[Clausen]

Ok, let start off by saying, my Audiophile journey started some time after I got my first car and installed an Alpine CD player at a time when CD's were the new format and no one had CD's. Fortunately for me, I didn't have hardly any anything either way!

This was probably about 1988. Not my first car, but my first decent car stereo. Some time after that, one of my older brothers had left a pair of Bose 902's at our parents house, and my youngest brother ended up using them...and then started the journey toward actual Audiophile. He's got Mark Levinson stuff and Dunlavy speakers now.

I ended up building several DIY speakers and I have a B&K pre/pro and a real nice Parasound amp now.

I'm not going to belabor these too much, except to say, I have kids now and I'm older, and I find myself really wanted to listen to my music especially when everyone is asleep when I can enjoy it and turn up the volume!

I did my research, I even bought a Monolith LS to power the headphones.

Before I really say what I think of the HD650's let me give this context! Recently I built speakers for my main entertainment setup. Which consists of a gaming PC, with a 43" UHD monitor. I decided I was going to add a cheap receiver and build speakers rather than use PC speakers, since I'd had a setup of those for over a decade.

I've built a few of Troels Graveson's DIY plans, so I decided on a very cheap 5 1/2" bookshelf plan that was very inexpensive but incorporated the equally inexpensive but exceptional sounding Vifa XT tweeters. While I was at it, I bought a subwoofer plate amplifier and built an 8" powered subwoofer!

Now, to the headphones. Obviously I've owned many headphones in my time. I have a pair of the Logitech 935 cordless gaming headphones. But since I have the background I have, while the 935's are great for gaming, well for me the sound was always "okay they are headphones, and they have their advantages, and audiophile is never going to be one of them."

This has been my attitude about headphones for a very long time. "They are headphones, and they will never be audiophile."

One thing I have never been is narrow-minded, so for quite awhile and because I have kids now, I started thinking about giving headphones a try! And I 100% wanted to give them a completely fair and unbiased chance. After all, it was for my benefit.

My brother had some really nice Sennheiser headphones, and I had some nice IEM myself not that long ago. I am a Sennheiser fan for sure.

So having said all that...I got a pair of HD650's bought a headphone amp and with rapt anticipation eagerly awaited my newest audiophile addition.

I hooked them up, played all sorts of music from several sources....and I kept thinking..."ok, these do not sound that good" especially when I added volume. I tried hooking the amp directly to a DAC from my PC, headphones directly to the Denon, (which I could not tell a differance between the Denon and the LS, if anything the Denon sounded better to me.)

Then I did this....I compared what I was listening to the cheapest speakers I have in my three systems. My speakers with drivers, a combined $120, plus xover and cabinet, and it's so bad by comparison, frankly I'm floored! I was listening to the HD 650's and switch to my bookshelfs, and it was like putting a soothing poultice on a gaping wound. Now don't get me wrong I did enjoy them, I listened to them for about a week. Then I decided to return them. I listened to one of my favorite concert blurays, "Talking heads, Stop making sense." and Eagles, Farewell tour I, and then I said, nope, these are going back.

I filled out the return, and they we're only going to refund $425 of the $500 I spent.

So I got them out of the box hooked them back up...and then went back in the box, and they went back today! I just could not justify the money spent.

Here's why...the last night, I really gave them a go then I took them off, I noticed my ears were hurting a little, I switched to the speakers, and that was it...I cannot listen to them loudly... my bookshelfs at low level BLEW the 650's AWAY anyway, let alone volume with my small sub, so I could NOT justify the $500 spent.

In summary, headphones cannot come close to a well-built small speaker setup for a fraction of the cost. Personally I think it's the physics. A good full range speaker uses physics for one, crossover for another, and the cabinets, to make truly natural music reproductions!

One of the biggest things to me that I noticed was the highs. To my ears they just did NOT sound good...now again, this was a back to back comparison to my speakers! Maybe I'm spoiled because I built them, and built the crossovers, but I just copied plans and I followed the plans and didn't cut corners.

In any case, it was 100% worth the whole experience. I've been wanting to try this for several years, and I appreciate everything people here have contributed. You guys have done several things for me. Gave me all the information to try this out, decide if this was the right for me, and make me confident that I'm making the right decision.

I'm keeping the headphone amp. I'll try out some cheaper headphones around the $200 range, and maybe some cordless...I have some in the bedroom I really like, and for the price it just a good buy! But as far as headphones go...I'm not spending more than $200 ever again. I just can't see a return for the investment that would ever justify the money spent.

