What's the most overrated can?

[tigon_ridge]

600's have a lot more bass on my OTL amp (BHC). More bass by a lot than on my Ragnarok 1 driving XLR cables.

Yes, it's not news to anyone that it leans slightly warm, so of course warm amps can further slow their bass decay. By "low end" I meant <30hz. You can try to EQ their subs somewhat, but you quickly run out of headroom, because you can hit a massive %THD+noise brick wall, which is amp-independent. That's not to knock them. They're only $200, afterall. When the HD650 was released it was around $500, which is like $1000 today. HAHAHA. I could've bought a DT 880 + a nice desktop amp instead, but I was young, and bought into the Senn hype. Well, my $40 Moondrop SSR iem today sounds x10 more accurate than mid-price Senns, even with the much smaller soundstage.

 

[bagwell359]

Yes, it's not news to anyone that it leans slightly warm, so of course warm amps can further slow their bass decay. By "low end" I meant <30hz. You can try to EQ their subs somewhat, but you quickly run out of headroom, because you can hit a massive %THD+noise brick wall, which is amp-independent. That's not to knock them. They're only $200, afterall. When the HD650 was released it was around $500, which is like $1000 today. HAHAHA. I could've bought a DT 880 + a nice desktop amp instead, but I was young, and bought into the Senn hype. Well, my $40 Moondrop SSR iem today sounds x10 more accurate than mid-price Senns, even with the much smaller soundstage.

I find where the 600/BHOC pair extends the bass is from 35-70 Hz (vs every SS amp I've paired them with) - and pretty linear for an amp with bass decay/THD.
For a long term dipole fan/owner that's most of the battle (a functional bass from 35-70 Hz). It's nice to have 20-35 Hz (it's almost an octave after all), but 98.5% of what I listen too has the music above 35 Hz. You can buttress the 600 with EQ to get to 50 Hz range - but as you say it flattens the dynamics. But its the 35-50 range that gives me a sense of foundational bass, and justifies the side trip to an OTL amp.

 

[iFi audio]

all ifi products

I take it that you've heard them all

But this aside, is there anything specific you don't like about our stuff? Or is it a rather general feeling?

 

[Achlys]

KPH30I since you can get Etymotic ER2SE for 20 dollars more

 

[arielext]

I take it that you've heard them all

But this aside, is there anything specific you don't like about our stuff? Or is it a rather general feeling?

Personally I think your amps and DACs all suck if I use it as a can

 

[Malevolent]

Personally I think your amps and DACs all suck if I use it as a can

Agreed. They don't seem to be playing any music at all! What a waste of money!

 

[dieseldriver200]

I think the most overrated headphones I have to say is Grado. I've had so many of them over the years but every single one I could keep for more than a year. It's the only headphone that does not feel comfortable out of the box. Even their discontinued IEM the GR10e, I bought new. I even paid wholesale price for those and it was pretty bad. Then the latest edition, the GT220 Bluetooth. Once of the most annoying Bluetooth headphone I have ever owned. I just want to throw the thing in trash can. No software to customize it. Each bud connects to the device separately so you can two announcement for price of one. Then the voice is so annoying, urrggh. Never will go back to their crappy product ever again.

 

[rocksteady65]

Add my votes for HD600 and HD650.

The frequency response of the HD600 is probably the only great thing about it. Also has a clean CSD measurement. Unfortunately, it's slow, and lacks bass extension. That's why it sounds muffled or veiled, relative to many of the faster, more resolving headphones out there. Don't even give me that nonsense about how you need to drive these with exceptional amps. I've driven them SE and balanced through powerful amps. Didn't change anything. Still slow and not very transparent.

People love these headphones because they're forgiving and easy to listen to, not because they're truly hi-fi equipment. They're not. They're dynamically compressed. I remember A/Bing a pair of $20 sony earbuds against a HD650, and honestly they sounded equally detailed. That shocked me so hard, I wanted to exit the hobby immediately. Learned many years later that apparent they required a much more powerful amp. Okay...plugged into Schiit Mjolnir, balanced. Maybe it opened up some, but it's still nowhere near as detailed as a Stax, or many planars. You can EQ almost any headphones to have near-perfect timbre accuracy, so the FR of the HD600 isn't even all that important to me.

Totally in agreement regarding the HD600/HD650. The latter, in particular, is an utterly Mediocre, not truly Hi-Fi design, and my mind boggles as to why it ever gained such a Cult status. I think Cult describes it accurately...

 

[tigon_ridge]

Totally in agreement regarding the HD600/HD650. The latter, in particular, is an utterly Mediocre, not truly Hi-Fi design, and my mind boggles as to why it ever gained such a Cult status. I think Cult describes it accurately...

