Sennheiser HD 65 TV Closed Back Dynamic Headphones for TVs

Sennheiser HD65 - not just for TV!

The Sennheiser HD65 TV headset is advertised as being for listening to TV -- for which is it great, especially with the (detachable) wire extension that allows you to sit a decent distance from a TV. But in general it is far superior for listening to spoken audio than music-oriented headphones, which have too much bass bias. With full-coverage earpieces, the sound you want to hear is beautifully isolated from external sounds, which are very muted and in the background. That also means the volume can be kept quite modest -- and safe for your hearing.

I bought this headset for listening to audio that I do closed captioning for, and for general audio transcription of lectures, presentations, etc. It is ideally-suited because of the spoken-voice clarity. For that usage, it's as good as it gets.

Very disappointing
I purchased this set of headphones based on the fact that they are supposed to be designed for TV listening. After reading the specs, with neodymium magnets and independent left and right volume controls and all that, I figured that these headphones would do the trick. They didn't.

My hearing isn't great, but I can hear normal conversion well enough if there isn't too much background noise. When watching TV, I sometimes have a difficult time understanding the spoken word. I sometimes have to ask my wife "what did s/he say" even though the sound is turned up so that it is too loud for her. We always put on subtitles on any DVD that we watch, just so that I can understand what's going on. If people's voices were the same tone as the refrigerator, I'd have no problem.

When I received these headphones today, I immediately hooked them up to the back of the TV using the Y-cable adaptor Cables To...

Terrific Headset

Sennheiser HD 65 TV Closed Back Dynamic Headphones for TVsThis headset is everything the manufacturer claims it to be. It's very lightweight and sounds terrific for both voice and music. The volume control is a dual slider that is conveniently located on the cord and provides very smooth control over the volume. My TV has a separate headphone volume control which allows me to turn the volume up as loud as I want to, so I can't comment on the headphone volume from a fixed volume jack. The headphone impedance is 32 ohms, so you'll have to check your TV's Specs. for compatibility. My only complaint is that the ear cups are not totally "over the ear". If they were a bit larger they would rest completely against the head and not partially on the ear as they do.

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