Sennheiser HD 555 to HD 595 Mod | Hacker News Reader

Sennheiser HD 555 to HD 595 Mod

mikebeauchamp.com

609 pointsedent317 comments

The actual difference between the two models could be that the HD595 had selected and matched drivers, the HD555 getting all the rejects from the 595. This is a fairly common practice.

This mod was done many years ago, before it was common to be able to find someone who could do proper frequency response measurement. Unless someone measured them in the thread, I wouldn’t assume the visual difference check identified 100% of the differences, including material differences.

Sennheiser likes to reuse parts across their headphones lineup. They have several current models that look similar despite tiny internal differences but have substantially difference frequency response due to those tiny changes.

This is always going to anger the people who think the cost of objects should be based solely on the cost of materials. I find that especially ironic for a a website where most of us work on software products where the cost of running and distributing the software is vanishingly small and produces margins these hardware companies could only dream of.

But you realize that the drivers (can be seen on the replacement driver from Sennheiser which states it's for both models) and even the construction is the same?

So it is not about looking the same with different internals .. it basically is the same just without the dampening.

I think the larger point is that they could be drivers that don’t meet the same quality standard. Just like how processors get binned.

It’s hard to make electronics that are identical. It’s easier to make them such that they fit within buckets of tolerances.

Without proper testing, it’s hard to know for certain

This would make sense if not for the claim that they list the same drivers as the replacement part for both models. Or do they when picking up the order do the testing to see if it's a 595 or 555 part?

Well it could be that the replacements are substandard, I mean otherwise they'd have to be a matched pair. And if you damaged one, who knows what shape the other one is in.

But I'm willing to bet that at the lower end it's not worth the end. These aren't studio grade.

Called "product binning".

Though it's also common to segment products that don't have defects/differences by intentionally hobbling them, or even just using different labels when there's no actual difference.

AMD's Phenom II let you unlock the locked fourth core, if you so dared.. allowing you to save like ~$50 on the higher chip. But it could be unstable.

Two other older AMD CPUs could be similarly unlocked:

- AMD K6-2+ with 128K of L2 cache can be converted to a K6-3+ with 512K. The CPU has a heatspreader that can be carefully removed revealing a series of zero-ohm resistors, moving it to the right location unlocks the cache. The CPU is still bound by binning as to whether or not it can be overclocked well.

- AMD Athlon XP could be overclocked with the "pencil mod", using a pencil to draw a conductive trace between two pads on top of the CPU, no delidding required.

Isn’t a zero ohm resistor just a jumper?

It is, but pick-and-place robots like to work with zero ohm resistors compared to small pieces of wire. Also makes it easier to change later, you just swap reels.

In a sense that's correct, but "jumper" suggests these are deliberately components you can change whereas "Zero ohm resistor" is likely intended to be permanent.

Or it might not work at all (as was the case for mine when I tried it).

There definitely was a period where AMD was shipping three-core Phenom IIs with a functional fourth core (demand was higher for the three-core SKUs than their actual defect rate appeared to allow), but I don’t know how plentiful fully-functional one’s actually were. And it was never guaranteed.

There was also the original Athlon, where there was an unjoined connection on top of the die. You could fill in the connection with a pencil and overclock the chip.

Been there and done that.

"By the power of graphite!", I upgraded my cheaper CPU to a more expensive one.

Skeletor failed to show, however.

Yes, allegedly demand outstripped supply for the lower core count chips so it was a mix of disabled rejected cores and disabled working cores.

And certain GeForces could be turned into Quadros (for use with CAD software): https://archive.techarp.com/showarticleefc1.html?pgno=0

This was a soft mod, but I think there was also a hardware mod involving only a pencil.

I still have a computer running Athlon x3 unlocked to Phenom x4 - circa 2010 this was the most cost efficient way to get a 4 core with 32GB of RAM.

You don’t even need to look for extra cores. Just CPUs being locked on different frequencies is similar enough to this concept.

