Sennheiser HD650 Review (Headphone)

[Jimbob54]

Diffuse field EQ does not exist. What Robbo means is he removed the Harman Bass boost and slightly adjusted the treble a bit.

Diffuse field is a measurement method for calibrating HATS. The HATS is placed in an anechoic room with speakers all around it and the signal from the HATS is then measured resulting in the FR curve that looks the most like Harman minus the bass boost (which is derived by preference of a fixed frequency bass slider people could adjust to preference). That way an echoic room is 'emulated' somewhat and as this setup is described multiple HATS manufacturers can calibrate to that standard.

In the 'old' days and still today. People using HATS use the diffuse field method for headphones (for which it really isn't suited but you have to do something). At least it is better than using the other known correction method for measuring speakers.

So when a headphone manufacturer has developed a headphone using a calibrated HATS using diffuse field compensation and didn't even listen to it but relied on the measurements and 'f'-ed around with ports, pads and damping to get the bloody driver they had to measure well on their HATS with their incorrectly used diffuse field correction (by lack of something better) they say 'it is diffuse field tuned' but no EQ has been used. Only the 'wrong' correction has been chosen.

Not for your benefit of course, but other readers, a useful primer on Harman etc . About as deep as I care to go. Because whilst this is a science-ish/ measurement led site, some of us are not avid scientists or measurerbators . https://www.headphonesty.com/2020/04/harman-target-curves-part-1/

 

[Patrick1958]

I have a little project running on my Discord where I collect every trustworthy EQ preset for a bunch of popular headphones and then ask owners of said headphones to directly compare the presets and vote for the one they like best.
For the HD650 this one was the most popular: https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/blob/master/results/rtings/rtings_harman_over-ear_2018/Sennheiser HD 650/Sennheiser HD 650 ParametricEQ.txt

I'm curious how people like this one compared to Amirm's personal EQ settings. I'll also post his preset to the Discord
(I can't compare them myself as I only have the HD600)

I have been going back and forth between 4 PEQ presets and the one based on Rtings measurements sounds best to my ears. Did ad a slight adjustment to the 26 hz, lowering to 4.5 and adding a low shelf 105 hz - Q 0.71 - +4 dB.
I suspect Rtings had a veiled headphone similar to mine.

 

[staticV3]

I have been going back and forth between 4 PEQ presets and the one based on Rtings measurements sounds best to my ears. Did ad a slight adjustment to the 26 hz, lowering to 4.5 and adding a low shelf 105 hz - Q 0.71 - +4 dB.
I suspect Rtings had a veiled headphone similar to mine.

Thank you for the feedback! That mirrors what I've seen with my project.

 

[F1308]

Just another poor, extortionately priced headphone.

Lovely.
Many thanks.
Any listing with some kind of ranking or am I to open each file and see...?

 

[staticV3]

Lovely.
Many thanks.
Any listing with some kind of ranking or am I to open each file and see...?

This is the one bobbooo was trying to point to:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jaj88yzof3pgoly/HEDD Heddphone.pdf?dl=0

 

[bobbooo]

This is the one bobbooo was trying to point to:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jaj88yzof3pgoly/HEDD Heddphone.pdf?dl=0

? That is the one I pointed to.

 

[bobbooo]

Lovely.
Many thanks.
Any listing with some kind of ranking or am I to open each file and see...?

Here you go.

 

[staticV3]

The one you sent opens a list of all oratory PDFs. At least on mobile. If you wait for a bit, then the Hedd one eventually opens, but if you start scrolling through the list, then it takes quite a while to open the specific PDF.

Spoiler: Screenshot

][/SPOILER

 

[bobbooo]

The one you sent opens a list of all oratory PDFs. At least on mobile. If you wait for a bit, then the Hedd one eventually opens, but if you start scrolling through the list, then it takes quite a while to open the specific PDF.

Spoiler: Screenshot

View attachment 102243
][/SPOILER

Yeah that's just an annoying quirk of Dropbox on mobile.

