Sennheiser HD650 Love (Appreciation Thread)

Yes, I completely agree. That's part of why I use it as my primary headphone. (sometimes with Sonarworks as well)

 

Digital Signal Processing. It would be a bit too far afield probably to spend a lot of time explaining it in this thread (especially because I'm not the most qualified to do so). But you might want to start here. The 10th Anniversary Edition uses the same DSP from the Master 7. In a lot of ways, the DAC-19th 10th Anni is more or less a single ended Master 7, but with generally better USB implementation because of the Amanero option. (The Master 7 can get the Amanero option now too, but most of them that you'll hear in the wild don't have it.)

It's what differentiates these two DAC-19 models:

$640 http://www.audio-gd.com/Pro/dac/DAC19/DAC19EN.htm
$800 http://www.audio-gd.com/Pro/dac/DAC1911/DAC19EN.htm

Make sure that the one you ordered is the latter. There's way more difference between the two than $160 would suggest.

 

I have the latest version, and if DSP makes it sound better then great! Also curious how Master 7 compares to DAC 19. That is probably what I'm gonna buy next time I need to upgrade my DAC, if it's a natural upgrade over DAC 19 that is.

HD650 is just an amazing headphone, and I really can't wait to hear it on the Liquid Carbon. I have tried many headphones and I don't feel any of them were a clear upgrade over HD650. HD800S might be, but let's see what happens. Hopefully they did something good to justify the pricetag.

 

@purrin @New Reformation @Hands as this looks cleaner than a massive multi-quote for a maybe misplaced but related to the discussion about the HD 650's slight ringing rant.

I think we have reached the limits of headphone design in general and the various design tradeoffs for upper mids and treble reproduction in close to the ear transducers. There are major design problems in four areas:

1. Ringing and grain.
2. Grossly wrong amount of upper mids and lower treble. Frequency response issue
3. Air/high treble FR
4. Timbre/weight/authority issues. It's weird to talk about treble authority but sparkly cymbals should shimmer! A full body weight cymbal slam should feel like it. Cymbal rides should not sound plastic.

The HD 650 overcomes 2, and 4 by damping the driver. Sennheiser correcting 2 causes problems with 1 and 3. Removing the back foam negates 2 in a way. It has the some of the least offensive amount of treble for headphones that have treble and aren't completely rolled off like the prefazor LCD-3 or the UE6000 and Roland muddy closed shit cans. The 580/600 are shoutier and actually ring more my experience even though they are better at the proper amount of air while the 800 just has a ridiculously offensive voicing and lacks weight like an electrostat but not as bad.

The DT-880 and DT-990 (250 and 600 ohms versions) are better about 1 and 3 but just horrifically offensively bad about 2 due to 1980s diffuse field treble lunacy and Beyerdynamic's "We don't damp shit" approach. When you hit volcanic peak of the Beyer treble Mount Doom at 10khz with the over 2ms of ringing. That is utter pain, false detail, recording artifact highlight and taunting insanity. They also sound oddly metallic so they screw up timbre.

Electrostats and planars have their own problems. Planars with upper mid suckout and ringing. They frequently have false detail spikes at 9-11 khz too that grit up the treble like it's covered in sand. All electrostats have timbre and planar-like FR issues but succeed at ringing or treble air. The Koss has the smoothest FR if it seals but has a slight upper mid bump followed by some planar-like upper mid suckout and isn't as resolving as the better dynamics like the HD 580's children. Saying dynamic drivers are actually worse and "lower fidelity" is insane as they obviously achieve a more speaker like timbre and speakers are the standard whether you like it or not.

All headphones are trashy sounding compared to good monitor speakers in even a semi-treated room. Treat the walls behind you and the speakers in a mimalist, home office type space, correctly EQ (or get someone else to or buy something like the Sonarworks kit) a decent pair of near fields (these will cost you about the same as a TOTL in price headphone) , and except for bass you'll just have a higher fidelity personal audio experience. The HD 600/650 make sacrifices to come much closer to this tonality wise than other hi-fi headphones is what I am trying to get at.

 

Basically what I was trying to say in picture form Ultrabike. For STAX I've only heard cheaper Lamba models but the HD 6XX is already ridiculously high-fidelity as far as headphones go (I can't even perceive the 5hz ringing on the 650s right now as I type this) and spending ten times more won't really be getting you any closer to the source (the sound of the recording on flat monitor speakers) due to the nature of headphones.

 

I'm replying to you in a different thread to not go too off topic.

That's just new pads compressed down like the old pads on the black driver HD 650. The HD 580/600 used those pads back in the day too. Sennheiser made the entire line more neutral (ie better fidelity) and revoiced the HD 650 driver somewhat. There is a big difference between the black driver HD 650 and the current one even with new pads. Test it yourself. The current HD 600/650 do not audibly vary at 100 hz. FR isn't everything either as the HF 555/595 sound veiled compared to the HD 558/598 despite being louder in the presence region.