I feel somewhat embarrassed, because the comment you replied to is many years old, and my opinions of the Senns have changed quite a bit since then, ever since I started amping my HD600 with my speaker amp. The Mjolnir I had was rather sterile sounding, I realized. The Senn just really needs an appropriate amp to get it to sing. I reckon an output-transformless (OTL) tube is the name of the HD600 game. I haven't tried that pairing yet, but the HD600 does sound quite nice through my speaker amp. Not quite as nice as my Sundara, but still nice. The Sundara has much roomier, taller soundstage. The HD600 has a flat (no height) soundstage, but can still be precise within that plane of sound. It also lacks bass and especially subbass, which is a big deal to me. The parametric-EQ'ed Sundara when powered with my speaker amp is just as organic and natural sounding as my HD600, but it also feels more immersive/enveloping. Perhaps if I get my hands on an OTL amp I might love the HD600 even more. Right now, I'm so satisfied with my Sundara setup that I feel no desire to try anything different. I've found my "endgame."

 

[rocksteady65]

I feel somewhat embarrassed, because the comment you replied to is many years old, and my opinions of the Senns have changed quite a bit since then, ever since I started amping my HD600 with my speaker amp. The Mjolnir I had was rather sterile sounding, I realized. The Senn just really needs an appropriate amp to get it to sing. I reckon an output-transformless (OTL) tube is the name of the HD600 game. I haven't tried that pairing yet, but the HD600 does sound quite nice through my speaker amp. Not quite as nice as my Sundara, but still nice. The Sundara has much roomier, taller soundstage. The HD600 has a flat (no height) soundstage, but can still be precise within that plane of sound. It also lacks bass and especially subbass, which is a big deal to me. The parametric-EQ'ed Sundara when powered with my speaker amp is just as organic and natural sounding as my HD600, but it also feels more immersive/enveloping. Perhaps if I get my hands on an OTL amp I might love the HD600 even more. Right now, I'm so satisfied with my Sundara setup that I feel no desire to try anything different. I've found my "endgame."

Hello there.

Truthfully, I didn’t realise that your post was that old, as I had merely noticed the very last post, dated yesterday. While I don’t want to knock your personal experience with the HD 600, your reply reads as if you are another person altogether from the one who wrote those posts almost 4 years ago. No disparaging intended…

But to be fair, my criticism of the HD 650 is certainly more vehement than that of the HD 600. I have had the latter in my possession for a few weeks (an Original Ireland production), and I didn’t think it was that bad, and certainly a notch or two over the deeply mediocre HD 650, based on an even shorter run with a relatively early production example. I was so underwhelmed with the experience, that I never felt tempted or even curious to get back to it.

My problem with it (them) isn’t so much the lack of Bass extension, as I’m not usually too bothered with the ultimate Bass quantity or indeed extension, but rather the Bloated, Slow quality of said Bass, especially obvious with the HD 650, and of course that infamous Veil over the Upper Midrange and Treble. Again, especially true with regard to the HD 650.
A comparative listen to their superb predecessors, both the HD 540 (preferably the origInal 600 Ohm version), and the HD 560, painfully exposes their shortcomings. The differences are striking, and certainly not in the HD 600/650’s favour!

As far as I’m concerned, the path that Sennheiser chose in the development of their (then) Top Models is hard to comprehend, and I certainly don’t regard either design as true High Fidelity. I suspect that Mr. Grell had something to do with it, and it’s probably no coincidence that his entrance into Sennheiser’s fray marked the beginning of their decline in terms of Engineering values, rather than the Marketing side, which saw a considerable push.

I can appreciate that you were able to extract better performance out of the HD 600 by running it with a Speaker Amplifier. It is also my experience that Vintage, High-Impedance Cans can perform at their best with a good Integrated Amp or Receiver, and this is especially true for 600 or even 1200 Ohm Headphones. I’ve run my original HD 540/600 pair, purchased back in 1987, with a humble but good Technics Receiver with superb results, and later on, throughout the 1990s, I ran my HD 560 Ovation (MK1) with a couple of Power Amps and a QED Adaptor Box. Also with excellent results, and I can vouch for the fact that both exhibited more body down Low and a smoother overall balance when driven by these Speaker Amplifiers than with Dedicated Headphones Amps.

Among the latter, I would say that Lake People/Violectric are among the Best, if not The Best, of the Solid State breed. I still own a LP G100 and a Violectric V100, which I have in permanent rotation with Two other Amps, as well as a vintage Crown D-75A, which is simply superb in the capacity of a Headphone Amplifier, especially so for High Impedance Cans, due to its immense Power Reserves. Highly recommended, too.

Happy listening!

 

[tigon_ridge]

Hello there.

Truthfully, I didn’t realise that your post was that old, as I had merely noticed the very last post, dated yesterday. While I don’t want to knock your personal experience with the HD 600, your reply reads as if you are another person altogether from the one who wrote those posts almost 4 years ago. No disparaging intended…

But to be fair, my criticism of the HD 650 is certainly more vehement than that of the HD 600. I have had the latter in my possession for a few weeks (an Original Ireland production), and I didn’t think it was that bad, and certainly a notch or two over the deeply mediocre HD 650, based on an even shorter run with a relatively early production example. I was so underwhelmed with the experience, that I never felt tempted or even curious to get back to it.

