Sennheiser HD650 & Massdrop HD6XX Impressions Thread
Sep 30, 2015 at 8:05 PM Post #29,431 of 46,497
  60 and living my retirement One Day at a Time remembering John Lennon's line in Beautiful Boy : "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."  So true.  Live in the moment, that's all we have & one of the better ways to live in the moment is listening to my favourite music. 

Well said....so true.
 
Oct 1, 2015 at 6:21 AM Post #29,432 of 46,497
  57 years young, here
 
Still feelin' good and music everyday soothes my soul.
 
Never knew the bass could be so punchy on the HD650  
biggrin.gif

 

 TungSol 5998 power tubes and a Ken Rad VT231 Black Glass, which is a 6SN7GT
 
Life is good at 57!

 
Every time you post a pic of that amp, I keep thinking I want to copy you.  I have a feeling you nailed the setup...
 
Oct 1, 2015 at 10:25 AM Post #29,438 of 46,497
  57 years young, here
 
Still feelin' good and music everyday soothes my soul.
 
Never knew the bass could be so punchy on the HD650  
biggrin.gif

 

 TungSol 5998 power tubes and a Ken Rad VT231 Black Glass, which is a 6SN7GT
 
Life is good at 57!

Yeah the HD650 bass is very punchy when there driven well. depending on what I'm listening too I sometimes prefer my HD600 over TH900 for bassy music.... actually I do prefer the HD650 for most genres over TH900, about 70% / 30% of the time
 
Oct 1, 2015 at 3:38 PM Post #29,439 of 46,497
  I have found the shrillness can be system dependent to a greater degree than the sound pressure in my experience. Great headphones but having fatigue issues with them is honestly disheartening as they offer a great sound and I really prefer the darker and warmer sound. I was pretty much forced to listen to my brighter headphones even though I had the ache to listen to the HD 650 or HD 600 due to their tonality.
 
Yeah, it was like the sound was trapped within the earcups and irritated my ears and causing a claustophobic sensation, loosing the clamp helped but never fixed it, I think I found the culprit to be the silver acoustic film as the old black-screen HD 650's didn't cause my ears discomfort. I've had a similar experience compared to my brighter headphones, brighter headphones only tend to bother me at higher listening levels. I've personally found darker planars and the nighthawks to not fatigue me in terms of warmer and darker headphones. 

 
Thanks for sharing your experience so far. I think I have the older version without the silver driver, but I'm still having this problem. It's unfortunate that they're causing fatigue, as the 650s are a lovely headphone in many ways. I took a look at the Nighthawk thread, and I'm intrigued, though not exactly inspired by a cable company whose cables appear to be readily falling apart on these headphones.
 
Oct 1, 2015 at 4:20 PM Post #29,441 of 46,497
   
Thanks for sharing your experience so far. I think I have the older version without the silver driver, but I'm still having this problem. It's unfortunate that they're causing fatigue, as the 650s are a lovely headphone in many ways. I took a look at the Nighthawk thread, and I'm intrigued, though not exactly inspired by a cable company whose cables appear to be readily falling apart on these headphones.

 
I must admit to being intrigued by the Nighthawk but I too would expect way better in the cable department, from a Cable Company.
 
edit - How ironic would it be if the Nighthawk cable specifically led to a range of replacement cables from other 'third-party' companies?
 
Oct 1, 2015 at 5:09 PM Post #29,442 of 46,497
 
   
Never knew the bass could be so punchy on the HD650  
biggrin.gif

 
 
 
 TungSol 5998 power tubes and a Ken Rad VT231 Black Glass, which is a 6SN7GT

 
Looks impressive!  Is it good for planars like 560?
 
cheers

I am not sure how it will do with planars, as I do not own any..
 
It will work well with my low impedance Grados, using 6336 tubes  
smile.gif

 
Oct 1, 2015 at 5:41 PM Post #29,443 of 46,497
   
Thanks for sharing your experience so far. I think I have the older version without the silver driver, but I'm still having this problem. It's unfortunate that they're causing fatigue, as the 650s are a lovely headphone in many ways. I took a look at the Nighthawk thread, and I'm intrigued, though not exactly inspired by a cable company whose cables appear to be readily falling apart on these headphones.

I haven't listened to the old HD 650 much, so it could be I didn't spend enough of time. I only heard of one person with an issue with the cable which could honestly just be bad luck. It seems to be an isolated case, I would only be concerned about that if you come across multiple cases of it popping up later on. I have no problem with the cable personally, I find it much more durable and better made than most cables, just not the most pliable but with my experience with many higher-priced cables, at least some level of rigidity is normal. The small cable is very pliable though. The build quality of the Nighthawk is on a different level than the HD 650, I wouldn't worry about the build or the cables on them. The biggest thing is going to be if you like their sound after spending time with them or not.
 
Oct 1, 2015 at 6:49 PM Post #29,444 of 46,497
On the pairing of HD 650 with Liquid Carbon amp. Here are some snippets of my reviews after trying this pairing earlier in the summer:
 
"It seemed like the sounds were "always out of your head", and I meant this in a good way. I tested it out with the Ether headphones and my Sennheiser HD 650's, and especially with the 650's I seemed to always get a sound in which each instrument was pristinely placed in it's proper position of the soundstage, almost so that nothing sounded like it was coming from any 1-dimensional place! 
darthsmile.gif
. It accurately reproduced the frequency response low to high, was very lifelike and ever so slightly leaning towards 'musical', had paranormally good soundstage, and maybe what I liked even the most was the impact 'slam' how it handled the likes of drums in a pleasing way. Warren and myself both seemed to agree this is the best amp under $2,000."
 
"I initially tried the LC amp with the Ether headphones and it went from sounding energetic, bass heavy & recessed treble, to sounding organic bass, just as much energy if not even more, and pristine details in the highs IIRC"... "Not only was the FR of the HD 650 pleasingly presented paired with the LC, but it gave me a euphoric 'always out of your head' sound, as if nothing was 'in my head' but each and every sound was extruded in some alien-dimension soundstage; of which the only other amp at this Head-Fi meet  that was able to give me this immense of a perception of energy and soundstage besides the LC was several multi-thousand tollar tube amps like Eddie Current's Zana Deux."

( full review here and here )
 
 
Oct 1, 2015 at 6:58 PM Post #29,445 of 46,497
@whirlwind it looks like your nice tube amp photo is a Glenn OTL amp with a custom tube setup, right? Do you have any opinions or direct experience on how this amp compares to the Felix Audio Elise amp? (of course the tubes used of each will have an impact)
 
Also @kman1211 or others that were mentioning about listening fatigue from the HD 650 on recent pages. Seeing how the 650 is a moderately dark headphone with rolled off highs, it makes me think that either you may be sensitive to certain low frequencies, or that you could be sensitive to listening to sounds on any headphone. Have you also had similar ill results from other headphones in general?
 

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