 Sennheiser HD 600 Headphones
I've been an audiophile for donkey years now and have even,
in my small way, achieved some renown as a reviewer. Yet, every time I review headphones I
get defensive. You see, I like headphones -- and true audiophiles, of course,
aren't supposed to.
But headphones are indispensable in so many situations. As
a sometimes participant in the recording process, I use high-resolution headphones as a
diagnostic tool. And as a considerate husband (well, I try), I'll don a pair so my
wife can read in the living room during The West Wing. And as a traveler, I
wouldn't dream of going anywhere without a portable CD player and my Etymotic ER-4s --
especially in this new age of arriving two hours before departure.
Valid as all those applications are, however, they're not
why I love headphones. The real reason I love headphones is that they remind me of my
early teens, when I'd hunker down under my bedcovers late at night with an AM radio and
catch distant radio stations bouncing off the stratosphere, playing exotic music I'd never
heard before. Stuff like Muddy Waters and the Howling Wolf -- and even inspired quackery
like Mexican radio selling patent cures for everything between Gospel songs wilder than
anything I'd ever heard in a church.
And that's the real reason to have headphones, of course.
They allow you to have a meaningful musical experience when the only other option is
silence. I know folks who listen to cans because they can't afford a high-quality source and
loudspeakers. Others have roommates with different schedules or tastes. And some
deranged souls like me simply like 'em. Go figure.
Out of all the headphones I've tried, however, there's one
I keep returning to as my personal reference: the Sennheiser HD 600. It is tonally
accurate and remarkably sensitive to detail. It is also extremely comfortable hour after
hour.
It is also a total bear to drive and therein lies a tale.
Does truth sound bitter, as one at first believes?
The HD 600 is a refinement of Sennheiser's long-lived (and
superb) HD 580. When the company celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1995, it made a
commemorative model of the 580 that substituted carbon fiber for the extruded plastic, the
HD 580 Jubilee. The Jubilee was surprisingly less colored than the conventional 580, and
this caused Sennheiser to re-examine the headphone looking for other areas to improve. The
HD 600 retains the carbon-fiber ear-cup and bale and replaces the plastic screens from the
580 with stainless steel versions. In addition, by using computer modeling, Sennheiser is
able to focus the neodymium magnets to better drive the duofol diaphragms -- the
600 is built to a 1dB tolerance as opposed to the 580's 3dB.
That duofol diaphragm, by the way, was developed for
the HD 580 and is mounted without a conventional surround-- a move Sennheiser says reduces
edge-related distortion.
Underneath the HD 600's carbon-fiber bale are four thick,
velour-covered foam pads, which spread the 9-ounce weight of the headphones over a large
area, making them feel almost weightless. Similarly, foam rings surround the ear-cups of
the 'phones, allowing them to rest lightly around your ears. The ear-cups do not isolate
you from the environment (or it from you), since their backs are screen-covered and
essentially open. The upside to this is that you can hear what goes on around you -- and
the downside is that everyone around you can hear what you're hearing (but softer, of
course).
The HD 600s are a 300-ohm load and no portable can drive
them properly -- a separate headphone amplifier is required.
Now the fact that the HD 600s require a good headphone amp
wouldn't even raise an eyebrow if such critters were in general use, but the fact is, they
aren't. Unless you're a bit of a headphone nut, you've probably never even heard of a
headphone amplifier. Most headphones are used with a Walkman or other portable players,
which have a teeny little op-amp driving their headphone output. And that's sufficient to
drive the flimsy little gimme headphones that come with the portables or are sold to work
with them. But most high-fidelity dynamic headphones perform a whole lot better if they
have a little more juice driving them.
And, glory be, headphone amplifiers, once you look out for
them, are a lot more common than you'd think. HeadRoom not only makes a number of them, ranging from portable models
to heavy-duty hi-rez home models, but they have begun to carry a wide assortment from
around the world -- including Sennheiser's top-of the-line Orpheus model with its
dedicated D/A section and electrostatic headphones.
But here's what's weird about the Sennheiser HD 600s: Their
300-ohm impedance dictates that they be driven by a headphone amplifier, but Sennheiser,
realizing that almost nobody uses one, has "tuned" them as though they will not
be paired with an amp capable of successfully driving them. Of course, almost all hi-rez
dynamic phones are tuned similarly.
Kind of a Catch 22, eh?
So what's that mean? An interesting question, that -- but
first let's look at how they sound, then we'll try to figure out why.
The whole of the truth lies in the presentation
I used my four-year-old HeadRoom Max amplifier for this
review. HeadRoom has recently released an improved version of the Max, as well as an
all-out assault on the headphone amp state-of-the-art, the Blockhead, both of which will
be arriving here shortly for review.
