Senneheiser HD660S Impressions

I am def. not interested in a more efficient HD6XX that does not scale as well as HD650M with TOTL/proper amplifiers.

 

Finally home and did a quick listen using there lowest common denominator - iPhone with the Apple adapter. Big caveat is that I just came out of a 3 hour rehearsal and despite earpro sitting next to the drummer does a bit of a number. First impression is that it certainly presents the mids more forward than my AFO but I don't hear much balls in the low end. Listening to Simon Phillips drums sounds reasonable but certainly not involving. I can hear attack of the stick on the drum head quite well but I'm not really hearing a lot of the fundamental. I'll have to give another listen when my ears are fresh and with a decent source. Certainly didn't wow me out of the box like the AFO but I likely am preferring a different signature at the moment.

 

Hd 600 Brit-fi? What? Amphions as an ultimate tonal reference? Amphions are deliberately colored by design. That's the same as saying listening to an eighties record on NS10s or a 90s one on old Genelecs is what the record really sounds like as that's what the record was mixed on. It's just not true. The record sounds like what the record sounds like. The past isn't real anymore but the recording is.

I think you're just a low volume listener who doesn't care too much about the levels. Not that it matters for you as you're listening to music without a lot going on that's mostly not mixed with realistic instrumental levels anyway, recording practices be damned. Low volume listening to recordings with recessed percussion and guitars might lead to one to prefer a technically worse transducer. That whole experience would of be course lower fidelity to those very same recordings compared to playing them at a normalish level (80 db or so) on a flatter transducer. There are relative standards and loudness contours in this world and they are real but we're arguing about headphones so whatever...

 

ok, insomnia sets in so some more listening. This time with Modi Multibit/Vali2 and Mojo, going back and forth between HD660 and AFO. While there is something compelling with the 660 - initial note attack is strong though I think "oversharpened" is a good adjective. Listening to tracks from steely dan, good portion to the cannon points out some fits and misfits. There 660 don't handle crash and light hi hats well, rides are a bit cleaner. Guitars are ok but a little light and edgy. Sub bass is pretty much not to be found. The sound makes an impression but not a lasting one.

I could see this being a reasonable mixing hp if one was so inclined. Reasonably clean and neiutral-isl - or at least consistent, It doesn't strike me as a phone I want to use for fun listening. It isn't bad - just missing some elements of the AFO presentation that I like.

 

This is surprising to me, but I'm enjoying the 660S more with my Modi 2U than with the Modi Multibit. It sounds more even and less fatiguing with the 2U. With other headphones, I prefer the Modi Multibit though.

 

It´s been very obvious to me since the beginning that many SBAF regulars share a view of neutral that I don´t agree with and that´s fine. All I´m saying is one should listen neutral speakers* for yourself and compare headphone neutrality to that. In comparison to that I would definitely rate the HD 600 as somewhat relaxed/designed for enabling higher listening volumes (albeit nowhere near the scale as HD 650/Elear). It takes away some of the natural energy/brightness that exists in the recording. The comparison to accurate speakers lead me to a different definition, but your mileage may vary. HD 800 S** is the closest I think any headphone gets to that reference so far. I don´t care what the Klingon High Council decides about it, by all means continue to preach a different vision. This is still a great site nonetheless. You won´t find critical discussions like these on that many other audio forums. Anyways, I have no desire to turn this thread into a debate on neutrality so I´ll instead leave room for more impressions.

* Such as full range studio monitors, Revel stuff etc. And no, the studio range from Amphion is not colored by design (the cheaper consumer models are; if the studio range is colored it´s towards being very slightly relaxed/low listening fatigue). Also I´m also not a low volume listener with headphones. Mostly listened to newly released Michael Jackson (like the original songs in Xscape) yesterday evening, quite loud actually. At that volume I´d guess it goes beyond the upper midrange/treble sensitivity for many people who like the HD 650 the most here, but I didn´t have an issue with it at all. It just shows how subjective these things can be, but the only person you need to please in this hobby is yourself. If Grado is your thing, go for it and don´t mind what others say about them.

It´s great that the internet enables similarly thinking people to group together, but they always create a certain level of an intellectual echo chamber. It´s just human nature - not a good or a bad thing. Happens everywhere on some level, more when there are a lot of people with less experience of the topic gathering (= SBAF having less of it than Head-Fi, but don´t fool yourself into thinking this place is immune to it).