The current HD 600 also sounds brighter than the older 600 as the bass hump is lowered making the slightly shouty upper mids and lower treble stand out when ABing. The current HD 650 just sounds bassier compared to the current HD 600 as it's slightly dark in the treble despite not actually having MORE bass. The balance is just different. Basically the current HD 600 is higher fidelity and better built than the older ones but it might sound less pleasant since they fixed a problem that helped to balance out another problem. Sennheiser has also gotten incredibly good at making the drivers since they've been making them since at least 1991. The current 600 ones aren't hand matched and there's no channel imbalance. Compare that to Beyer.

For me:
new HD 650 > old HD 600 > new HD 600 > HD 580 as they break > old HD 650. The old HD 650 is the only one I would be seriously ticked off about having to use as a daily driver.

 

The +6dB bass boost actually ends up being much less when the Wet is set low. Here's what 30 Wet looks like with +6dB Bass Boost (0 Tilt). As you can see the actual < 100 Hz bass increase with these settings is 1-3 dB.



Still a work in progress. Sounds good to my ears so far.

Using Project Polaris as amp

 

One thing to note about using the 'stock' average compensation curve is, they chop off the compensation below 35Hz, so the fall off at the very bottom end is rather steep.

Compensating for that additional fall off can add up to way more than +6db, as in can you say +20dB or more, if the aim is to extend down well below 20Hz…
This is where the 'full spectrum' or "No Limits" compensation curve can greatly reduce the amount of added 'correction' that is needed.

JJ

 

I'm just going based off all the black box, silver driver 2015 units I've heard and the Sonarworks averaged measurements corroborating that. I assumed the silver box had the bass boost with 600 treble and the black box changed that but honestly I have no idea when Sennheiser changed what with them (pads, baffles, drivers) or if it's just product variation. The 600/650 drivers might just start at the same base and are just binned and matched based on how they turn out measuring.

The current 650 does tend to always sound a little more cohesive and clean compared to the 600 but being darker/warmer sounding (anyway they do it, it still ends up sounding about two to three decibels "darker" or so when ABed but I've never done silverbox silver driver to black box back to back) can tends to turn into a gooey/asphyxiated mess on tubes, warm-voiced DACs/amps, rolled off protocols like DirectSound, old CD players with warmed over NOS DACs, and shitty "audiophile warm" receivers. I guess you could call the HD 650 both more revealing and more tolerating of brighter/bad recordings than the HD 600 which is why I like it better

 

HD650 is always referred to as a dark sounding headphone on head-fi and I begin to wonder if it's because people are just used to headphones with treble peaks and/or emphasized treble, which includes most headphones sadly, or if the HD650 really just is dark sounding.

 

Yes. This has been especially exaggerated by the throngs of people whose first "good" headphone was (very reasonably) the Grado SE60/80. Going from that to the HD6x0 can be jarring.

 

Old driver HD650 is moderately dark sounding to me. In this context unmoded HD800 is a bit more than moderately bright. Rugliner'ed HD800 just about moderately bright and LCD-2F more than moderately dark, or maybe moderately dark and dull is better description. LCD-3F (veiled set) is very dark but with very annoying treble peak, = dark and bright at the same time
Context is imprtant thing here IMO, people who think live unamped acoustic performance is reference sound or people who think super hot up top metal is reference have very different POVs (or POHs).

 

As Priidik said, context is key but...

I would without a doubt agree with head-fi on this one. They are dark, but also quite pleasant. I think Romaz description of the LCD-3's in big sound fits HD650 perfectly. "If you want to sit back and chill, no problem with this headphone, taken in isolation it doesn't sound dark at all. It sounds very good, very pleasant. But when you start to compare it, it starts to sound a little bit veiled."

I love my 650's to death but I can't go straight from another headphone to HD650 without taking a break in between, otherwise I usually find it to sound too dark.

 

I would agree it's dark but not as dark as people make it out to be. Most headphones have severe treble problems and the 580/600/650 line doesn't. The HD 650 treble is only a little shelved by a few decibels so that you notice it but it's not even comparable as dark to how bright Beyerdynamics, Grados, the HD 800, and many closed cans are. Maybe you could call the pre-fazor LCD-3, UE6000s, or that Roland studio can as dark as those are bright but the HD 650 might as well be a set of bone-flat monitor speakers compared to them for me.

 

You are right, it's not as dark as DT990 is bright for example. If we look at my example, I said that HD650 doesn't feel very dark at all when listened to in isolation, DT990 is painful regardless.

 

Solderdude, one-half of Garage1217, has put together some amazing documentation detailing the measureable effects of HD650 mods. It's a work in progress that has already reached 66 pages (!). Really fascinating stuff...

http://www.mediafire.com/view/d9kb768up61eh3b/HD650_modifications.pdf

SOURCE: http://diyah.boards.net/thread/681/project-polaris?page=14&scrollTo=15935

Page 33 shows the effects of both the rear foam and quarter mods. Basically, a touch more bass between 40 - 300 Hz, slightly less peakiness between 5KHz - 10KHz, and a bit more presence between about 15KHz - 22KHz.

Interesting stuff.

 

Anyone going to attempt the K240 foam mod?