The HD 600s are comfortable -- on my head, at least. I find
them so comfortable that I actually forget I'm wearing them sometimes, only to (literally)
be pulled up short when I get up and attempt to wander around with them on. They're light
(9 ounces) and Sennheiser, being German, has carefully measured and calibrated their
pressure against your head. (It's 2.5 Newtons, if you must know.)
But as comfortable as I find 'em, you may experience them
differently. Chacun à son gout, you know?
Their sound is warm, enveloping, and seductive -- yet
detailed. In fact, there aren't many loudspeakers that can match the HD 600s for deep,
powerful bass. On big orchestral works, such as the Bernstein/NYP Mahler Third Symphony
[DG 450 080], the deep brass and percussion of the opening phrase exploded into Avery
Fisher Hall so propulsively I could feel the floorboards flexing. And during Joseph
Herseth's glorious trumpet solos, I could actually hear the brassy overtones of his
instrument's bell as it rang like a, ummm, bell. Now that's high-end detail.
Vocals sounded warm and present through the HD 600s,
although female singers, such as Emmylou Harris (Wrecking Ball [Elektra 81845])
tended to sound a tad distant throughout their lower ranges.
As did, now that I had started to notice, solo instruments.
In fact, wide-ranging instruments such as piano -- on, for instance, Robert Silverman's
masterful Beethoven sonatas [Orpheum Masters KSP 830 10-CD set] -- sounded slightly bigger
and warmer than life in their lowest registers (a seductive additive coloration) and then
sounded slightly less present throughout the midrange and presence region, before popping
into sharp relief for their upper octaves and overtones.
And this, I suspect, is primarily that pesky built-in
damping at work. It's annoying, but not crippling.
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression
Now, I'm talking about the slightest amount of shading
here, not a difference that turns, say, a cello into a double bass. Even so, it's a tonal
shift that you won't hear on a headphone such as the Stax SRS-4040 I reviewed recently.
But the 4040 costs over $2300 (including a dedicated tubed amp, to be fair), while the
Sennheiser can be purchased almost anywhere for $350. You can buy yourself a heckuva
headphone amp with that difference.
But there's another difference between the two headphones
and, even though it's obvious, I hadn't thought about how to articulate it until I had a
conversation with John Atkinson, who was in the midst of mixing one of his recording
projects.
We were talking about the Stax, and John was allowing as to
how much he relied upon them as a mastering tool. Well, yes, I agreed, but I find myself
preferring to listen to the Sennheisers. John looked at me under his eyebrows and said,
"Oh, I never said I listened to them for pleasure. That's why I own my Sennheisers.
But the Stax always tell me what's wrong with a recording."
Of course! That's it. The Stax are detailed, but somewhat
coldly so. You hear everything, but they're ruthless at uncovering flaws, edits, clams,
and coughs. As a tool for the engineer, they're in a class of their own. The Sennheisers,
in contrast, are warm and have a slightly (ever so slightly) recessed midrange, but they
reveal the musical gestalt rather than its component parts.
That's what I want in a headphone, actually. I mean
the ones I listen to for pleasure, that is. You may feel differently. A lot of audiophiles
do -- they'd much rather hear what's wrong with a recording than what's right with it. And
that's just fine by me. It's just not where I find my joy.
What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay
for an answer
So, if you're looking for a pair of headphones that'll give
you hour after hour of enjoyable listening, I recommend the Sennheiser HD 600. It's almost
as revealing as the Stax SRS-4040 at a much lower price. But I believe it's a far more
enjoyable headphone than the Stax -- a contention you may well disagree with, if you
prefer total honesty to a soupçon of flattery. I like total accuracy as much as
the next fella, but apparently, when it comes to headphone listening, only to a point.
But what about this? We've already established that the HD
600 requires a headphone amplifier to sound its best. And we also know that Sennheiser,
realizing that most listeners don't have one, have adjusted the damping on the 600 as
though it weren't being driven by an adequate amplifier. What if Sennheiser made a version
of the phone for those of us who do own headphone amps? That would probably take
care of the extremely minor colorations currently present in the 600 and that, my
friends, would be a headphone fit for the gods.
Until then, the HD 600 is a mighty fine way to while away
the wait.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
Sennheiser HD 600 Headphones
Price: $449 USD
Warranty: Two years parts and labor
Sennheiser Electronic KG
W-3002 Wedemark, Postfach 10 02 64
Germany
Phone: (51) 30/600-0
Fax: (51) 30/63 12
Website: www.sennheiser.com
U.S. distributor:
Sennheiser Electronic Corporation
One Enterprise Drive
Old Lyme, Connecticut 06371
Phone: (860) 434-9190
Fax: (860) 434-9022
Fax: (860) 434-0509
Website: www.sennheiserusa.com
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