In summary, I want to be clear. I am not saying the 650's sounded bad. They sounded very good. Just not $500 worth of great, and not even close to my bookshelf speakers. That was the deal breaker for me. When I took the headphones off, unplugged them restarted what I had just listened to, well to be fair, it wasn't fair! It wasn't even close! It's hard to describe other to say, it is like a balm. I wanted so BAD to LIKE these 650's, but when I unplugged them I was like "good GOD!"

Music is like medicine, and the vehicle for the medicine is the differance of whether it went into the muscle vs the veins. This, to me was the differance of headphones vs speakers! Putting the balm next to the wound or on the wound!

 

[descloud]

Since this was a review, you could have posted it here: https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/sennheiser-hd-650-headphones.9315/reviews

Alternatively, you could have posted on the forum thread as well: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/sennheiser-hd650-massdrop-hd6xx-impressions-thread.197776/page-2910

 

[Edward777]

I don't think it's a bad thing to spark some discussion on here. I'm pretty turned off by HeadFi as of late, just because every thread is thousands' of pages long, so it's not very appealing to just dip in and read a convo. I, for one, appreciate this post! And I say that as an owner of an HD 600.

 

[Clausen]

Since this was a review, you could have posted it here: https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/sennheiser-hd-650-headphones.9315/reviews

Alternatively, you could have posted on the forum thread as well: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/sennheiser-hd650-massdrop-hd6xx-impressions-thread.197776/page-2910

Sorry, I'm new here, however, my review is from a completely different perspective, from the reviews I've read. In any case...I have no problem if it's moved to whatever thread is appropriate! My apologies if is in the wrong spot!

 

[Clausen]

Oh and BTW, this is not a "review of the 650 compared to other headphones" it's a review of the 650 and speakers, compared to the reproduction of music!

 

[Mink]

Interesting comparison. I have the exact opposite experience as you have. I find headphones in general smoother and less fatiguing than speakers.
I know the headphones drivers/tiny speakers sit closer to the ears as speakers do, but they generally are properly tuned and dampened. And the funny thing is that in every single case I tried different ear pads that made the drivers sit further away from my ear canals the sound got harsher and more sibilant.
Speakers need to be properly placed, the room needs to be treated to avoid annoying peaks and waves.
Every pair of speakers I owned were less detailed, more edgy sounding in the treble and too bassy.

 

[Edward777]

Question for speakers users: do you guys have more trouble deciphering lyrics than headphone users do? One of my biggest annoyances with a lot of music (I listen to primarily classic rock, soul, etc.) is that I can never make out the lyrics. I use HD 600s, as I said earlier, but I still find this problem. I wonder if it's any easier or harder to make out lyrics with speakers? Or does this problem happen to everyone?

 

[techboy]

Question for speakers users: do you guys have more trouble deciphering lyrics than headphone users do? One of my biggest annoyances with a lot of music (I listen to primarily classic rock, soul, etc.) is that I can never make out the lyrics. I use HD 600s, as I said earlier, but I still find this problem. I wonder if it's any easier or harder to make out lyrics with speakers? Or does this problem happen to everyone?

Headphones are usually much more articulate, given everything else is the same. A good DAC/AMP matters as much as the transducer. HD 700/800 are way more articulate than HD 600.

 

[Gilles De Rais]

Hi Clausen,
I think you are comparing apples and oranges and complaining they don’t taste the same. Just because both are transducers doesn’t mean they should sound the same.
I’d take it one step further - compare your dynamic driver bookshelves to other speaker types - something like a Martin-Logan or Quad electrostatic, any tractix horn or even an omni-directional like Duevel or Shanihans. Do they tick your box? All of these will present music differently, it just the nature of the technology involved. Ditto headphones.
All that being said, I like your post. You’ve raised the opportunity for listeners to consider what it is that they like in music replay - this is a good thing.

regards,

Giles

 

[Clausen]

Interesting comparison. I have the exact opposite experience as you have. I find headphones in general smoother and less fatiguing than speakers.
I know the headphones drivers/tiny speakers sit closer to the ears as speakers do, but they generally are properly tuned and dampened. And the funny thing is that in every single case I tried different ear pads that made the drivers sit further away from my ear canals the sound got harsher and more sibilant.
Speakers need to be properly placed, the room needs to be treated to avoid annoying peaks and waves.
Every pair of speakers I owned were less detailed, more edgy sounding in the treble and too bassy.

