“* Unimpressive performance in almost all subjective metrics (dynamics, stage, detail, etc.).”
Just like their predecessors, then.
“* More expensive than it should be.”
Again, just like their predecessors.
Hands down, most overrated series of pretend High Fidelity headphones in History…
2 replies
How would make things better? If anything, a Valve Amplifier would further smooth and slow things down.The series as a whole is already too smooth and veiled, with notably Slow, even bloated (HD 650) Bass and unimpressive Soundstaging. What they do need is fast, highly neutral and dynamic amplification, which basically means Solid State, of the Topping (A70 Pro) and Lake People caliber…
1 reply
LMAO. Tbh, totally fair. I think they’re a bit better in terms of “detail” since the midrange overtones are more present for things like piano + guitar, also helping with things like vocal intelligibility. That said, I totally get why the 6x0 line of headphones—which can be really dark for some people (but not me)—would be called unimpressive regarding most subjective metrics.
This is where I’m gonna have to vehemently disagree. Even if you don’t like the headphones, I think it’s pretty impossible to reasonably disagree with the value offering from the HD 6xx in particular.
The fact that it has one of the best midranges available in headphones, at any price while being available new for $200 any day of the week (and used for $125-150 extremely often) makes other headphone companies making much more expensive, much more colored options look pretty bad. However…
This is also very true, except for the obviously hyperbolic language I’ve omitted.
People tend to forgive and/or forget its flaws—lacking sub-bass, lacking treble (for some people), comfort issues, pad wear issues—much more quickly than other headphones. But one has to ask themselves: Why?
It’s because the other headphones that are usually much more expensive still have the same—or even greater—issues that could even be bigger deal-breakers than the flaws that 6x0 has.
While I agree that yes, the HD 6x0 lineup is easily one of the most overrated headphone lineups out there, it’s also one of the only lineups that has had any period of staying power over a decade. While yes, its a balance of compromises like any headphone, it’s one of the least expensive with the fewest absolute deal-breakers.
As a price:value ratio option, it’s truly among the hardest to beat if you’re focused on getting an “anatomically neutral” sound for most of the audio band instead of focusing on colorations like “soundstage” or “detail.”
1 reply
Do SYS drivers have lower distortion than KDH580?
If by standalone, you are including a DAC/AMP, and you don’t happen to have a good vintage stereo amplifier on a speaker system to plug into, you aren’t going to see (hear) what the headphones are capable of.
That doesn’t mean that it’s not useful to know what is still a frequently used reference point.
I had a Ragnarok 1 and I have a Ragnarok 2 which deliver a ton of power to the HD-600, yet every single OTL amp (BHC, BCHs, DXUOO T-26, Feliks Echo 2) all sound much much better with the 600. I agree the 650 and the 6** are too warm. I get a big 5 blob soundstage with my BHCs compared to the smaller more closed in 3 blobs with every SS amp (more than the two I mentioned) in use. The purpose of the HD-600 is correct timbre. Step down a bit on the two bright spots using PEQ in the high end, and add a tad of bass from 35-80 Hz and they will play piano and dual piano timbre correct - far better than any HFM headphone w/o PEQ (which I have own/owned 14). Its not for metal, industrial, electronica with heavy bass. It for jazz, classical and other well recorded music.
Lake People and Violectric are better than most SS. Hit Head Fi for dozens of folks that agree with me on the HD-600 stock and w or w/o PEQ.
The other reason why people forgive them is that the sins (besides some brightness in two spots) is subtractive. Means what they do not have, they don’t do. Compare that to some Beyers, AT, Grado, etc. which hit you over the head with unnatural treble. Its fatiguing. The HD-600’s with a good FPGA or R2R DAC and an OTL amp is the cheapest way I know to getting sound of unamplified music correctly - still. The alternate is a refurb HFM HE-6 SE with a SS amp of at least 2 wpc @ 60 Hz, with a good dose of PEQ with the same sort of DAC. Better for rock, bass heavy music for sure. Worse for timbre correctness.
