Sennheiser HD650 Love (Appreciation Thread)

And this is why we use plastic pliers... or failing that, put a piece of cardboard over the driver/under your hand while you work. These paranoid life lessons brought to you by close encounters with an HE-6 driver

 

My pair also has more punchy bass at the right driver, even when I removed the backfoam + spidercage on the left driver and did a lot of A/B’s.

It was this way months ago before I even opened up the grill for the very first time. How come this has happened? The mids and highs sound equal on both channels.

 

Has a new pair of pads increased bass extension for anyone else in the past? It's usually just the treble frequencies that are increased, right?

 

The HD650 sucks balls!

 

There never has been and never will be a mod that gives true extension to 20hz on a 600 series. Sure, you can make the difference between amplitude at 100hz and 20hz less by decreasing the midbass, but that's not really giving you better extension. Just less midbass emphasis. Leaky baffle by design + small driver + breathable pads = not gonna happen. Best bass I've heard from a comparable design is a 58X modded with double magnets scalped from HD650s. Still getting some rolloff though. In many ways I prefer the extension on both ends and livelier dynamic presentation of the double mag 58X to all the single-mag 600/6xx/580s I've heard/own, even though the latter still have slightly smoother, mellower timbre and better resolve.



I'd like to see more non-FR measurements of double magnet mods on 600 series. Subjectively I think it makes a clear improvement in terms of the perceived veil and grain. It brings a sense of fluidity and ease to the sound without any compromises I can hear. I don't trust EARS with distortion or CSD measurements, so someone else will have to give it a shot. It's kind of an expensive mod though, since you have to render another set of Senn drivers useless. And probably not the best idea without also implementing other mods (KISS, as always, a good place to start).

 

Interesting, I guess my old pads just weren't able to seal well then.

In the past, I've typically only seen an increase in treble with a reduction in mid-bass from new pads, but the results were different this time around.

Measurements just for analysis

 

Do you have a pic of the double magnet stack?

 

@E_Schaaf I'm interested in the details regarding the double magnet mod because I have an old pair of 650 drivers that are just sitting and would be willing to try that out, depending upon the requirements of the mod.

Out of curiosity, after reading your post, I simply tried putting the extra magnet on top of a stock HD650 with its spider cage still intact and the magnetic force is strong enough to hold it in place.

 

I don't think @Besnia is as active now but this one thread re: Sennheiser magnet replacement was fun to read:

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/hd650-mod-tinico-magnets.2734/

 

@Lyander It's awesome they were able to do that and it is a fun read, but actually attempting to perform the same mod was, unfortunately, impossible with the tools and magnets that I had without destroying the drivers, which is what happened.

The magnets in my pair were glued in, so it wouldn't budge by just pulling straight up. I had to wedge a flathead in the vent hole and pull side to get it out. This caused the red ring that attaches the magnet to the driver to twist and snag the inside of the magnet where it sits causing it to detach from the driver, thus destroying it.

I would imagine with the correct tools, hand precision, and patience it could be done without destroying the driver, but a mod like that comes with risks that are probably more trouble than it's worth, for most people.

Especially if you don't have the correct tools or if it's your only set of headphones.

 

Would the same double magnet mod work on the HD650? I have one HD650 driver magnet that has no use, so I can stack it on the HD650 magnet that’s still working.

My question is would this still bring the benefits? And what side of the magnet should I pull on; just the side that’s there stock as well?

 

I've been interested in what constitutes the DMaa (Japanese Modder) tuned hd650s/6xx since passing on a rather cheap pair on yahoo japan. If anyone has ideas I'd be very appreciative.

I'll attach an album of the best photos I could find of the mod here (combined with those I got from the auction). Pics of the mod seem to be rather scarce.

Most obvious is the woven wire mesh inner to cover the driver along with hollowing out the pad centers. That said, it could be steel bird cage cover since it does seem to appear a little like the inner cage on @Bill-P 's 580 mod. Rear foam removed from the top of spider cage.

From what else I can initially tell it seems like the top piece on the back of the driver might be soldered to the spider frame/driver? Maybe done with a metallic tape on the arms? Currently I don't own a pair of these cans so I'm not sure on the material compatibility (re: soldering), or if the residue on the inner side of the top spider piece is typical.

