Got myself some “Reference-grade headphones for analytical listening sessions”, as it says on the box:
And, a bit further up on the same box, the product name:
And the Sennheiser HD 560S, currently available for 149€ instead of 199, are just wow. Watch a review from a Youtuber who calls himself “DMS” who is also cited on the product page:
So yes, for that price they are without any real competition if you need headphones which you can trust, without having to eq or “correct” them, which is what I did with my Sennheiser HD 598SE during the last years. First listens of today were:
- the wikiloops tracks #239063, #239157 for female and male vocals,
- the wikiloops tracks #221897 and #216509 from my last album,
- la chanson d’hélène from youn sun nah from her album “same girl”:
and finally one from our “mix master” at wikiloops, Monsieur OliVBee:
- wikiloops track #10082
I also tried to listen with some equalizer settings and frequency curves made for and of these headphones from a reddit user named “oratory1990”, find his list and explanations/howtos and free programs here. With these, Oliv’s track #10082 sounded just like with my corrected headphones before, but the interesting thing was: I liked the sparkle on these cymbals even more *without* that correction – these cans are great right out of the proverbial box!
So well done, Sennheiser. You have some headphones there which are like the famous HD600 in their neutrality, with an even more pronounced bass, and very very detailed. Bravo! I can only recommend to try these.
This is no advertising – I paid them with my own money, and my trusty old HD 598SE with new earpads will find a new home at some relative’s place.
As always, thanks for reading (and maybe listening). And look up oratory1990, maybe you’ll find some correction curves/settings for your own headphones.
P.S., from later in the evening:
I have listened a bit more, and tried both pulseeffects on Debian (with pulseaudio and jack) and easyeffects on Arch (with pipewire), the LSP parametric eq was the same. And so was the sound, with oratory1990’s recommended eq settings it’s pretty much the same as my Sennheiser 598SE, corrected with Sonarworks (99$). But the difference with the 560S is pretty minimal, so you don’t have to eq it. But this is just a cheap (free) method of getting a sound reproduction which is very nice, and close to reality. So – I can recommend both the headphones *and* the eq methods and curves. Nice 🙂
Again, thanks for reading. And good night.