Learning about how they product bin CPUs blew my mind years ago.

iirc, the CPUs come off the same manufacturing line--but the ones they sold as 3.2ghz vs 3.4ghz were based on stability tests. It was the same chip, just that some came out the oven better than others. So they would cap it and slap a label on it, which is why overclocking is feasible but inconsistent.

This is also common a common practice with garments, bakery items, fruit, racehorses, and children.

Wait, children?

Some children are just smarter, more athletic, or better looking than their siblings.

I think they are referring to this part:

> It was the same chip, just that some came out the oven better than others.

Not the part about selling.

Makes sense, no?

Should be an XKCD comic

There are shops that buy CPUs in bulk and bin them themselves for suitability for overclocking and then sell the top performing ones at a premium.

I got my i9-9900k this way, they binned it for 5.1GHz and it had been working 24h non stop for a few years (it is still working fine, but I no longer have a need for it to run).

Silicon Lottery shut down two years back. It isn't clear to me whether manufacturer binning got tighter, overclocking just doesn’t work anymore, or auto-boosting are their lunch.

These days chips with different amounts of cores or cache may derive from the same mask. If one or more of the cores or banks of cache are defective, they're disabled.

Intel/AMD do not test every single die. Once you get stable output from the foundry you learn a max clock/wafer location distribution.

That's interesting. I always thought each one had a basic pass-fail test after packaging.

though then shouldn't the correct replacement part for the HD595 be a matched pair of drivers?

Supposedly, our left and right ears aren't even equal at birth...each having different pathways to the brain. Then, of course, unequal damage over time. Makes me wonder how much tediously matched drivers matter.

Our brains are pretty good at compensating for the failings of our bodies. For general recreational listening matched pairs are not all that useful since the majority of music is mixed with the knowledge that 99% of people are not going to listen to it on something with an accurate stereo image or even flat frequency response.

I had a sad realization after finally buying the very nice 6XX with a small tube amp - that while it sounds incredible, it also makes my hearing loss/tinnitus more prominent. Probably since I was focusing much more on the intricacies of the sound. Ended up selling them because it just wasn’t an enjoyable experience

We are already asymetrical, adding (inconsistent) asymetry on top of it is not going to improve on it. That's why matching is... something we can do to improve audio. At least it's doable.

Apple and JBL measure your ear and adjust according to the measurements. Apple calls it personalized spatial audio.

If you want a matched stereo image across the spectrum, yes. I have little experience with Sennheiser but most makers of the high end (studio grade at least) will offer both singles and matched pairs and leave it up to the buyer.

I've bought matched pairs of DJ stylus. The product descriptions waxed poetically about the reasons this was important, and if I cared, it might have even made sense. The sole reason I bought them paired was the simple fact that the pair was cheaper than buying two individuals. The exact same logic was applied when I bought a pair of monitors, and the fact that the seller offered a $50 item for free.

If you're into matched pair speakers, what about for surround systems? Do you have to have a matched 4 set or a matched 6 set?

If you are into it, sure. This is a good question and I can not quite answer it too my satisfaction despite repeated attempts, but here is my best go at. Surround sound gives a larger sweet spot than stereo (that area in the room where you can hear sounds from speakers move about the room as if they were there with you) which will compensate for less than optimal speaker matching and we also get more information to process from those extra channels so our brain can make more sense of what it is supposed to be. This along with surround sound generally being used with film where our attention is divided makes surround sound more tolerant of speaker selection.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable in 3d sound will happen along.

Edit: Should also mention that we get a lot more leeway in general when it comes to film sound since we also have visual cues regarding the sound's location and movement.

From what I can tell, hardcore audiphiles tend to stop at stereo, so there's that. But if you're going to match speakers, I would think you'd want to at least match by type: match your fronts to each other, match your surrounds to each other, match your heights to each other, match your subs to each other. Just having all of one type be the same model is probably good enough though.

I had a problem with a bass driver on a pair of PMC studio speakers. I asked PMC directly whether I should replace one or both drivers in the pair, and they said to only replace one, that there would be no issues.

So, in response to replacing drivers, 'it depends' is probably closer to the truth. It may well be that bass drivers are less problematic than say midrange when pairing.

