.

 

[Midgetguy]

  Anyone feels the HD 600 are soon falling behind in light of the new offering from the likes of Focal being released recently?

Not even remotely.
 

   
Not unless you've got a minimum of $1,000, and just shy of $4,000 for the top model. I'd be far more interested if somebody released an open headphone in the HD 600's price range that addressed a few of its shortcomings, not yet another four figure flagship that, for all its virtues and superlatives, represents just a different set of compromises. HiFiMAN had a go at it last year with the HE-400S, and Audio-Technica's R70x looks pretty decent on paper. What sets the HD 600 apart from contemporary "mid-fi" (ugh! I hate that term!) offerings is that it was always intended to be a flagship, whereas new headphones released in its price range today are going to be artificially gimped so as not to compete with higher end models from the company.
 
There's always going to be the hallowed revolutionary headphone. This year it's Focal's new cans. Next year there'll be another contender, another pie in the sky product that will promise to make us forget all about that tatty old HD 600, will convince us that we need to spend four figures minimum these days to get good sound. And it will be yet another product that fails to make anybody forget about anything, except maybe putting the kids through college once its relative handful buyers have spent four figures on it plus additional thousands on back end equipment.

While Audio Technica and Hifiman have tried to hit that market sweet spot the HD600 is in, I don't feel they've got what it takes to be classics especially due to the way those headphones are designed in the first place in regards to company mindset. Sennheiser likes to design things for the really long haul with barely any tweaks down the road: a cornerstone type mentality. Other manufacturers tend to go down the refresh route where their headphone lineup gets an update every 5 years or so it seems.
 

The difference is that this time it is a dynamic driver that is disrupting things rather than the same-old -yawn- planars.

There absolutely has been an influx of headphones, way overpriced, that have crippling weaknesses that inevitably compromise tonal balance and cohesion, both of which the HD6x0, largely has.

The hope is that Sennheiser rises from its idle digressions into non-audiophile toys or indulgent excesses into marble vanities and updates their lineup with something truly remarkable rather than a slight update to the HD800.

Even if that does happen, I do not think the HD6x0 will be displaced. The Elear in particular seems to be worse than the HD6x0, and even if the Utopia does rival the HD800(S), it would be threatened by a new balanced Sennheiser phone that is half the price of that, if not more than half, something which the gigantic company should be able to leverage based on economies of scale. The issue is thst if this did happen, it will be some years ahead, and until then, staple your HD6x0 to your head or win the lottery and buy the Utopia.

I do not have much hope in the Elear.

I actually liked the Elear's sound more than the Utopia's. So firstly, in my book, the Utopia is REALLY not worth it in the slightest. I found the Elear to actually sound very good and built quite well too, but would I pay the asking price? Nah. Even considering the law of diminishing returns, the curve for that is still too steep with the Elear. As a $600-700 headphone, then I think it would make sense in the scope of diminishing returns compared to the HD600. The HD600 hits that sweet spot for how good a headphone can sound while still being a solid bargain. If you recognize the law of diminishing returns, the Elear would still make sense in my mind at $600-700, but at $1k, it's too much. But that's just how I am with just about all of the flagships. I'm glad they exist, but I won't ever consider them to make any sort of financial sense whatsoever.

 

[Argyris]

The difference is that this time it is a dynamic driver that is disrupting things rather than the same-old -yawn- planars.
 

 
True. I will say this much: it's quite impressive that Focal were able to extract such good bass extension and low bass distortion from an open dynamic design. I was interested for about five seconds when I saw this...until I saw the price.
 
At this point, it's a bit like if somebody offered me a pint of my current favorite vanilla ice cream for $4, and then they came up with some ice cream that, on paper at least, was better (e.g. no artificial ingredients, less sugar (I tend to find them all a bit too sweet), higher quality vanilla flavoring), but offered it for $40. I might try it and conclude that it's indeed better than my preferred brand, but there's no way a pint of ice cream, no matter how good, can be worth a ten-times increase in price over what I was already getting. There just isn't enough of a possible improvement--ice cream technology tapped out sometime in the early 20th century.
 
It's the same thing with headphones. The era of revolutionary, eye-opening improvements for me ended when I first tried an M50 in a dark Guitar Center showroom six years ago. Everything, even the DT880 and HD 600 that I prefer to that M50 by a considerable margin, is an incremental improvement when stood against the jump between the M50 and everything I'd heard before it.
 
Focal might have some good products on their hands, but the pricing is yet more of the same folly we've seen over the past seven or eight years. As for Sennheiser, I believe they're just as guilty as anyone else with the inflated flagship pricing. Perhaps more so, since they were the first, barring esoteric models like the K1000 or any of the Stax headphones. And I'm not talking about the Orpheus, which was always supposed to be a statement product. I'm talking about the HD 800. With the release of that headphone, they made it clear: their best engineering--the caliber of engineering they threw at the original HD 580/600/650--is going to be devoted to multi-thousand dollar flagships, not reasonably priced models. For that, they'll just keep making the HD 600 and HD 650.

 

[Sonic Defender]

Personally, I think there is a finite limit to just how well any transducer can reproduce a signal, and we are already rather close to that limit with even something as humble as the HD600; which I have grown to respect and enjoy far more than I ever expected I might add. The differences we ascribe to better are as far as I can tell can be explained by sound signature preferences to a great extent as opposed to complete technical differences in sound signal reproduction. I do not question that a $4000 offering may well improve in some measureable, but ultimately not reality changing way, some small sonic issues that a budget level HD600 exhibits, but unless one is rather flush with cash, the differences are not really objectively worth it.
 
