Sennheiser HD 650/HD 6XX

[solderdude]

Focal Clear is a decent option if you can look past the negatives around it.

Personally I did not fall for the HE400, Elear, Fid X2 nor AFO, never heard the Elex.

 

[Grave]

Focal clear - treble peaks

 

[solderdude]

There is no pleasing you !

 

[SilverEars]

Focal clear - treble peaks

I thought the treble peaks were better done than something like the HD800. For me, pop music sounds quite right out of it. With certain tracks, the treble on the 800 gets pretty annoying.

I would prefer more mids on the 800 (like the 6 sereies), and a bit subdue'd treble response. With the tightness and sound stage of 800, it would be much improved.

 

[Xulonn]

The title of this thread intrigues me!

 

[amirm]

The title of this thread intrigues me!

Yeh, looks like after getting banned, he took his marbles home.

If someone remembers the original title or what it should be, I can restore it.

 

[hvbias]

Yeh, looks like after getting banned, he took his marbles home.

If someone remembers the original title or what it should be, I can restore it.

I'm not sure what the original thread title was, but maybe a new title along the lines of headphone measurements from Solderdude?

Just curious why he was banned? If you don't want to say that's cool

 

[amirm]

Just curious why he was banned? If you don't want to say that's cool

This was handled by Thomas so I don't have any data to share.

 

[solderdude]

I suspect the thread title was Sennheiser HD 650/HD 6XX

Most likely the first post was quoted by Sal (#35)

Grave said:

Sennheiser HD 650/HD 6XX
I have owned the Sennheiser HD 650’s for many years and I am not sure that they are replaceable. They are the most balanced sounding headphones I have owned. They have a pleasant smooth sound signature which takes some time to get used to and may not be for everyone. My only criticism of them is that they need more deep bass. I have their bass at +7 dB at 20 Hz so that their bass is flat.

I assume Grave made a grave offense to deserve a punsihment as grave as banning.

 

[amirm]

OK, I updated the title.

 

[Sal1950]

I suspect the thread title was Sennheiser HD 650/HD 6XX

Most likely the first post was quoted by Sal (#35)

OK, I updated the title.

That looks right.

 

[Sal1950]

I assume Grave made a grave offense to deserve a punsihment as grave as banning.

He wouldn't share the beer.

 

[jazzendapus]

I don't think it was mentioned here, but there are measurement based parametric EQ settings for this series of headphones (and many others) that will Harman-ize them rather neatly. It beefs up the bass quite a bit, clears the somewhat congested mid bass and strategically adds a little treble.
At first the phat-ass bass didn't sound right to me, but I got used to it pretty quickly and now it's the non-eqed HD650 that don't sound right anymore The low shelf is easy to adjust to taste anyway.

Here are the EQ settings: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zr5tqw0qojom9uh/Sennheiser HD650.pdf
Here's the source: www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/9o2f5n/psa_oratory1990s_list_of_eq_presets/

This is an nice snippet from Axel Grell + a bit of placebophilia to satisfy the relevant crowd :

How do you feel about the Harman Target Response Curve? Does it have any influence on your design when working on a headphone’s sound signature?
It is interesting. We did something similar 23 years ago. And we had very similar findings. When you tune a headphone only following these findings it sounds okay, but a bit boring. As headphones should transport the music, the emotions, we tune them using our ears, knowing all these findings.

https://drop.com/talk/989/community-interview-axel-grell

HD580, the HD650 grandad, came out in mid-90s, so it's quite possible those findings were implemented in that model and the reason why they aren't that different from Harman target out of the box.

 

[solderdude]

Are the HD580 (HD600) close to the Harman curve ?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dm0m6u3s3b4zqzl/Sennheiser HD600.pdf?dl=0

bass below 100Hz is off (bass is important)...
There really aren't +10dB peaks at 12kHz and 17kHz, measurement errors but everything below 6kHz is about correct.

my measurements:

I fully agree with EQ'ing the HD600 (and HD650) in the lows though.

 

[bequietjk]

I'm sure there is a tube out there for my Project Horizon to get those sweet and crispy lows out of my HD600 ^.^ without EQ.

 

[maxxevv]

I'm sure there is a tube out there for my Project Horizon to get those sweet and crispy lows out of my HD600 ^.^ without EQ.

And add on plenty of artifacts to the rest of the frequency spectrum....

You're better off with a bass elevated planar headphone instead.

 

[bequietjk]

To be honest HD600 is a very funky headphone, I will say. It's been really fun shaping the sound with different tubes, as well as listening to the differences in a couple solid state amps. For tubes, I've settled on the 5751 Raytheon Windmill getter. It's pretty sublime imo.

However, I do think the sound it bottlenecked by my JDS Ol Dac.