I got them for $350 brand new. The HD 650 was costing only slightly less than this (~$50). Bought both but I liked how the HD 660S2 sounded a little more than the HD 650. So the HD 650 went back.
Using them with a modest old FiiO K5 Pro (AKM, not ESS), and quite liking them. The pads hurt after a few hours though. I am used to much squishier pads.
I really wanna know where the whole “HD6X0+tubes” meme started. I have a feeling it was back before everyone understood that a high output impedance basically applies a bass shelf to a headphone. Like, of course that’s going to make a bass-light set of headphones like the HD6X0 sound better.
4 replies
I think you just answered your own question. Of course there have always been some folks who understood impedance. Many others just tried it and liked it.
To my ears a tube amp actually reduces the 650’s bloat and replaces bloat with harmonics. I can’t stand the 650 on a SS amp. The 600 doesn’t respond the same way, as tubes do tend to boost its bass.
People understood hifi in great detail way back in the 1970s. Ask @pennstac about his gear. Audio is a very mature industry.
To be honest, I was never a huge fan of the HD650; it always sounded rather sluggish and dull compared to the 600 or even the HD800s.
Neither tube amps nor ifi’s ZEN stack convinced me when paired together.
Until, yes, until I received the Nitsch Pietus Maximus.
Together with the Holo Cyan2, the 650 is now more or less my daily driver.
Since the Nitsch was apparently tuned specifically for the 600 series, these headphones are unrecognizable since. Dynamic, fast, relatively punchy bass and clearer in the higher frequencies without losing the valued qualities of the mids.
Incidentally, Nitsch offers a tuned 600 version specifically for this amp for just under $1,000, which I don’t think is necessary 
And for a “budget” amp (being a relative term here) it also sounds quite excellent with Focal Clear OG, virtually any ZMF dynamic I’ve tried, and some easier to drive planars (e.g. Rosson RAD-0).
It is a shockingly good sounding amp for the amount of $ spent. 
Let me rephrase.
I want someone to do before/after measurements on the same unit on a calibrated measurement rig, like a B&K or something. The differences Marv shows in his measurements could easily be attributed to unit-to-unit variation.
I also want to see someone take it apart and actually show what JAR is doing. He was charging a lot of money for what is probably just a piece of 3d-printed plastic and some dampener. If he didn’t want to do the mod anymore, he should have released the STL file along with instructions on how to do it.
Many OTL amps have high output impedance, so unless it’s a particularly bad design the most obvious difference vs a SS amp is going to be the increase in lower frequencies. It isn’t surprising at all that a lot of people are going to like that effect since the HD6X0 series is bass light.
You can achieve a similar effect with a bass shelf filter.
1 reply
Ok so we’ll use many zmfs as an example. It has bass but 9 times out of 10 it’ll sound better off an OTL or transformer coupled tube amp.
EQ isn’t giving you the same experience. We’ll have to agree to disagree here. You may as well just own the cleanest dac and amp you can find, and EQ your one neutral headphone to sound like other headphone signatures.
3 replies
That was my takeaway from some other recent threads. It seems some influential people on this site really do believe in that strategy. In my experience it works for brief periods, but then the processing always creeps through.
That discussion isn’t worth the time IMO.
Absolutely 
…..
I should have added a “/s” to the end lol.
Right, unless you have actually listened to the difference with your own ears any opinions are essentially hypothetical in this instance.
I’m curious about what you normally listen to, and what you have listened to. When I checked your profile, there isn’t any commentary about your equipment, daily driver, etc. And this a thread about Sennheiser. I’d lived with the original HD-580 since about a year after it came out, and got the 6XX from drop. I have not listened to the HD-600, which I suspect may be the best of the lot, or the newer models along similar lines.
I do have a range of DACs and amps, solid state and tube, nothing super TOTL, but generally decent stuff. @generic and @robson are trying to point out that it’s not merely impedance and any impedance-related frequency shifts that count. Nor is EQ a substitute for the beneficial harmonics in the sound of a decent OTL tube setup.
