The thing about big-brand headphones off the shelf is that they need to be easy to manufacture. They'll never sell something with complex damping tweaks because the labor and materials cost is much higher than with parts that can be machine-made and assembled.
@E_Schaaf I understand that, but "uninspired" is a great word. Even if they did a half-ass job of making a slightly different housing it would be more exciting than this stupid champagne paint job.
And if they were going for the "audio jewelry" angle, it's still a major fail. Audio jewelry actually HAS to look good; ZMFs, RAD-0 to name two that look good (and sound good).
Yes, the color coordination is dodgy - the silver connectors just don't go with the gold. I fear that Sennheiser's sales of the HD 6x0s and the 800S are consistent and reliable enough that the company no longer needs any high-end innovation.
^^ Because in order to get the headstage thing on a successor they'd need to keep using sunken baffles, which will inherently yield similar treble peakage. Going on from HD800 it's either earspeakers or mods if soundstage is your thing. I keep a stock pair as a reference for headphone staging, but nothing more. I'd rather see a 50mm 650 replacement with angled pads.
@E_Schaaf - It's pretty common to use 2 or more different materials in injection molding machines designed for this. Cycle time might change slightly, but it's next to no cost compared to applying in a secondary process. Either they don't see a market to justify the capital expenditure, or they really don't think it's an improvement.
@Bill-P's idea with the HD800S driver in a JD650-like housing is a real interesting experiment. Honestly so much of Sennheiser's work has already been done for them.
Luckily the Nectar Hive looks to be interesting. Before that the last major interesting thing was SR1a.
Doing HD800 in HD650 housing would seem like a concession considering how iconic the design of the HD800 is, enough to warrant doing weird overpriced corning glass back crap and an anniversary edition.
Though I agree with ChaCha that the ZMF and RAD-0 look better IRL, the HD800 design is a marketing machine in itself, just remembering how many hf avatars were HD800 cups and recalling personal experience. You just want to touch that scifi shit. If Bill-P's work is recognized by Senn, they would make it an HD7xx variant most likely, cause that's where consumer feedback actually killed their crap product.
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