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Sennheiser HD600 offer

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HD6xx are repackaged HD650.

650 are slighly warmer overall and 600 a bit more top-end with slightly more forward vocals.
 
Just ordered some 600’s, was gonna wait till the Bristol show but doubt I would have got 35% discount, usually it’s 20% at best.
 
I find it annoying how Sennheiser bounces their prices around. For example, the 660S has ranged from $499 (MSRP in the US) to $299, with frequent detours to $349. I bit when the price was $399, and found them utterly unremarkable, smooth to be sure but rather dull and uninvolving. I’ve bought portable Sennheiser headphones for $60 a pair or so and been much more impressed.
 
The 600 offer from Sennheiser looks great vfm. I use 650's which I think were around £300 a year ago. Both need a headphone amp imo.
 
Hi All,

The HD600 is a benchmark phone that everybody should get to use at some stage in their “Audiophile life”. There is a reason most recording studios usually have a pair hooked into the “mix-down” desk for monitoring and creating the final stereo Mix. The HD600 seems to come up on sale occasionally then supply dries up and you go on a waiting list. If they are available and you are curious then jump in while you can.

Between the HD600, HD650 and HD660 I think that the HD600 is the best of the three. The other two seem to sacrifice top end extension to get a little more bass extension, they also appear to lose some of that Mid-range magic the HD600 gets just right.

The earlier HD600 used to more expensive because they originally came in a posh presentation box. These days it’s a plastic Blister-Pack in a cardboard box with the same headphone inside.

Also; the cables, ear pads and head-band padding are all interchangeable across the range and can be all purchased as spare parts. The beefier 6.25mm TRS cable as well as the balanced cable with a 4.4mm Pentacon connector that is supplied with the HD660 can be purchased separately for use with the HD600 giving you the best of both worlds.

I wouldn’t get to hung up on headphone amps, all three models are actually easy to drive with most devices. The impedance curve doesn’t change very much between 20Hz to 20kHz so the phones are not particularly reactive and draw very little current. The phones will only require a few extra millivolts to get the same volume. A smart-phone might struggle to give you ear shattering volume levels but my HD600's work fine from the headphone socket on my stereo Amplifier, as well as the FIIO K5 Pro headphone amp when I want to listen off the laptop. My other two “DIY” headphone amps are also quite happy to drive the HD600's including a little “chip amp” that uses a humble LM4808 op-amp which sounds allot better than the price would suggest.

If you have the Cash Jump in now and enjoy.

Happy Listening.

LPSpinner.
 
HD600 is an excellent headphone. I preferred it to the HD700 which I also owned and sold in favour of the HD600.

I paid £180 for it a few years ago from Sennheiser and have been very happy with it ever since. The only headphone I have found that has significantly outperformed it has been the Audeze LCD-X, at five times the price. Even then, it took a very good headphone amplifier to be able to really notice the differences.
 
I was so lucky with my pair. There was a thread here ages ago that alerted a few of us to some redundant stock after Zavi went bust and they were knocking out brand new pairs of HD600s in slightly shop-soiled boxes for £99 delivered! The presentation box inside was in perfect condition as were the cans. I don’t use them very often, but I’d hate to be without them. I consider them a real reference point. I have an old ‘Can Opener’ from the 1980s so hooking them up to the outputs of a power amp is easy enough which is useful for diagnostics etc. They really are superb headphones, I can’t imagine wanting/needing more.
 
Tony L said:
I was so lucky with my pair. There was a thread here ages ago that alerted a few of us to some redundant stock after Zavi went bust and they were knocking out brand new pairs of HD600s in slightly shop-soiled boxes for £99 delivered! The presentation box inside was in perfect condition as were the cans. I don’t use them very often, but I’d hate to be without them. I consider them a real reference point. I have an old ‘Can Opener’ from the 1980s so hooking them up to the outputs of a power amp is easy enough which is useful for diagnostics etc. They really are superb headphones, I can’t imagine wanting/needing more.
Click to expand...

I remember that. I was not so lucky when I put my order in, received an email to say they were OOS despite the site saying otherwise. A phone call after could not persuade them to find a pair for me :( To this day I still do not have a pair o_O
 
I am thinking of buying something to replace my (tatty and) old HD580s - how do 600s compare?
 
