sgrossklass
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2004
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Today a mint pair of HD430s (from a collection, with cable and earpads apparently having been replaced a few years ago at most) arrived here, so here's what I think about these cans.
Fact sheet:
Made: ~1980..1985
Position: Sennheiser's top dynamic headphone at the time
Preceded by: HD424 (?), 1976...1979
Followed by: HD540, 1985...1991
Construction: Circumaural, open, circular earpads, double headband.
Impedance: 600 ohm
Freq response spec: 16...20000 Hz
Comfort: Large circumaural pleather earpads, the replaced ones being similar to what the HD535 uses in terms of material, could be a touch deeper though. Earcups can be tilted and swiveled, good head size adjustment.
Equipment used for testing: Grundig T7000 tuner with modded BTech BT928 amp (tone control defeated, output coupling caps replaced by 220µ 35V, gain reduced and bandwidth increased by swapping 100k for 47k resistors, run off regulated 12V supply), Terratec Aureon Sky sound card directly or via Onkyo TX-SV636 (the Onkyo seems rolled off in the highs though).
Sensitivity: Pretty much the same as HD420SL, thus about what to expect from 600 ohm, 94 dB/mW cans. Even a simple opamp based amp (BT928 or Cmoy) won't break into sweat provided the supply voltage is sufficiently high.
Sound:
Technically these are rather capable cans, easily reaching to 37 Hz and below like the best of my cans in terms of bass (50 mm drivers, I assume) and up to at least 16.5 kHz as far as the highs are concerned. They are, however, rather bright, with a big peak in the 10 kHz region (not overly much sibilance though). This very much reminds me of the frequency response that I've seen for the Beyerdynamic DT880, maybe with a touch less in the lower registers. Soundstaging seems better than with the HD420SL (not too difficult, given this one is a supraaural headphone with rather diffuse imaging), anything more is hard to tell with the omnipresent brightness. I'd only consider classical to be listenable with those, and even then you don't get that concert hall feeling as with the HD590. These cans might be something for a warm-sounding (tube) amp.
Honestly I must say that I prefer the sonic signature of the HD420SL, which is warm and mellow and somewhat mid-centric in comparison (even if a tad aggressive in the upper mids, which gives excellent speech intelligibility; it also drops off in the lower bass, which just doesn't sound right somehow, even if bass is rather tight and precise overall). Seems like I'm a HD650 guy - poor old wallet...
Fact sheet:
Made: ~1980..1985
Position: Sennheiser's top dynamic headphone at the time
Preceded by: HD424 (?), 1976...1979
Followed by: HD540, 1985...1991
Construction: Circumaural, open, circular earpads, double headband.
Impedance: 600 ohm
Freq response spec: 16...20000 Hz
Comfort: Large circumaural pleather earpads, the replaced ones being similar to what the HD535 uses in terms of material, could be a touch deeper though. Earcups can be tilted and swiveled, good head size adjustment.
Equipment used for testing: Grundig T7000 tuner with modded BTech BT928 amp (tone control defeated, output coupling caps replaced by 220µ 35V, gain reduced and bandwidth increased by swapping 100k for 47k resistors, run off regulated 12V supply), Terratec Aureon Sky sound card directly or via Onkyo TX-SV636 (the Onkyo seems rolled off in the highs though).
Sensitivity: Pretty much the same as HD420SL, thus about what to expect from 600 ohm, 94 dB/mW cans. Even a simple opamp based amp (BT928 or Cmoy) won't break into sweat provided the supply voltage is sufficiently high.
Sound:
Technically these are rather capable cans, easily reaching to 37 Hz and below like the best of my cans in terms of bass (50 mm drivers, I assume) and up to at least 16.5 kHz as far as the highs are concerned. They are, however, rather bright, with a big peak in the 10 kHz region (not overly much sibilance though). This very much reminds me of the frequency response that I've seen for the Beyerdynamic DT880, maybe with a touch less in the lower registers. Soundstaging seems better than with the HD420SL (not too difficult, given this one is a supraaural headphone with rather diffuse imaging), anything more is hard to tell with the omnipresent brightness. I'd only consider classical to be listenable with those, and even then you don't get that concert hall feeling as with the HD590. These cans might be something for a warm-sounding (tube) amp.
Honestly I must say that I prefer the sonic signature of the HD420SL, which is warm and mellow and somewhat mid-centric in comparison (even if a tad aggressive in the upper mids, which gives excellent speech intelligibility; it also drops off in the lower bass, which just doesn't sound right somehow, even if bass is rather tight and precise overall). Seems like I'm a HD650 guy - poor old wallet...