Sennheiser HD 650 Headphones Review

The HD650′s are advertised as “reference class” headphones, that is to say, the headphones to which all others should be measured against in terms of balance, detail, reproduction and bass. But are they worth their lofty price tag?  Read on to find out.

Wearing them

Sennheiser have a long, established tradition of creating hard wearing, world class hardware. The design here is beautiful, all gray faux metal (more on that) and big open backed cans covered by a metal mesh. In short, they look wonderful both on other people’s heads (I look terrible with headphones on) and while sat nonchalantly on your desk, waiting to be picked up. They’re also mind bendingly comfortable, everyone I handed them to remarked on how wonderful they felt when pressed up against the side of your face for extended periods of time, which is always a big consideration while choosing a set of headphones. The included 9 foot Y-cable is detatchable and can be replaced when they finally give in on you.

Disappointingly Sennheiser have decided to opt for a plastic material to cover most of the ‘phones, albeit a very high quality one. This makes them light, but also belies the price tag here, which is very steep, a cool £250 or $350, depending on your currency of choice.

Hearing them

Oh boy, are the HD650′s detailed. When played with the right source (lossless rips of my favourite albums) they performed like stallions, leaping ahead of the competition in terms of balance, tone (very natural), detail and seperation. That is, of course because I played them with good equipment and great sources, those of you looking to plug these into an iPod could do better elsewhere, they become simply average when handed poor material to deal with. It’s this snobbishness that’s going to restrict these to the audio-professional or sound enthusiast only as the average music listener will not find these to be anything special, indeed it was only when I started throwing them flac files that they burst into life and started blowing me away. Considering Sennheiser hand picked each driver to ensure left/right matching tolerences, you can tell a massive amount of time has been spent designing the hell out of these headphones, it pays off.

Also worth note is the bass on the 650′s, which is monumental. Coming at you like a sonic boom in most scenarios it handled even extremely bassy tracks like nothing at all, even more impressive than its monumental bass response is how they never let it drown out the detail that lives in the rest of the recording.

On the downside, the noise leakage from these cans is almost hilarious, taking them off and setting them down while music is playing will magically transform them into a pair of speakers. Listening to music near people is no longer a personal experience, folk. Now, you might consider your collection of avant-garde post-jazzcore world class, but that doesn’t mean the woman next to you on the bus is going to dig it as much as yourself.

Conclusion

For the average Joe, Jane and Jimmy consumer the HD650′s will do nothing for them, the price, desire for high quality source material and obscene sound leakage will send them sprinting in the direction of more consumer focused ‘phones. But for sound enthusiasts, producers or just those who want to hear a record how it was designed to be heard, the HD650′s are hard to knock at all.

Rating: (8/10)