Speakers are different than headphones. With speakers you have a sweet spot, if your head is not in that sweet spot than the stereo image is blurred in someway and that image is affected by room reflections, the stuff in the room, volume setting, etc. This is why headphones are common for mixing, when you lean over to adjust that preamp you take the stereo image with you instead of moving out of it. We are more tolerant of speakers in this regard (from the studio standpoint) since the stereo image with speakers changes with your position and is rarely accurate compared to headphones. Midrange is the most important part and it is where the bulk of the information is for most of our music and our hearing, we get a lot more wiggle room in the bass and the highs.

It does depend, we don't always need or want that perfect stereo image but it makes mixing easier to have it available.

The correct replacement part not only isn't matched....it's the same part for the 595 and 555.

> Quite a few people speculated in my Original thread that the more expensive HD595 headphones must also be using a more expensive driver. However, Head-fi member MCC posted the smoking gun; a picture of the original Sennheiser replacement driver labelled “HD 555 / HD 595”.

So, unless they're fucking over their 595 customers who need a repair: the drivers aren't binned.

Unlikely, since the replacement part is the same for both models. From the link:

If you buy a single they are not going to break up a matched pair and they will not refuse to sell you a single. The only way to really know is to sit down with a nice fresh and new pair of both headphones and compare the stereo image across the spectrum, but it is too late to do that for these unless someone happens upon some NOS examples.

Got some bad news for you. "Matched pairs" is a marketing term. They are all tested within the same tolerances.

Depends. Some hifi headphones and speakrs are actually matched. Rare now, but used to be very common when driver designs and production tolerances were looser. I have some 1930's brandes headphines that were matched, but are basically a magneto driver and sound awful (but clear) by any modern standard.

And now you're adding more random assumptions to baseless statement

No I am relaying my experience. I never said this was the case for HD595/555, I said it could be the case and it is common practice. The only way to know for sure is a direct comparison on new examples, unless you have insider information at Sennheiser.

Sorry, what is a NOS example? I'm not familiar with the abbreviation and it is hard to search for such short terms.

New old stock, sealed unsold new product from the past.

BTW, a pro-tip, ChatGPT is quite good at abbreviations:

https://imgur.com/a/SB42IVR

I use it for abbreviations all the time.

New Old Stock

I tried this years ago and without the foam, the headphones gave me a headache every time I listened. The headaches went away as soon as I replaced the foam

What’s with the downvotes? Sorry for being one of the only commentators in this thread to have actually tried it, and for saying what happened. There is one other actually, who also says the sound got worse

I didn't downvote you, but your message is a bit useless: I know lots of people that feels the most bizarre things when they know about it. Starting with people that believe in magic (like in if you burn a black candle, you get free from bad luck), to a girl that got the ear pierced in at least a dozen points to relieve pain on random points of the body. According to her, it worked. A woman who claims that every single chemical puts her in agonizing pain, but sure enough the pain only starts when he knows the chemical is there.

My point is you should try randomly at least couple of headphones that some other person removed the foam on one of them without you even knowing. Then you could apply some simple test like the binomial, and claim/reject one of them gives you headaches.

Quality of sound has a abjective part (a speaker too loud would sound broken to every one), and a heavy subjective part (a speaker with too much bass would sound great to some, bad to others). If someone say "this headphones sound bad" it means almost nothing.

I hate the sound of every guitar with single coil pickups, even the most expensive Fender Tele/Strato, but a lot of guitarist love their sound. I cannot claim "the single coil sounds worse" as if it was an objective thing that everyone should agree to, because what I really mean is "I don't like single coils".

I sympathize, i've had dozens of top ranked headphones as a head-fi fanatic and some of them were unpleasant, mostly for fit and weight reaasons.

On reddit, i've written some carefully researched little posts and gotten 1-2 downvotes so i'll downvote myself and see what happens.. sometimes it's a trickle of more downvotes, sometimes i get the upvotes i think it deserved.

If that were true then the replacement driver for the HD595 would be a matched set, not a single driver labelled “HD 555 / HD 595” as shown.

