We purchased the Sennheiser HD 650 (which we planned not to review) one year ago on account of the very good price. At $500 it is quite attractive. You can get two for $1000, and this is a good thing. Although we did not need another, having purchased it simply to have a classic Stereophile recommended component, we considered it a few times, on account of the price.
It's not an audiophile component, however, and... it fails on two accounts, in our estimated opinion.
First, you would expect a transducer that advertises a frequency response of 10 Hz to 39,500 Hz (~40 kHz), to be +/- 1.5 dB, preferably +/- 3 dB, tops. (1)
Compare this to the Magico Q5, a loudspeaker. Quite a difference.
Second, it fails to play back well, like a Focal Grande Utopia, Justin Bieber's "Take You" and "Right Here feat Drake" tracks, our standard loudspeaker test material. $180,000 USD / pair. (2)
It's the audiophile equivalent of the Sennheiser MKE-2002, in our opinion - another poor-sounding, but nice piece of equipment - a reverse-headphone (or binaural microphone) as you would call it.
Things start to pop, however, with "Santeria" by Sublime (Sublime). It's not good music, or good sounding, but the music starts to appear, never the less with the 650.
Where it starts to flow, however is "We're my Otp - Single" by Troy Sivan, which provides a John Atkinson-type experience, with the sound of the beaten drum.
And "Complètement fou - Single" by Yelle (Complètement Fou), sounds good. Rather good on it.
"Fireball feat. John Ryan" by Pitbull (Globalization) provides a nice pre-fi experience. It's engaging. Not like Drake and Eminem on the Revel Ultima Studio 2's, but in the same general way.
Sam Smith's "I'm Not the Only One" (In the Lonely Hour) provides absolutely nothing to fault. It's good.
We like the 650, so much so that we're keeping it in our arsenal. It comes in a nice box, and we like seeing the handsome label, the corrugated cardboard, and the design, a nod to the Sennheiser Orpheus. Solid.
Why, heaven pray tell, that we did not buy the Orpheus ($16,000 USD) upon release, or get a modified Devialet D-Premier ($16,500 USD) along with a Stax 009 ($5400 USD) today, as opposed to so many headphones, we can not tell.
It's easy for the headphone enthusiast to pick up 30 some headphones, and easier still for us to pick up headphones, rather than full-size loudspeakers and reference level components to review.
www.hifiart.ca
Based on our understanding of Sennheiser headphones, we can recommend the Sennheiser HD-580 Precision. It's better looking than the 650 (and 600), and more listenable (with Arcam), too.
HI FI ART
JP 2015
Equipment
Headphone Amplifier / DAC: Audioquest Dragonfly 1.0 DAC
Player: Apple iTunes on Windows 8.1
Laptop: Hewlett Packard HP DV7 i7 8 GB
Tracks
1. "We're my Otp - Single"
2. "Complètement fou - Single"
3. "I'm Not the Only One"
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