My problem with it (them) isn’t so much the lack of Bass extension, as I’m not usually too bothered with the ultimate Bass quantity or indeed extension, but rather the Bloated, Slow quality of said Bass, especially obvious with the HD 650, and of course that infamous Veil over the Upper Midrange and Treble. Again, especially true with regard to the HD 650.
A comparative listen to their superb predecessors, both the HD 540 (preferably the origInal 600 Ohm version), and the HD 560, painfully exposes their shortcomings. The differences are striking, and certainly not in the HD 600/650’s favour!

As far as I’m concerned, the path that Sennheiser chose in the development of their (then) Top Models is hard to comprehend, and I certainly don’t regard either design as true High Fidelity. I suspect that Mr. Grell had something to do with it, and it’s probably no coincidence that his entrance into Sennheiser’s fray marked the beginning of their decline in terms of Engineering values, rather than the Marketing side, who saw a considerable push.

I can appreciate that you were able to extract better performance out of the HD 600 by running it with a Speaker Amplifier. It is also my experience that Vintage, High-Impedance Cans can perform at their best with a good Integrated Amp or Receiver, and this is especially true for 600 or even 1200 Ohm Headphones. I’ve run my original HD 540/600 pair, purchased back in 1987, with a humble but good Technics Receiver with superb results, and later on, throughout the 1990s, I ran my HD 560 Ovation (MK1) with a couple of Power Amps and a QED Adaptor Box. Also with excellent results, and I can vouch for the fact that both exhibited more body down Low and a smoother overall balance when driven by these Speaker Amplifiers than with Dedicated Headphones Amps.

Among the latter, I would say that Lake People/Violectric are among the Best, if not The Best, of the Solid State breed. I still own a LP G100 and a Violectric V100, which I have in permanent rotation with Two other Amps, as well as a vintage Crown D-75A, which is simply superb in the capacity of a Headphone Amplifier, especially so for High Impedance Cans, due to its immense Power Reserves. Highly recommended, too.

Happy listening!

I appreciate your thorough elaboration, and I think I should've made myself clearer about the "embarrassed" remark. I meant that I was embarrassed for myself, because I looked back at my own old comments in this thread and felt myself disagreeing a lot with my old self, which is a very funny (but uncomfortable) experience.

Speaking of Crown, the XLS 1502 is what I'm using on my desk. People say class D amplifiers can't sound very good, but I've owned class A and A/B headphone amps in the past that I were underwhelming compared to this speaker amp.

 

[bagwell359]

The flaws of the HD-600 are: lacks low bass impact/volume, images poorly, doesn't do dynamic contrasts that well, has two bright spots in the treble (one notable, the other not so bad). So those who like genres outside of well recorded acoustic music won't likely care for it, as we see here. It also is difficult to drive to its best - OTL amps and SS amps with lots of current at high impedances (v281 for instance) is what is needed.

However, the timbre of midrange acoustic instruments such as piano is stellar and wipes the floor with non PEQ'd cans of all sorts - many much more expensive and newer. It also has the charming character of not adding things that are not there - so the fatigue factor is quite low, assuming what it does not do well is a requirement of the listener.

I don't listen to mine very much, but, for what it does well, it is very good. Like it or not, it is an important headphone in the history of high fidelity headphones over the past 30 years. I am looking forward to the Schiit Valhalla 3 due out on May 1st - $499 for an analog only all tube headphone amp for high impedance headphones, as well has a switch that allows it to drive planars (we'll have to see how that works).

 

[jbarrentine]

Overrated: 660S2. Voices are a fuzzy mess. I don't know why people tolerate this.
650/6xx just pisses bass on everything. At least the 650 I had did.

Grado: I had one of the lower end models (I forget which) and it was like wearing a torture device. Like it was made to be uncomfortable on purpose. By itself it almost dissuaded me from pursuing headphones. Moreover, the sound was like someone was beating the inside of an aluminum trash can with a baseball bat. I have never heard a high end grado and have absolutely no interest to.

 

[rocksteady65]

Overrated: 660S2. Voices are a fuzzy mess. I don't know why people tolerate this.
650/6xx just pisses bass on everything. At least the 650 I had did.

Grado: I had one of the lower end models (I forget which) and it was like wearing a torture device. Like it was made to be uncomfortable on purpose. By itself it almost dissuaded me from pursuing headphones. Moreover, the sound was like someone was beating the inside of an aluminum trash can with a baseball bat. I have never heard a high end grado and have absolutely no interest to.

"650/6xx just pisses bass on everything. At least the 650 I had did." No disagreement there. I see a trend developing in here...

 

[evanft]

600's have a lot more bass on my OTL amp (BHC). More bass by a lot than on my Ragnarok 1 driving XLR cables.

BHC has a high output impedance, which is going to raise the bass on most headphones, including the HD600. It basically acts like a 1-2 dB bass shelf under about 500hz.