I have always said, and admitted, a great deal of the appeal of really TOTL gear is the look and feel. I think more people need to admit that our brain is easily influenced by such things. It seems adaptive to our species that our brain is hard-wired to respond to novelty and beauty. When I hold a premium product it actually triggers the pleasure centers (yes there are more than one) more strongly than when I hold a very cheap piece of budget gear. With those increased levels of neurotransmitters flooding my brain when I then listen to music the impact and perceived quality of what I hear will also be influenced to some extent by just the sheer beauty of the product. Novelty also plays a role in this yearning for freshness, I know I suffer from that as well.
 
Ultimately I think those factors explain far more of the sound advantage than many of us like to admit. By the way, I think there is nothing wrong with responding to, and enjoying novelty and beauty, it is natural and a wonderful part of being human and I do not look down on it at all. Some people are very lucky and they can easily afford to stimulate their brain and sensory systems to the extremes, I wish that was my lot in life, but it isn't. However; I take comfort in knowing that something as humble as the HD600 when paired with my La Figaro 339 is perfectly capable of giving a surreal, and beautiful experience almost beyond description. So I will keep the extra $3000 plus for something else (until and if I ever don't need to that is).

 

[siwolfman]

  Personally, I think there is a finite limit to just how well any transducer can reproduce a signal, and we are already rather close to that limit with even something as humble as the HD600; which I have grown to respect and enjoy far more than I ever expected I might add. The differences we ascribe to better are as far as I can tell can be explained by sound signature preferences to a great extent as opposed to complete technical differences in sound signal reproduction. I do not question that a $4000 offering may well improve in some measureable, but ultimately not reality changing way, some small sonic issues that a budget level HD600 exhibits, but unless one is rather flush with cash, the differences are not really objectively worth it.
 
I have always said, and admitted, a great deal of the appeal of really TOTL gear is the look and feel. I think more people need to admit that our brain is easily influenced by such things. It seems adaptive to our species that our brain is hard-wired to respond to novelty and beauty. When I hold a premium product it actually triggers the pleasure centers (yes there are more than one) more strongly than when I hold a very cheap piece of budget gear. With those increased levels of neurotransmitters flooding my brain when I then listen to music the impact and perceived quality of what I hear will also be influenced to some extent by just the sheer beauty of the product. Novelty also plays a role in this yearning for freshness, I know I suffer from that as well.
 
Ultimately I think those factors explain far more of the sound advantage than many of us like to admit. By the way, I think there is nothing wrong with responding to, and enjoying novelty and beauty, it is natural and a wonderful part of being human and I do not look down on it at all. Some people are very lucky and they can easily afford to stimulate their brain and sensory systems to the extremes, I wish that was my lot in life, but it isn't. However; I take comfort in knowing that something as humble as the HD600 when paired with my La Figaro 339 is perfectly capable of giving a surreal, and beautiful experience almost beyond description. So I will keep the extra $3000 plus for something else (until and if I ever don't need to that is).

Well written and honest assessment of the HP industry. I agree that look and feel play a huge role in our perceived judgement of an object. If it was possible to blind test products before buying, I imagine the results would be quite different. But beauty and appeal are important factors and if the overall perception of a product is superior, then it is worth it.

 

[PinkyPowers]

True. I will say this much: it's quite impressive that Focal were able to extract such good bass extension and low bass distortion from an open dynamic design. I was interested for about five seconds when I saw this...until I saw the price.

At this point, it's a bit like if somebody offered me a pint of my current favorite vanilla ice cream for $4, and then they came up with some ice cream that, on paper at least, was better (e.g. no artificial ingredients, less sugar (I tend to find them all a bit too sweet), higher quality vanilla flavoring), but offered it for $40. I might try it and conclude that it's indeed better than my preferred brand, but there's no way a pint of ice cream, no matter how good, can be worth a ten-times increase in price over what I was already getting. There just isn't enough of a possible improvement--ice cream technology tapped out sometime in the early 20th century.

It's the same thing with headphones. The era of revolutionary, eye-opening improvements for me ended when I first tried an M50 in a dark Guitar Center showroom six years ago. Everything, even the DT880 and HD 600 that I prefer to that M50 by a considerable margin, is an incremental improvement when stood against the jump between the M50 and everything I'd heard before it.

Focal might have some good products on their hands, but the pricing is yet more of the same folly we've seen over the past seven or eight years. As for Sennheiser, I believe they're just as guilty as anyone else with the inflated flagship pricing. Perhaps more so, since they were the first, barring esoteric models like the K1000 or any of the Stax headphones. And I'm not talking about the Orpheus, which was always supposed to be a statement product. I'm talking about the HD 800. With the release of that headphone, they made it clear: their best engineering--the caliber of engineering they threw at the original HD 580/600/650--is going to be devoted to multi-thousand dollar flagships, not reasonably priced models. For that, they'll just keep making the HD 600 and HD 650.

I understand this sentiment quite well.

I haven't had the same life-changing experience with audio since I risked $100 on my first hi-fi IEM. Going from cheap old Skullcandy Ink'ed II all the way up to the Klipsch R6 blew my hair back. Every jump since then, while wonderful, hasn't had the same impact.

Though I will say, the upgrade from my FiiO X5>ATH-IM03 to the Astell&Kern AK120ii>Angie was nearly as awe-inspiring. Nearly. Maybe half.