Senneheiser HD660S Impressions

Finally got to hear the 660s very briefly; like, 2 minutes briefly.

First impression: damn, the clamping force is real. I don't know if I received a defective pair of 6xx, but they sure did not clamp this hard right out of the box. 6xx clamping force never bothered me, and the 660s would.

660s wowed me with a wider stage, slighter faster and brighter treble, and slightly more control in bass, all relative to stock 650.
In stock form, I like the 660s. Modded 650 holds a slight edge in pretty much everything. The comparison was done using the Ampandsound Kenzie. With a more synergistic setup, I suspect the 650k lead will be even more pronounced. Whereas the 660s will be a better pick with budget amps.

 

Reminded me of this classic...

 

To me it does, and for multiple reasons (many have been mentioned here on SBAF, H-F, etc.).

Market/$$ opportunity for Senn. (of course) ... because of:

1. HD6xx series popularity / success
2. Very little development/overhead costs. Incl. tool/die, manuf. of new materials, etc. Even re-use packaging of other HD6xx series.
3. etc.

Senn. simply wanting to hold its own against ever-increasing competition from other manufs (Sony, Hi-Fi Man, A-T, etc.)

Senn. wants to increase its mkt. share due to opportunities that have arisen: incl. increased mkt. of portable and personal gear.

 

I was thinking in terms of "continuing the legend" rather than "exploiting the legend".

 

I was thinking of this classic....man.

 

I was thinking that a resistor could be added to the path to increase impedance. This would increase the load the head-amp would see not the speaker itself. My thinking was that it may help in scaling the headphone.

 

I haven't tried the 660s; it's probably not good as what they wanted it to be. But hey, they tried something instead of minting money over a decade old headphone. It was always going to be hard to top the 650, esp when the community loves the 650 for what it is and any changes (done for good for the avg folk) is going to be frowned upon by hard core 650 lovers.

 

Sorry but I can’t agree. A lesser headphone than the 650 for $200 more isn’t done for the good of average folks. This is looking more like Sennheiser management trying to do something with the HD700 driver surplus they no doubt have. Hard to believe the engineers who design their headphones were O.K. with the final product. But they don't call the shots. Anyone know if there was a shake up in management? Feels like it. Went through this when Wadia was changing management. They went from "what can we do to fix your unit" to "who are you? Sorry buddy you’re out of luck". Hope I am wrong. Really.

 

Compared to a modded 650, sure. But against stock, isn't it more about preference/trade-offs? To me stock 6XX was boring and sleepy as hell and I wondered for a long time what all the shilling was about. Modding changed my views completely. I'm not sure if everyone's going to be comfortable modding their headphone. Senn's are not going to tell everyone that the mod is really great. If some genius guy is able to mod the 660s and make it sound great in an affordable setup it's going to be a win for everybody.

As for price, right now it's unreasonable at $500, but let's give it some time to settle down. If there are a couple of MD drops of the 660s we can check their demand against the 6xx.

The 660s doesn't sound like the headphone that I'd be interested in (for my use and my context), but Senn's din't sit on their butt telling themselves they can't top the 600s and 650s ever and continue to make money out of them. Instead they've tried to come up with a better product. I respect that! For someone who has a Yggdrasil + BHC/BW 650 might be best pick, but for people who run it from their iphone, laptop directly, *may be* 660s sounds better than stock. In short, I'm just glad that there are more options available, even though the option isn't good enough for me.

 

.

 

To be honest, I don't think Sennheiser really gives a shit about headphones anymore. The "S" at the end of their new models stands for "no shits given".

 

To me, trying to optomize a circumaural, fully open headphone (and I have no idea if this is actually what was attempted) for use with portable devices is a fool's errand, and to discontinue a great headphone (overall maybe the best ever) optomized for home use with a dedicated desktop amp in preference to same seems like a strange business decision. Guess that is why I don't run a headphone company.

 

Wow, that's disappointing, for me at least. My wife overheard that video and is cock-a-hoop. I do need new pads for my HD 650 though so I will probably go for the HD 660S ones once they are made available.

 

The 6XX is $200 now, but that is recently. The 650 used to have a $650 MSRP and Sennheiser used to be a huge stickler about not letting it drop below $500 from authorized dealers.

It does seem like the Massdrop partnership was a way to remove excess stock of 650 drivers. If they had surplus 700 drivers I would have expected a 7XX. After all, the Massdrop deal pretty much instantly devalues all existing 650 out there, and handcuffs Sennheiser on what they can sell them for.

It all reads very much like the 650 is on the way out, and the 660 is here to stay. I say this as a fan of the 650...

 

Yes, this G. Carlin will never get old.

 

I'm going to hold out for the 700S, with it's 700 chassis & 650 drivers. Can't wait.

 

Doesn't appear that it would be worth the wait, seeing how little difference the 700 driver made in the 6x0 enclosure.

 

I do like the 700 chassis the most out of all senns. It's a shame they don't sound as good as the 6x0.

 

So it's the chassis of the HD 700 that makes it sound as it does?