The other strange thing (at least with the 580 pic I could find with the cup removed) is that there seems to be protruding circles on the back of the driver (looks almost like it was plugged with some rubber stoppers), I couldn't find any images on google with a version that resembled this inner pattern.

I'm sure there are more obvious things I'm missing as someone who hasn't tinkered with these yet, so I'd be grateful for any insights (or insights into the reasoning)!

 

Unless DMaa did something to dampen the magnet on the back, that's gonna sound really boomy in the bass.

It's common knowledge at this point that, if you remove the foam disks on the back of the driver and don't dampen it at all, the bass is really elevated (and you really don't wanna have more of that soft HD650 bass). With some damping it seems to go down a bit and tighten up, but it's still way to much midbass for my taste, way more than stock. I dampen the driver + put 1 foam disk on the back. That seems to be a good middle ground.

The mesh material on the front seems interesting though. I wonder what that would do :/

 

Just to give you an idea of how much damping mine has, here is a pic: http://imgur.com/a/nJ7nR1v

That's STP Aero Gold (Dynamat from Russia basically) all around the magnet + one foam disk in the middle. This BTW still has quite a bit of midbass, but I think it's tasteful. If I remove the foam disk, it's just plain bad elevated HD650 bass. Way more than stock.

 

My thoughts are similar, I would have to really handle it in person to be 100% sure but all it seems like to me is he removed the rear small foam in the spider cage, remove wide oval foam near earpads for some mesh and put some fancy writing and thats…it? That was one of the first things I’ve tried with the 6x0 and that didn’t sound very nice.

Also I think the meshy material is not steel. If it’s steel it would not feel very nice on your ears (might even hurt.) And you would need to cut the mesh in a very precise manner for it to be held on with snap fit friction between the screen and the earpads.

 

Few years ago Kashibo-san from DMaa modded my HD650. Eventually I preferred my KISS modded HD6XX so I sold the DMaa. It had very forward/clear sounding vocals and more midbass compared to the HD650KM. It was very good with Diana Krall type female vocal jazz (and I listen to music like that a lot, so I liked it first), but sucked with other music.
By the way it had a foam ring within the magnet ring, and the meshy material was some kind of metal, but don’t remember what exactly.

 

Thanks so much everyone for the insights! I was hoping that there might be one or two interesting things to try on a stock set to see what his aim was with some of the changes - and if any of those might be beneficial to current modders.

I did some more digging on mesh wires & it looks like it's a loose twill (possibly double layered) weave, quite similar to what you would find on a flour sifter, unfortunately my googlefu came up (somehow) short on a cheap source of sheets or larger easily available amounts - this could be just that I'm searching the wrong terms / using overly technical terminology.

Thank you so much for your reply! Would you care to elaborate on what made it suck with other music? Maybe even relative to what you suspect (if you feel qualified enough) mod-wise was done (i.e. which you think might be detrimental or beneficial relative to your personal tastes)? Or just on what made it gel with a single genre so well?

Slightly unrelated but I got to briefly demo a Dunlavy setup where it just was something else (amazing) with that sort of vocal heavy jazz & some blues, didn't get enough demo time to run through more typical genres for myself but your comment reminded me to look into their lineup again sometime. From here on I'll make a mental note to try a few wildly different genres on a given demo time hehe. On say, Summertime (Ella Fitzgerald), it made me realize that if I have a system of that caliber (relative to my current) I may massively enjoy a vast number of genres I might not have otherwise enjoyed nearly as much - personally I think it was how extended the top end was (probably more air than I'm used to) & fluid throughout the range.

 

Unrestricted driver/magnet hole results in too much bass and midbass that bleeds everywhere, even becoming boomy. Doesn't turn the HD650 into basshead cans, but it sure throws the whole thing off.

On top of that, entirely removing the front foam results in too much highs in my experience. That's why there's the coin mod, you get just enough foam out to get an improvement, not more. Back when I'd gotten mine, I'd tried them without the front foam and they didn't last 5 minutes before going back to having the foam in there and doing the coin mod. Doesn't sound good.

I wouldn't be surprised if these HD650s had a V shaped frequency response relative to stock or KISS.

 

Depends on the amp/chain. On my 445, I preferred it with the front foam removed, as it sounded much clearer and the highs weren't a problem. I've tried that with other chains and it was a bit too much, so it just depends.