 

[F1308]

This is the one bobbooo was trying to point to:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jaj88yzof3pgoly/HEDD Heddphone.pdf?dl=0

Thank you....

 

[F1308]

? That is the one I pointed to.

Thank you...

 

[F1308]

Here you go.

Thank you...

 

[F1308]

Yeah that's just an annoying quirk of Dropbox on mobile.

That's why I was asking for a listing or see them one by one.
Many thanks.

 

[F1308]

I am not familiar with the ranking process...
Please, if a headphone sound is top notch but weights 5 kilograms, the rating will suffer just for the weight, or not ?
Is the price another factor...?

I see Shure SRH440 as second in the list...
And for the top one...I see other opinion...
FOR
Solid build
Easy to use
Punchy, confident sound
AGAINST
Lack detail and dynamics
So-so noise-cancelling
Average battery life

 

[solderdude]

Just for the fun of it I compared 4 'rankings' of Jaakko, Oratory, Rtings and Crinacle.
They all rate 18 'known' headphones quite differently. Of course Oratory and Jaakko often have the same numbers but that's for obvious reasons.
There is little to no relation between Oratory, Crinacle and Rtings.

In other words... forget about the neat ratings listings... they are nonsense.

 

[bobbooo]

Just for the fun of it I compared 4 'rankings' of Jaakko, Oratory, Rtings and Crinacle.
They all rate 18 'known' headphones quite differently. Of course Oratory and Jaakko often have the same numbers but that's for obvious reasons.
There is little to no relation between Oratory, Crinacle and Rtings.

This isn't surprising at all. Oratory is the only one who uses the exact same coupler, on the same rig that Harman used for the measurements the preference formula was devised from. Rtings do not use an industry standard rig, and Crinacle uses a different coupler. Oratory is also a trained, qualified professional with a methodically precise measurement procedure. Then of course there's unit variation, which can be quite bad for some models. Oratory usually measures several units to account for this. For all these reasons his calculated Harman ratings will be the most accurate for a headphone you buy/own. AutoEQ's ratings are generally similar so the ranking order is mostly the same - I suspect the few discrepancies with Oratory's results are due to digitizing his pdfs instead of using the raw data, and/or differences in the number of data points used in the calculation. There's nothing nonsensical about a metric with the highest correlation (0.86) between headphone measurements and (double-blinded) listener preference that years of controlled scientific research has developed.

 

[bobbooo]

I am not familiar with the ranking process...
Please, if a headphone sound is top notch but weights 5 kilograms, the rating will suffer just for the weight, or not ?
Is the price another factor...?

I see Shure SRH440 as second in the list...
And for the top one...I see other opinion...
FOR
Solid build
Easy to use
Punchy, confident sound
AGAINST
Lack detail and dynamics
So-so noise-cancelling
Average battery life

The AutoEQ ranking list is purely based on sound quality (in particular, frequency response). When considering other aspects, Rtings is a decent resource.

 

[F1308]

The AutoEQ ranking list is purely based on sound quality (in particular, frequency response). When considering other aspects, Rtings is a decent resource.

Thanks so much.
Great work.... truly outstanding.
Thank you.
Looking for a replacement to be used while playing my Roland Fantom in case the ones I have failed, after so many years.

 

[Jimbob54]

The AutoEQ ranking list is purely based on sound quality (in particular, frequency response). When considering other aspects, Rtings is a decent resource.

Genuine question. Is there an accepted definition of "sound quality" when talking about transducers?

Edit, you may mean as opposed to build quality etc?

 

[F1308]

Genuine question. Is there an accepted definition of "sound quality" when talking about transducers?

Yes, I do think so.
If I hear a band playing, or play it myself, record it and hear it, I can tell very easily if the sound is fine or not.

I remember a friend inviting me to hear his equipment.
I hit play for Tchaikovsky's 1880.
His system made those canyons plain pistol shots.
Then he heard mine and he understood....while getting cover !!!