When you consider the quality of sound provided by a headphone like the HD600 they are a bargain even at their full RRP. Just think how much you need to spend on a pair of speakers and room treatment (or be blessed with a good sounding room) to get that level of neutrality and resolve.
 
The coupling between the headphone and measuring device makes it very difficult to measure a headphone with accuracy and consistency, so any third party headphone measurements should be viewed with caution, even if they're being used only to compare the FR of one headphone against another that have both been measured on the same device. That said, here are measurements I've taken of several headphones. This one is likely to be of most interest as it overlays the FRs of my HD58X, HD600, HD650 and HD660S.

All four HD models share a very strong family resemblance when it comes to imaging/headstaging, which is unsurprising given they all use the same earcup design. The biggest difference between the models to my ears is the frequency response and, to a lesser extent, the resolution.

In summary, the HD600 remains my favourite of the four and is the clearest, most natural sounding and most resolving to ears. For those who don't like the HD600's forwardness in the upper midrange, a subtle -1.5dB to -2dB EQ cut around 3.5kHz works wonders or, for the anti-EQ brigade, the 58X is a great alternative and arguably the best bang for buck.

I've never really warmed to my HD650, in stock form they sound slightly veiled and thick to my ears with a more pronounced midrange and upper bass than the HD600. Whenever I've used them I've always ended up EQ'ing them to sound like my HD600, which FWIW is surprisingly easy to do.

Disclaimer: my impressions are based on the actual samples I own, all with fresh earpads fitted, but do not account for intersample manufacturing variations. For example, the HD600 I bought for my dad are noticeably hotter up top and don't extend as far in the low end. Also, to test my suspicion about intersample variation, I once ordered three pairs of HD600 from Amazon (not a third party seller) at the same time. Two of these sounded close enough to each other not to worry about the differences but the third was not pleasant to listen to at all, - the upper mids were pushed too far forward and the headphones sounded harsh and lacked depth and spaciousness compared to the other two.
 
That's quite an alarming inconsistency rate given the small sample size. Some FR variance is to be expected in this price range but to be that audible it has be quite a margin. I wonder if consistency could have gone down after the move of production to Romania?

Even though Meze is Romanian and mostly make their own parts and are making some of the most well-made HP in the business.
 
krenzler said:
That's quite an alarming inconsistency rate given the small sample size. Some FR variance is to be expected in this price range but to be that audible it has be quite a margin. I wonder if consistency could have gone down after the move of production to Romania?

Even though Meze is Romanian and mostly make their own parts and are making some of the most well-made HP in the business.
Click to expand...
I conducted my subjective listening test on the three HD600 samples many years ago, long before production shifted to Romania.

To be fair I'm not singling out Sennheiser here, I'm sure this issue affects other brands too, even the $$$$ models. I've certainly seen some quite alarming measurements from other sources demonstrating intersample variations, and even significant variations between left and right transducers in the same headphone, which is arguably more serious!

It is of course difficult to ascertain just how much these variations have to do with the headphones themselves and the measuring technique. AIUI it's easier to get consistent measurements using the flat-plate coupler technique than devices that have pinnae attached (such as my miniDSP EARS) as the latter causes a lot of comb-filtering that can produce a very different response curve if you're a tiny bit off in your positioning of the earcup.
 
ToTo Man said:
I conducted my subjective listening test on the three HD600 samples many years ago, long before production shifted to Romania.

To be fair I'm not singling out Sennheiser here, I'm sure this issue affects other brands too, even the $$$$ models. I've certainly seen some quite alarming measurements from other sources demonstrating intersample variations, and even significant variations between left and right transducers in the same headphone, which is arguably more serious!

It is of course difficult to ascertain just how much these variations have to do with the headphones themselves and the measuring technique. AIUI it's easier to get consistent measurements using the flat-plate coupler technique than devices that have pinnae attached (such as my miniDSP EARS) as the latter causes a lot of comb-filtering that can produce a very different response curve if you're a tiny bit off in your positioning of the earcup.
Click to expand...

You make a good point, sample variation is something that doesn't get much attention because few of us get to compare many units. I heard and owned an inexpensive DAC a while back and agreed with several others that it was an excellent performer, punching well above it's modest price and made a mess of my rather more costly CDP. Then a friend bought one based on hearing mine, it was a different beast. Coarse and unfocussed. He would never have persisted based on that performance, but it was duly swapped and the replacement was absolutely fine.

I often wondered how much sample variation accounts for some radically different perceptions.
 
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