** Marv and I probably have very different treble sensitivity as I don´t have a huge issue with the stock HD 800 on most material even loud. Sure it´s a little brighter than neutral and has a pretty nasty spike, but to me it´s nowhere near unlistenable. HD 800 S fixes that entirely and I can do high volume on anything, including brightly mastered low DR pop. But yes, bass is better on HD 800 than the S version. It´s just that I find HD 6XX range more comfortable/lighter and have a higher engagement factor/HD800S is a bit too good at digging up microdetail for general enjoyment sometimes.

On the other hand for what it´s worth the HD 800 S also loses a bit (but clearly noticeable) of its soundstage magic with the S version, leading me to conclude that that nasty spike is instrumental in creating that huge soundstage. I´d say it´s probably the reason we see intentionally designed treble peaks in so many headphones. In other words it just comes with the territory, something you have to pay if you desire a speaker like presentation in headphones. It has nothing to do with bad engineering. To be honest If I ever get an HD 800/S again, I´m not really sure which version I would take. When I had the HD 800 S I missed the previous imaging and bass clarity. Both have their merits and that´s why they stayed in the lineup.

Another major issue that´s often overlooked is comfort/weight. It´s close to 50% of overall product quality for me, but this is obviously extremely subjective. If I could get a HD 800 stock or S sound in the HD 6XX chassis I would go for it instantly. There´s a huge difference in comfort between gaming 6 hours a row with the HD6XX and HD 800. This for me instantly disqualifies headphones like the Focal Utopia and most planar magnetics (I would simply never want to use them).

 

Before I had the HD600 I was an AKG guy. I had two K500s with K601 ear pads. The K500 was neutral-ish but sub-bass was almost lacking and the transition between the midrange and the highs was slightly boosted. With a powerful amplifier you could get the low end to kick in, and really enjoy that midrange-to-highs transition. It was not exactly neutral but still very pleasant.

After that I had some money issues, sold my K500s with their amplifier and saved up until I could buy the HD600. The HD600 does not have the slightly boosted midrange-to-highs transition of the K500. My HD600 had been modified to remove the bass bump to make it sound flatter. Bass is more linear, the midrange present and the highs are smooth and forgiving, making my HD600 sound boring. If "boring" to you equals "relaxed" then I agree with you. I happen to enjoy that sound quality of the HD600 so I refer to it as "neutral-ish."

I have had several headphones that sounded similar to the HD600 and every headphone manufacturer has its on flavour and/or tuning. I have owned the DT250-250, Sony CD900 ST, K240DF, Pioneer Monitor 10, K500 and DT48 among others. I was even lucky enough to try out Solderdude's HD650 with the Kameleon Module/Amplifier at his place and then you treat the term "neutral" as something relative to "bassy" or "boosted highs."

Do not let the word "neutral" become absolute or we might go Bloody Mary on the infidels. I cannot wait to give the HD660S a listen.

P.S. I am reading a book about Taoism. Relativity is beautiful thing.

 

So you really think that HD800S is close to reference neutral, with its screwed up sound with suppressed upper midrange that in part artificially creates its large soundstage? Really?!
...That is without including its woolly undefined bass compared to HD800 and its still brightish treble.

The midrange is were the fundamentals of music reside. I would never consider any speaker whose upper midrange is dipped compared to lower treble and lower midrange.

Personally the ZX2-Andro combo, Utopia, HD6x0 are way more tonally correct than HD800/S. Supermodding the HD800 may get you there somehow but you need some tricks beyond a simple SDR mod.

 

You must have missed his caveat

 

I have Dynamat/Coin mod/ behind driver foam rmv mod on my HD650. First 2 mods are must have IMO. For me these mods make a significant difference, more like a darker more bassy HD800 little brother. FR is near perfect for HP. TBH, HD800 FR with the dupont resonator and some cork in the driver side sound more similar to HD650M than not, HD800M tends to be leaner on the bass than HD650.

With proper mods HD800 gets only better, imo, so i don't exactly agree with Vorlon here. Stock HD800 is too bright, excess sparkle. In good accoustic environment you don't get any artificial sparkle with Speakers, just the instruments and vocals. I have heard various mods that Priidik has made for he's HD800, it is quite easy to mod them to shit. I get people who like them stock, i don't mind HD800 stock, but actually stock soundstage is foggier/ more imprecise due to the resonant highs.

 

It's the Ugri people's skull, if you are native Finn. 6 kHz gets attenuated in the thick monstrous scull-bone. I have that too.

On the other hand I wouldn't say HD800 stock or S is neutral, not even close. Bright and/or lean even when looking past that 6k spike.
SDR-corkring-feltliner mod gets it to the point I'd say it's one of the few close to neutral phones, by which point there is nothing left of the stratospheric headstage. I maintain that it's as neutral as HD650 (dynamat, foam reduced), only on other side of the fence.
The soundstage of modded HD800 gets more real images to it vs the endlessly expanding stardust that is the stock headstage.

