Sennheiser HD650 Love (Appreciation Thread)

Discussion in 'Headphone Measurements' started by purr1n, Sep 27, 2015.

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  1. Ice-man

    Ice-man Friend

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    My money says after the pads break in a little and the driver as well, they will sound just as you expected.
     
  2. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Hi @k4rstar, pardon my asking but could you take a photo of the back end of the baffle? Want to satisfy my curiosity about something, i.e. whether the finishing looks uneven.
     
  3. robot zombie

    robot zombie Friend

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    I remember that, too. I mean, this is the classic problem with changing manufacturing locations... sometimes you need the culture/job market/skill pool that arises from having a place where people have been making x thing for generations. I liken it to the retired maintenance man's secrets. Even with his notebook, nobody is going to come into that facility knowing how to manage everything like him.

    I think they want to move past the old HD600/650 and have something new take over at this point. And maybe to justify keeping them around, they have to lower the cost of making them. *shrugs* I'm not sure but this pattern is a bit troubling.

    But yeah, that rainy-day pair is kind of the attitude I'm having. I don't know if they will continue to have the quality problems or not, or if anything will ever happen to my favorite pair of headphones. Usually with most things you can just buy another. But when that's in doubt it's nice to know you have an extra life tucked away. I would hate to lose the pair I have years from now and never get one that sounds as good again.
     
  4. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

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    I don't think so. it took about 20 minutes of listening to determine the nature of sound is different. I know my senn's, this is maybe my 10th pair in 4 years, at some point you expect something and this is the first time I'm not getting it - regardless of pad wear. I always have fresh pads on my senn's and I have never noticed big differences with burn in. maybe if I was using a Magni or something it wouldn't be so obvious

    here are photos. consider this a HD650 obituary

    first, the pitiful box they came in
    [​IMG]

    no L/R indicator on outside of headband. no Braille indicator either, porkers. the cup yoke is now flat, not rounded. a light tap with a fingernail tells us the plastic is hollow inside. it could not be any cheaper.

    [​IMG]

    there is now a forward/back tilting mechanism. as such these do not have the traditional death grip clamp out of the box, but it only adds to the perception of flimsiness in your hands as the cups jiggle back and forth

    [​IMG]

    rear baffle

    [​IMG]

    1/4" termination is shorter, no Sennheiser logo. again, a cheaper grade of plastic is used. the cable is substantially lighter, like the old HD600 one. who knows how they cheaped out on the wire inside

    [​IMG]
     
  5. Dash

    Dash Friend

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    Makes me wonder if the Drop HD 6x0 and the HD650 are now one and the same
     
  6. Tchoupitoulas

    Tchoupitoulas Friend

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    Was just about to post the same thought - the grade of plastic and the tilting mechanism might be suggestive of this?
     
  7. LetMeBeFrank

    LetMeBeFrank Won't tell anyone my name is actually Francis

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    Haven't they always been like this? Hard to tell from picture since it's out of focus.
     
  8. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    That looks precisely like the baffle on the HD600 I got as a replacement off another member here (dented the original's drivers accidentally). Date stamp implies it's a 2019 thing so made following the move to the new factory, it was measurably (and subjectively!) different sounding, I was hoping it would be one of those things that'd solve itself sooner than not.
     
  9. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

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    maybe 5 degrees of freedom back/forth on old pairs. these have more like 30 degrees, if you shake them they jiggle like Shakira
     
  10. Merrick

    Merrick A lidless ear

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    Wait, do the HD6xx now sound like shit? I haven’t been keeping up. I feel dumb selling my KISS modded 650s now.
     
  11. robot zombie

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    Now you've got me wondering.

    The pair I have definitely sounds like HD650s. There is little doubt for me. I have heard the 660s and it is not even close.

    The plastic does seem cheaper, though I always attributed that to the plain finish showing how cheap it always was. Normally the seams and imperfections would be covered up by that metal flake stuff, but the bare plastic underneath probably would have looked similar. I always found the plastic on 600/650s to be a bit cheap for what they cost. I can tell you they don't feel any lighter, either.

    The forks on mine are definitely solid, too. The forks do swivel a little more than I remember with my old HD600s, but definitely not freely and not 30 degrees... more like half that. And it is rotation... definitely no shifting straight out and away from your head. Not to mention they're stiff enough that they don't move freely when shaking them and you can adjust them and have them stay while on your head. The cups still have just the slightest tilt.