For reference, my at-work (non-speaker) setup consists of the Schiit Modi Multibit, Eufonika H7M OTL tube amp and ZMF Auteur Classic headphones. It’s good enough that I don’t aspire to any higher level setup there. (well possibly the Atrium open…). I don’t think @generic has had the opportunity to audition the Modi Multibit (on LAST CALL!) but I find it an entirely acceptable little brother to the Bifrost which we both have, so I’m guessing that he could happily listen to this setup all day.
The point being, it’s very important to hear with your own ears, and your opinions will be additionally informed.
1 reply
I have been a fan of Sennheiser headphones for years, having owned both HD 580s and HD 650s. I never had issues with them, and was baffled that some reviewers complained about a wooly mid-base hump, while others liked it, but I had never heard it. I finally plugged my HD 650s into a headphone jack that was woefully inadequate to drive them, and there it was! As both a musician and an engineer, that was an epiphany for me. Why did no one understand that the headphones were accurately reproducing the sound of headphone jack electronics crapping out? And why was no one pressing the issue that, in order to accurately reproduce music, the driver must be presented with an accurate copy of the voltage signal as it was mixed in the studio? There are many filters and transforms the signal needs to pass through between the mixing board and your ears, and crappy headphone jacks need not apply.
That’s when the crazy engineer in me took over. Long story short, I now have highly modified Muse Model 100 power amplifier with external dual mono power supplies, revised star grounding throughout. It has six extremely high quality MOSFETS per channel, with a highly respected and novel at the time feedback arrangement that provides dramatic dynamics with extremely natural and effortless timbres and soundstaging. The knock on this amp in its heyday was a bit of hum, but mine is now stone cold quiet and for headphones operating in pure class A. A switchbox allows me to switch between stereo speakers and my headphones. I also built a DYI cable using aftermarket Sennhieser connectors and a run of professional grade Mogami Neglex 2534 microphone cable to each driver. Microphone signals are the smallest, most fragile in the recording studio. These cables never had it this easy!
I loved my HD 650s on this rig but wished for better bass. Enter a new set of HD 660S2s. The first thing you notice is there are tons of “refurbished” open box samples available. All brand new, not even broken in yet. People are returning these things in droves. What is going on?
So the new cans arrive, I plug them into my Muse amplifier with the supplied cord and am completely gobsmacked! These things are dynamically compressed, with soundstaging homogenized and flattened so you can barely tell where anything is. Musical details are smeared together or lost completely. These things are junk! No wonder reviewers hate them and customers are returning them.
So I get out a cheap Cardas knockoff cable from Arctic Cables, and dynamics are better, soundstaging and details are better, but there is a familiar clanginess in the treble I recognize from playing with this cable before. By now the new cans are breaking in nicely and initial stuffiness is gone, so I pull my DYI cable from the HD 650s and start doing some comparisons.
Holy mackerel! When you mind their care and feeding, these new Sennhiesers are a revelation! The HD 660S2s are dramatically better than the HD 650s, and a bona fide audiophile reference. Dynamics, quickness, punch, rhythm and drive are incredible (also known characteristics of the Muse amplifier), and soundstaging and detail are stunning – almost like you are seeing all the sound sources with your eyes as well as your ears, and they never get congested no matter how loaded the mix. The overall quality that really blows you away is the smoothness. With so much dynamic punch you don’t expect world class suave delivery, but there it is. You are able to effortlessly follow many musical and lyrical lines at once. Top marks for both naturalness and musicality. You will not only tap your foot, but you will dance with the music and break out singing involuntarily! I am rediscovering my music collection. These headphones are the best purchase I have made in a long, long time.
If you are thinking of buying these headphones, but intend to use the stock cord… well, don’t bother. Save your money. But if you like music, grab yourself a pair, feed it from worthy electronics only, and get yourself a good aftermarket cord. Or make yourself one. It’s not difficult. You won’t be disappointed.
Not trying to chase you off. I’m curious.
