HD600

It's been a year or two but I did test a new production 600 with the shitty new box and it was super peaky in the highs to a level that I couldn't stand. Vs the older sound which unmodified was still peaky but more tolerable. Modified 600 is the only one that works for me and with the right mods they're damn fine.

 

IMO: old ones are less peaky, new ones are more peaky, properly modded ones get rid of the peaks without glossing over the highs. The old ones were "better", but IMO not to the point where I'd hunt one down over a new one for modding. edit: also, old ones are still peaky enough to be annoying after a while for me, just less so.

Also, JAR mods are the best HD600 mods I've heard and of course no more annoying peakiness.

 

I just hunted down a pair of new old stock HD600s after foolishly selling my own.

These HD600s are even older and they sound fantastic.

I am running them out of my MacBook Air M2 with the upgraded headphone socket while I wait for my Schiit Modi and Magni I just purchased from Schiit.

I have no idea if they are the silver diaphragm but I think so... anyways... exciting times for me. A lesson to never sell my HD600s. $300 has never sounded so good.

 

^Many of us have done this, including me!

 

ooh! I bought one of you amps off of Canuck AudioMart... actually I better send the money....

It's like a Supreme drop. At least I am getting it close to the retail price.

 

LOL I am listening with my MacBook Air M2 with the upgraded headphone jack and my HD600s and I am pretty happy. Haha...

 

I think this is a quite good deal. $261 @Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-Open-Back-Professional-Headphone/dp/B00004SY4H

 

Could be off but has anyone been able to determine whether the new production non-marbled HD600s are within variance of the older lines?

 

Years ago people were measurebating looking at Made in Ireland vs. Made In Romania vs. I bought mine before the 650s came out (etc). Charts I saw looked like small within-tolerance variance.

To my ears, the various samples I’ve heard over time sound the same.

 

I would be going off of my aural memory, but I couldn't tell much of any difference from a 2017 silver screen, marbled version and one that I bought about 3 months ago. The new ones have a cheaper feeling/looking frame (matte texture) and the HD650 headband pad (which I find more comfortable), but otherwise seemed exactly the same. I deemed both worthy of being JAR modded.

 

As others may have already written, the age of the pads has a huge impact on the sound, so if you don't keep that in mind when comparing the old HD600 with the new HD600, I think you'll very easily come to the wrong conclusion. I think that such erroneous conclusions have been circulated on the Internet.

I've been using the HD600 for over 20 years, and have used 3 pairs during that time, including the one I gave to my son. There may be a difference between the old and new, but I think it's a level that can be ignored.

 

It is a remarkably small sample size but I felt there was enough of a difference here to warrant comment. All measurements there were taken with the same pads, cable, and grilles, the only differences are the baffle and the capsule. Please note that I got my terminology very backwards in the linked post and it'll take a while before my hand's recovered enough to really fix that, haha:

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/hd600.171/page-15#post-293054

 

I had a recent audio adventure I wanted to share. I have two pairs of vintage black silk HD600, however, the first pair had a damaged driver which I replaced with a pair of new production drivers from a silver screen HD600.

This hybrid black silk HD600 sounds like a lot like the silver screen pair that the drivers came from, but with a wider, deeper sound stage. Unfortunately, I’m getting the same fatigue with this as a stock silver screen HD600.

I compared the hybrid pair to the other black screen, brass ring driver HD600 with the same new style ear pads and after market balanced cable.

• The frequency range feels more present, and louder on the hybrid pair. The bass/mid bass seems seem louder in relation to vocals.

• I think most of the HD600 fatigue is from the new production driver than the difference in screens.

• I don’t know how much the age of a HD600 driver plays into my impressions. The unmodified HD600 had a serial number in the 35,000 range. It has to be over 15 years old at this point.

So yeah. This was a fun little project, I'm not so sure about this repaired HD600 and I think I’m going to return the drivers to where they came from and just leave it as spare parts.

 

What’s up with the stock cable of the new release? It’s thin and sticky and feels like what we call a dropveter here, which basically a string of licorice. Good thing my 20 year old cardas cable still works great.

Other than that these are exactly what i wanted, just clean and even keeled just like i remember the old ones.

Chain is Yggdrasil A2 xlr > Lundahl xfr > Lyr 3 in high gain. Tried low gain but these need high gain to wake up otherwise they are a bit sleepy.
Do have one of those dampening copper things on the way and i am thinking about getting some of those ZMF suede pads to try out as well.

Happy snoofer.

 

Concur. Is your pair Made in Romania or Ireland?

 

Sorry for being possibly dense but are you referring to the HD600s as a whole or the cable specifically sounding even-keeled? I know that there are those on the forum who have their heads more securely fastened than me but while I HATE to acknowledge that cables can change the sound of a headphone.... blegh.

I love the HD600s frankly and don't see myself ever letting go of the pair I have. I don't relish the thought of the sound changing drastically with new units (I remember that there was some issue with significant variance in FR around the time they moved production to Romania, but I also recall that that was not long after remediated).

 

The drivers are still made in Ireland as they always have been. There has been some debate about drivers changing, but my theory is that new drivers are just not as "broken in" as other drivers. Mass plays an affect too and older drivers get olis, dust, dirt, skin, etc, which also may play affect on drivers. The mylar is super thin and makes it nearly impossible to clean as well.

The screen HAS been a change and my theory (again, just my crazy wacky ideas) in an attempt to lift the "Sennheiser veil". There is a slight dip in the 5-6K range with the older black silk that looks more flat with the sliver screens.

I am not saying your wrong, I am just presenting other ways there could be variances in the two drivers besides just production. They all vary slightly, even in production.

 

Box says made in Ireland, i usually buy made in Scotland but i’ll take it!

No worries, i am referring to the cans themselves. As for cable difference the Cardas seems a bit smoother in the highs which can attributed to capacitance. Or placebo, either way not gonna use that shitty stock cable. I might do a comparison with the 22 year old one with the same pads when i visit my brother again.

 

I want to talk more about why ECBA -> HD600 is good without derailing the thread where I first brought it up.

They still sound smaller than some other headphones I could plug in here, a bit humid for lack of a better term, and there could be more to cymbal hits all around, but the 600's timbre for most things scales with this amp: drum beats have this visceral perception of their width rapidly changing and I can feel that one stick is hitting closer to the mic than the other. I feel the guitar strings as this narrow bar in front of the rest of the soundstage that I could reach out and grab and I can perceive that it's being held at an angle -- there's somehow height info in how the notes decay, idk. It's stimmy as all hell.

Full chain was Cambridge Azur 350c -> ifi spdif ipurifier2 w/ipowerx psu -> Auralic Vega on its good settings -> ECBA, and I was just listening to "Oscillation" by The Men on repeat. I normally listen on repeat, but I also think it helps gear differences jump out at you more easily.

 

The HD600 is indeed a gem in so many regards, timbre being definitely one of them!

Over many, many decades I have owned and/or heard countless headphones; some costing many thousands of dollars. In regards to Sennheiser specifically, I first owned the HD 580, then the HD 600, then the HD 650 before I jumped to higher tier cans, across many different brands of which, Sennheiser-wise, I dabbled a bit with the highly contentious HD 700 and then briefly with the HD 800. I finally had settled on a second pair of HD 650s and for a good long while... however, I too have recently come back to the venerable HD 600 and more than content. They synergize extremely well with my custom Silk vacuum tube amp, surprisingly even better than my HD 650s which have now been passed on to a friend and undergoing a major mod project. The timbre, the air, the overall naturalness of the HD 600 sound signature is just too appealing to my ears to deny it's proper place at the end of my chain now.