    Also... they do have that lobster grip for sure :p

    Cable... eh, I don't know. Drop has a custom one terminated for 3.5mm that to me feels no cheaper than my mid-2010's HD600s. Just shorter with that smaller plug.

    I don't feel like popping off the rear grille right now, but even without doing that the baffle doesn't appear to have those sharp, nasty edges/mill marks, nor is it super-shiny like the one pictured. They have that uniform, matte grit to them, similar to the outside of the cups. The cups are also identical to classic HD6x0 series.

    If they did change the Drop HD6xx's, it would've been recent. When I got mine, they came in the nice, textured, hinged box with the contoured foam. And IIRC, back when Senn was originally transitioning to the new style, people everywhere seemed to have it in their heads that the Drop ones were the only way to get a pair of proper HD650s. How true that is, I don't know. But looking at the pair I have, they seem like the real deal.
     
    Last edited: Aug 8, 2020
  12. Merrick

    Merrick A lidless ear

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    The HD6XX page does now say made in Romania, FWIW.
     
  13. robot zombie

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    Ooof. Sooner or later maybe one will float in and we can verify if they've really changed or not, or if they're retaining a different process to make them for Drop. If not, that kinda sucks. I'd hate to have to start telling people to track down used pairs. The Drop ones are a good deal. But I'm pretty sure the pair I have came from Ireland.
     
  14. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    My Romanian Drop HD6XX sounds just like a standard HD650 to me at least.
     
  15. Kernel Kurtz

    Kernel Kurtz Friend

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    Maybe they are counterfeit.

    It happens, even on Amazon.
     
  16. Merrick

    Merrick A lidless ear

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    Especially on Amazon. Doesn’t Sennheiser have some kind of authenticity tracker on their website?
     
  17. LetMeBeFrank

    LetMeBeFrank Won't tell anyone my name is actually Francis

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    Does the right cup have the little hologram sticker on the driver stem?

    This is on my 2015s
    [​IMG]
     
  18. Biodegraded

    Biodegraded Friend

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    Yep. My 6XXs, 2018 purchase, were made in Ireland; but the production of the Drop-branded versions must have moved along with the Senn-branded ones to the new Romanian factory in 2019.

    It was an interesting story, though, and it seemed that after the first while of production there things settled down a bit:

    https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/solving-the-hd650-mystery.8026/

    Maybe things have gone backwards since...

    Edit: The link is the story referred to by @monacelli above.
     
    Last edited: Aug 8, 2020
  19. ext1

    ext1 MOT: Jupiter Audio Research

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    This is of interest to me, because I (obviously) work with a lot of 6x0 drivers and I wonder if this Romanian stuff will impact my builds.

    One more data point- The last time I received my parts was Oct 2019 and the drivers were stamped 2019 (can’t remember the month). They sounded pretty fine, and it’s been the parts that all the recent impressions have been made with, so I feel like it should be fine, but I’ll see when I receive the parts this time around.
     
  20. Ice-man

    Ice-man Friend

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    Nothing against @k4star, but I'd be quite surprised if the new headphones are as bad as he describes. In fact, I think that there is a good chance that they will sound exactly the same after a 100 hours and a good dose of pad use. Most of the differences in the 650 that I've heard over the past 10 years are all with the pads and possibly a marginally with driver break-in. Here is my reasoning.

    * Sennheiser has ALWAYS maintained extreme tolerances with their products, right down to impeccable driver matching. Even when releasing the hd6x0 to massdrop, that product rolled out essentially as a carbon copy with a different paint color. I just don't believe that Sennheiser would damage a product reputation of possibly their best selling product in the history of the company (just guessing here).

    The only times that I've heard the 650 or variation sound any different than stock was with brand new pads (or third party pads) and then once at a meet. The pads were well worn and the setup was with an amp and DAC that I was familiar with so I just couldn't put my finger on why these did indeed sound so different. Then while I dug into the player settings I found that the EQ had been adjusted...and there was my answer.

    I spoke with my best friend who is an engineer and owns an injection molded plastics company. I asked him about the situation with the "cheaper parts" used on the new version and described the situation. Basically he said that there is no way he could be certain but doubts that the parts would be different. Depending on the process of how the parts are made, it would likely be very expensive to alter the process.

    Anyway, that my 2c. I could be wrong.
     

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