There is also the acclimatization factor. Even stock HD800 can feel sort of neutral to me for half an hour a day, if that's the only thing I'm listening to. Neutrality assessment is difficult with short term listening. It takes some settling/averaging to some murk or brightness to become annoying.
I was fooling myself thinking 'yeah, that's pretty neutral' some time ago. Now I use speakers sparingly to bring myself back to my sneses.

 

I would never call either 800 neutral and I have heard properly set up studio monitors. I get that there are different opinions but IMO this is like saying red is blue and adding the caveat that we just simply have different ideas of what blue is. I disagree with the entire line of thinking.

I fear @Vorlon is is the anti-psalmanazar that the scriptures warned us about.

 

+1 for Ad-fi, it really is, it is such a strange place now.

 

I apologize for opening the neutral debate, I was trying to find a point of reference when someone says the 660S is 'closer to neutral'.



It does kinda prove my point though, it seems neutral is a loaded term. Many seem to have differing opinions about the definition.

I am still curious to hear the 660S, though.

 

Even HD800M is on the lean side of neutral, not enough bass presence with some genres. HD800 stock is obviously far away from neutral.

Then again, i don't expect to see HP that can do big driver slam and believable full soundstage anytime soon.. Nope, Eikon has decent, but 'fun bass' , HE6 is still compressed, that's not it. Audeze is a bad joke. I am aware that comparing to speakers is only a reality check, not that HP will be on the same level anytime soon.


Edit. I don't want to take credit from Eikon, they are the best closed cans that i have heard this far.

Big + with HD800 compared to Eikon is that at least the bass is not compressed to **** and there is no added bloat. I really like Eikon, but because it has apparent closed can bloom/cup sound, it is not a clear winner over HD800 in bass. On the plus side, Eikon has stout low down impact and dynamic bass, only hindered by the cup sound/bloom.

In this case HD650M stands in the middle ground, it has more presence than HD800, less dynamic, goes down low, but Eikon hits low with more dynamics and better impact/mass.

 

It seems to me the 2 serve totally different purposes, HPs aren't going to do what speakers do, and there are some things that HPs do better than speakers.

This could easily be another thread though, probably doesn't belong on the HD660S impressions thread.

 

I didn´t say HD 800 S hits reference neutral (only that it´s the best effort so far), but it does yes get closer to that than the HD 600. And to my ears HD 660 S gets closer than HD 600, which is in a way both a plus and a minus depending what kind of material you are listening to. One big problem I feel with assessing headphone neutrality is simply that all open back headphones are inherently flawed due to not being able to reach deep bass. They all roll off fairly early. That´s something that can create a bright/edgy impression in some people. It´s similar to when you listen to smaller calibrated studio monitors (= can sound somewhat uncomfortably bright), but the moment you add a subwoofer or move on to larger models the excess brightness is gone when the deep bass is finally there too. My dream in headphones is to exactly reproduce what full range accurate speakers do - many will disagree with that goal and there´s nothing wrong with that either. It´s also possible that dream is technically impossible, but we´ll see what happens.

As for mods I have zero experience of them. I can appreciate the effort people put into that stuff and would love to hear their work, but in a small country like Finland finding that kind of stuff is not exactly easy and I don´t have a personal interest in doing mods myself. Just not that much into the tinkering aspect of this hobby anymore.

Anyways, isn´t it time to let this thread go back to its actual topic? I never imagined some people here would get so riled up from a a few disagreements from what is considered mainstream thought here on SBAF. I´ll only say that perhaps some things that are considered "facts" among certain people may simply be a case of shared subjective preferences. That´s the intellectual echo chamber phenomenon which happens on every forum on some level.

EDIT: Next up on my HD 660 S impressions series will be a focus on gaming (almost as important as music listening to me). Despite being otherwise such a problematic headphone, in my experience the HD 700 still holds the #1 position there so far. Let´s see if HD 660 S proves to be a viable challenger. HD 600 are ok, but clearly too tame for gaming - especially when it comes to fast dynamics and pinpoint positional audio in FPS games. HD 800 stock are awesome, but simply aren´t comfortable (+ too heavy) enough for longer gaming sessions for my head size.

 

Marv's assessment of the 660's were pretty spot on with what I heard. They didn't sound as cohesive as the 650's.the vocals also didn't sound nearly as smooth as the 650's. I don't believe in burn-in as my 650's were fantastic out the box. I believe most 650 owners here looking for more would be disappointed as I was. 500.00 is a lot of money for a bit more clarity imo.