Sennheiser HD 650 Headphones

Quite an experience - but you need some patience at first
As a lover of classical music I am a confirmed headphone listener. No set of speakers will offer the same amount of detail, most living rooms will add acoustic distortions, and many of us are not lucky enough to be able to play Mahler or Shostakovich at full power on a daily basis without getting into trouble with the neighbours.

For years I have been very happy with the Sony CD1700, an excellent headphone which is my point of reference for evaluating the HD650. The rest of my hifi set-up consists of a Marantz cd7300 CD player, PM7200 amplifier, and Musical Fidelity X-Can v3 headphone amplifier (a mandatory commodity if you intend to spend serious money on a headphone like this one). Also, I invested in the Cardas replacement cable for the HD650.

It is often said phones like this one need a 'break in' period. I used to regard this merely as snobbish audiophile technobabble - but found it to be actually true. Initially, I was less than pleased with the sound of...

Excellent, but what did you expect?
So headphone.com calls them "simply the world's best headphone." I can't speak for the Grado or AKG contenders. I can say that they're better than my Sennheiser 590's, and that is shocking.

Which leads me to my first (and probably most important) point about this headphone. They cost a lot. A whole lot. Sennheiser has many units, including the 580, 590, 595, 600, and 650 (among many others), which could be construed as 'reference' quality. You'll spend about half as much on one of the 5xx models as you will on the 650. So if you were to ask me whether the 650 is *twice as good* (that is to say, it costs more in proportion to its increased capability), I'll tell you no, probably not. I might just not buy them, given the decision again. Perhaps if the price came down a bit.

At any rate, they are really a superb headphone. The sound is really incredible. You never really realize what you're missing in a recording until you've heard it through a set like this. You...

One of the best options out there
For some strange reason, I waited a long time to buy these headphones. Silly me. We review one of Sennheiser's top headphone options.

Originally released in 2003, the HD650 is certainly aging. In fact, the headphone market has exploded since its debut and it's no secret that there are better headphones out there. Heck, even Sennheiser has their flagship HD800 and the soon-to-be-released HD700, $1,500 and $1,000 respectively. But just because there are more expensive options doesn't mean those are the better options.

If you start reading into a site like Head-fi (which I love, don't get me wrong), you'll start to feel like the HD650 is a thing of the past. Why buy the inferior HD650 when the HD800 exists?? Well, a couple reasons actually:

(1) 99.9% of people would never, ever consider spending $1,500 on headphones. Most people couldn't afford it. Most that could wouldn't find the point in buying them. The HD800 is a unique headphone for unique...

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