As I said in the first post, it's all in the crossover, drivers and then speaker design is probably the most important. My main listening room I have speakers which are comparable to $20,000 speakers. To give you an idea what a difference in crossover components just look at the differences in cost between crossover components. Those speakers have probably 20 crossover components, and the capacitor I have on my tweeter is a $70 cap, on each $80 tweeter. Most speakers even "hi-end speakers will use a cheap $3, and I built them with the excellent Jantez Super caps which are still only $20 caps. Some DIY will spend more money on the crossover than they do on drivers, as long as you are using drivers which justify good xover components. But the beauty of building your own speakers, is you can upgrade them by upgrading the xover components.

As I said, I think I'm just spoiled. I've seen the crossovers in commercial speakers and it's a down right joke. I had a real nice set of speakers with a dual VC 7" Focals, and the Scan Speak 2905, which is a fantastic tweeter, and the crossover was JUNK. The resistors started turning into dust, the caps were $3 caps, just a joke, but they sounded fantastic. I cannot tell you how many people said they could not believe how good they sounded.

And what I have now....my brothers Dunlavy's are the only thing I've heard that even comes close.

 

[Clausen]

Hi Clausen,
I think you are comparing apples and oranges and complaining they don’t taste the same. Just because both are transducers doesn’t mean they should sound the same.
I’d take it one step further - compare your dynamic driver bookshelves to something like a Martin-Logan or Quad electrostatic, any tractix horn or even an omni-directional like Duevel or Shanihans. Do they tick your box? All of these will present music differently, it just the nature of the technology involved. Ditto headphones.
All that being said, I like your post. You’ve raised the opportunity for listeners to consider what it is that they like in music replay - this is a good thing.

regards,

Giles

Yeah man, 100%. That's why I framed the whole thing the way I did. I said that very thing, I'm not comparing the HD650's to other headphones. Just like I'm not writing a review of my bookshelf speakers compared to my towers which are not even as tall as my towers are wide.

I'm temped to say I just don't like headphones but that's not true either. Let me try to clarify it this way. I don't like headphones in the place of my audiophile quality speakers, and the biggest deal breaker to me was when compared dollar for dollar. If I went out and bought my bookshelf speakers, they would easily cost $1500-$2000. To get headphones that matched that well, I didn't spend $2000 on my bookshelf speakers because I was able to build them, and I can't spend $1500-$2000 to find out if I can find headphones that match the quality. Also, I'm in a near listening field with these bookshelfs, they are only about 3-4 feet from my head. So at the end of the day, I'd rather listen to these at a lower listening level, and I'll crank up my music on my towers when that opportunity comes up...maybe when my kids grow up...LOL.

Now for this last tid bit...I have these cheap wireless Sennheiser's RS 135 I use in the bedroom, (I say cheap, they were still $100), and I absolutely LOVE THEM. I'm probably going to get the more expensive versions of these because I like the other ones so much, but they do what I bought them for and I don't expect them to sound like something they won't sound like. And there in lies the problem, I expected the HD650's to sound like my speakers, so yes, apples to oranges. And honestly, if I had read my review, someone else had written, I would have settled for $250-$300 headphones, and my expectations would have been more realistic.

I spent hours on here reading reviews on everything I was considering buying. Like, the "HD650 sounds like headphones costing MUCH more"...etc...lol...now I'm thinking thank GOD I didn't spend much more, I would have been MUCH more disappointed!

I mean I have Scan Speak 7 in Revelators in the doors of my truck, and a custom-built crossover I built in that too, with specially modded tweeter mounts for the small Vifa XT in that too, and that's not even my favorite tweeter. In others words, I'm serious about my Audiophile! This is basically what I have in my truck...I copied this and used the cheaper Vifa XT.

https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/auto-kits/scanspeak-6.5-2-way-signature-car-audio-kit/

 

[Clausen]

Question for speakers users: do you guys have more trouble deciphering lyrics than headphone users do? One of my biggest annoyances with a lot of music (I listen to primarily classic rock, soul, etc.) is that I can never make out the lyrics. I use HD 600s, as I said earlier, but I still find this problem. I wonder if it's any easier or harder to make out lyrics with speakers? Or does this problem happen to everyone?

So here's the thing about classic rock, soul, jazz etc. A lot of those recordings were really bad. Some remastered are better, some are not. One of the problems here is the sound engineer doesn't compensate by raising the singers voice to a volume that matches the other instruments. In my opinion one of the inherent flaws with headphones is that they use a single driver to reproduce the full range of the audio spectrum. An 8" driver cannot reproduce the bass of an 18" driver, so how could a 2 or 3 in driver reproduce the full audio range on the scale accurately. IMO, with the right speakers they 100% can do a better job than headphones, all the way around!

