My new Sennheiser 650 Headphones! I hear it all now!

[rasputin1963]

Santa just treated me to an early Xmas gift: a pair of SENNHEISER 650 headphones...

 

I''ve currently got it plugged into my iPod and am listening to my favorite songs (unfortunately, I'm a die-hard Oldies fan).

 

Y'know, listening with a fine pair of headphones after years of only listening with crappy ones is such a revelation. It is no exaggeration to say that all my old lineup of favorite Oldies now sound.... like completely different records altogether.

 

The old "Plato's Cave" metaphor is really apt... Until you've listened with good cans, you have no way of knowing what you've missed.

 

The transients are all iterated so crisply, the bass exhibits no more phase smear-- it plays along with the rest of the ensemble in perfect separateness, yet togetherness (does that make sense?). The swell of trombones and trumpets makes a roaring "bite" that never distorts...

 

I hear so many.... artistic choices being made that I never heard before... The producer's good choices, and his bad ones, are all now clearly writ.

 

In a way it's more bewildering, because I have more artistic information to analyze now; I didn't used to have to weigh in depth a lot of the producer's panning, compression and EQ choices... Now, I'm like: "Why the hell did he choose to do THAT?"

 

Good headphones, because they expose so much, also are "the great leveller"... I hear some production choices in records from 1967 that are superior to choices made in a record from 2003.

 

Comments? Anyone else like this particular set of headphones?

 

 

ras

[EccentRick]

Originally posted by rasputin1963 Santa just treated me to an early Xmas gift: a pair of SENNHEISER 650 headphones...

 

Congrats and enjoy! Senn models 600 and 650 are both very nice headphones, IMO. Good stuff.

 

 

Rick

[realtrance]

This is exactly why I hate the "dumbing-down" of home audio that's occurred over the past few years, at a time when providing widespread access to really high-quality sound at an extremely affordable price is completely possible. No, we've gone the route of convenience and greed, instead.

 

The HD line of headphones from Sennheiser are the absolute tops, from the old 580 onwards. I've had a pair of 580s for years that continue to be a revelation.

 

There's something you get from listening, without any background noise, computer fan noise or environmental noise or traffic noise, with a great pair of headphones -- or speakers, for that matter -- that absolutely transcends the more typical elevator-music style listening experience most people take as the norm. For almost any kind of music, recorded reasonably well.

 

It's too bad most people miss that. A pair of HD650s are a STEAL given what they offer in clarity.

[rasputin1963]

With more listening--- and we're talking MP3's, mind you!---- I find myself in disbelief that so much information is present in my favorite recordings.... records I thought I already knew well.

 

 

For example, today, in the old song "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty (circa 1977), I heard a Dominant 7th chord where, for thirty years I've only heard a regular Major Triad.

 

These 650's allow one to hear something that's almost metaphysical in nature.... and I'm referring to the INTENTIONALITY OF THE MUSICIANS.

 

In other words, I can feel the musicians' thought processes before they actually play their lick.

 

With inferior playback, the music one hears is kind of an "afterthought" or a "reproduction" of a performance... With these 650's I actually have the thrilling impression of observing the musician as he makes his mental choices, then plays them.

 

[i know, I sound like a burbling 1972 10-yr-old who just got ROCK 'EM-SOCK 'EM ROBOTS for Christmas.... ]

 

Listening to a wide swath of instruments (and hence producers) I am impressed with just how many production possibilities exist in an ordinary stereo field.... And no producer is particularly "wrong" with the choices he makes, necessarily... just.... different.

 

Why, f'rinstance, would one producer want his instruments to come together, all close 'n' tight within the stereo field, like a big warm bowl of oatmeal-butter-raisins-brown sugar; while another producer will have the different instruments (or "choirs" as I believe they're called) split super-dramatically in the left- and right- channels?

 

I'm listening to a number of 1960's hits in which the producers/engineers did the latter... records like "Eve Of Destruction" by Barry McGuire, "Skip A Rope" by Webb Cargill, and "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield... the musical choirs are VERY dramatically differentiated in the left and right fields, so much so that the listener can often literally tune out the lead singer altogether by turning the Balance knob. Yet that stark division-- it has to be stated--- are part 'n' parcel of the STUNNING record "For What It's Worth" was... The stark stereo treatment is part of the emotional impact of that record...

 

Hmmm.

 

Lest I rave too much, I also notice that my ears fatigue more quickly with these new 650's. It's as though they're unused to "firing" so rapidly by such precise spectral information...

[realtrance]

Turn 'em down a bit. You're probably used to listening louder to try to compensate for crappy, low-dynamic, mushy sound.

 

That "extreme stereo" stuff in the '60's and '70's was an artifact of the discovery of stereo; The Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" album is another example of this.

 

It's kind of like the excessive use of bloom to show off High Dynamic Range tech in recent console and PC video games (Gears of War, for example). The new tech starts with a shout and eventually settles in to the right level once everyone's made sure everyone knows it's there.