 

[descloud]

In my opinion one of the inherent flaws with headphones is that they use a single driver to reproduce the full range of the audio spectrum.

It can be viewed as a flaw, or it could be viewed as a design or cost-effective choice, and I'll get to that more below.

An 8" driver cannot reproduce the bass of an 18" driver, so how could a 2 or 3 in driver reproduce the full audio range on the scale accurately

I can agree about the bass that headphones create will not be able to properly create sub-woofer speaker type of bass frequencies with the requirements needed to reproduce such frequencies. One exception I could think of would probably be the JVC SZ2000 (although I haven't heard it myself) - I've read around that it produces bass similar to sub-woofer type of bass. However, I've also gathered information that the drivers on these models don't last long in particular - but someone can correct on that as that's the information I've gathered on some forums that brought these to discussion. So with that idea, there is a drawback in trying to reproduce the type of bass some standard speakers do.

But I find that given the environment headphones are reproducing sound (smaller volume, distance from the ear, removing other gain factors, different resonances), I suspect it is not as difficult in reproducing the rest of the frequency range given the power requirements for those aren't as demanding as the bass frequencies.

One example I can come up is this. If a singer is singing to you within 3 feet within an ideal volume SPL of say 60 dB, you can hear almost all the frequency range the singer can produce at that distance. If you were standing 10 feet away and the singer is singing to you at the same SPL of 60 dB, do you think you'd still hear all the frequency range at that distance or would some of them be missing? Now imagine if the singer is further than 10 feet, still singing at the same SPL, do you think you can still hear all of the frequency range you were hearing when you were 3 feet away? This is assuming it's an open space and no echo effects.

My point in the example is that a headphone driver is the singer in that scenario. It can reproduce a full frequency range just fine, but the difference is the listener, their position, and other HRTF variables. The driver has to be adjusted depending on the listener, which is where larger speaker drivers come in. So I would say a headphone can reproduce the full frequency range properly when a headphone is well designed, since the *microphone* is closer to the source.

IMO, with the right speakers they 100% can do a better job than headphones, all the way around!

I think the inverse can be true as well. With the right headphones, they can 100% do a better job than *standard-sized speakers

This is an interesting discussion and I didn't mean to be snobbish nor was I annoyed at your post, but just saw the "review" title and thought it can go to specific threads/sections here.

 

[Clausen]

It can be viewed as a flaw, or it could be viewed as a design or cost-effective choice, and I'll get to that more below.


I can agree about the bass that headphones create will not be able to properly create sub-woofer speaker type of bass frequencies with the requirements needed to reproduce such frequencies. One exception I could think of would probably be the JVC SZ2000 (although I haven't heard it myself) - I've read around that it produces bass similar to sub-woofer type of bass. However, I've also gathered information that the drivers on these models don't last long in particular - but someone can correct on that as that's the information I've gathered on some forums that brought these to discussion. So with that idea, there is a drawback in trying to reproduce the type of bass some standard speakers do.

But I find that given the environment headphones are reproducing sound (smaller volume, distance from the ear, removing other gain factors, different resonances), I suspect it is not as difficult in reproducing the rest of the frequency range given the power requirements for those aren't as demanding as the bass frequencies.

One example I can come up is this. If a singer is singing to you within 3 feet within an ideal volume SPL of say 60 dB, you can hear almost all the frequency range the singer can produce at that distance. If you were standing 10 feet away and the singer is singing to you at the same SPL of 60 dB, do you think you'd still hear all the frequency range at that distance or would some of them be missing? Now imagine if the singer is further than 10 feet, still singing at the same SPL, do you think you can still hear all of the frequency range you were hearing when you were 3 feet away? This is assuming it's an open space and no echo effects.

My point in the example is that a headphone driver is the singer in that scenario. It can reproduce a full frequency range just fine, but the difference is the listener, their position, and other HRTF variables. The driver has to be adjusted depending on the listener, which is where larger speaker drivers come in. So I would say a headphone can reproduce the full frequency range properly when a headphone is well designed, since the *microphone* is closer to the source.


I think the inverse can be true as well. With the right headphones, they can 100% do a better job than *standard-sized speakers

This is an interesting discussion and I didn't mean to be snobbish nor was I annoyed at your post, but just saw the "review" title and thought it can go to specific threads/sections here.

I didn't think you were snobbish in any way! I just want to hash this out...and I think we are finding everyone else does as well! We can agree, disagree, and all be good, and that how it should be!

 

[techboy]

The issue is you didn't like 650 with your existing source. What's your source by the way. That will probably do the trick. Or you might even need to turn to brighter headphones.