Recall that after Apple bought BEATS headsets it was revealed that BEATS was putting dummy-metal into the headsets to make them heavier, thus resulting in the purchaser to think that they had better-than headsets based on the perceived weight of the headset - but the weight was not in higher-powered magnets in the drivers...

I still maintain that the person who wrote that article was either doing it just to drive traffic by making bold claims about the design, or was completely unqualified to be discussing the topic and happened to touch on something viral.

At the root of it, products are all designed to be as cheap as possible to produce while meeting the product requirements. Beats are positioned as a "premium fashion" product, not a audiophile sound product, and when you are selling that type of product look and feel is very important to get right to justify the high price. The price of a product has very little to do with the actual cost in such a market, where high prices convey status and drive the desire to purchase the product to show they are more well off than those that can't afford it.

On the product design side, the design isn't even that egregious. Most of the weight is the headphone slider mechanism, where metal is a better choice as metal riding on plastic is going to be more durable and feel better than plastic on plastic unless materials and design are very carefully considered. The other two parts are just light cosmetic parts that absolutely were designed to be accents that looked good, and give that premium look (at extra cost, they could have just painted plastic metallic for less). It isn't like they took a couple pieces of pot metal and glued them inside the earcups to make them heavier, both parts have a function even if one is primarily cosmetic.

Fta it shows that a replacement driver is marked 555/595...

"the only physical difference was an additional piece of foam inside the cheaper HD555 headphones, blocking about 50% of the outside-facing vents"

They are likely still making a good profit on the $200.00 "cheaper" pair - just goes to show what a rip-off the $350.00"premium" level of equipment is. Sennheiser should be embarrassed. I hope buyers take notice and send their money elsewhere.

> rip-off

This term demonstrates a lack of understanding of market dynamics.

As a company you aim for a certain profit when developing and later manufacturing and selling a product. The market has multiple segments and ideally you re-use design and manufacturing processes for multiple segments. Simply speaking, you can basically sell a single tier for $250 or differentiate by different means into a $150 tier and a $350 premium tier. In the end, people with higher quality demands will pay a significant, dis-proportionate premium. So, you can tap into that, which means the premium tier essentially cross-subsidizes the cheap tier. Everybody angry at this practice needs to understand that they couldn't just sell the premium tier for $150. They'd need to sell it for $250, or whatever the weighted mean is. Worse, they'd likely sell fewer items in total, so $280 or some such is more likely to reach the same total profit.

Really, it's not about being evil, it's about economy.

> In the end, people with higher quality demands will pay a significant, dis-proportionate premium.

Also known as "rip-off".

>In the end, people with higher quality demands will pay a significant, dis-proportionate premium. So, you can tap into that, which means the premium tier essentially cross-subsidizes the cheap tier. Everybody angry at this practice needs to understand that they couldn't just sell the premium tier for $150. They'd need to sell it for $250, or whatever the weighted mean is. Worse, they'd likely sell fewer items in total, so $280 or some such is more likely to reach the same total profit.

See:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketsegmentation.asp

Another example is selling books for cheaper in countries with lower incomes. Yet another example is countries charging more for access to national parks to people from richer countries than poorer countries. And another example is using coupons to get discounts, or student discounts, etc.

It is not a perfect mechanism, and sometimes the subsidies are not from and to the populations that would make it "fair", but on a population wide level, it works pretty well.

The consumer is paying for slight sound improvement and the prestige of owning the nicer pair. You may not think it is worth the extra money but apparently it is for some.

This is no different then offering coupons to more ‘cost sensitive’ buyers

In the same way people prefer to drive an Audi instead of Skoda.

Yes, this particular example I always find really stark.

Large numbers of people look at a VW and think to themselves: "this is a nice car, but what I really want is to pay a whole lot more for it".

(I have a SEAT, which is for people who think the reverse. VAG, so same engine, transmission, gearbox, software, etc. as VW, Audi, Skoda).

$350 is hardly the high end market for headphones. That’s the general consumer market top end, barely getting into real Hifi money spenders (who drop hundreds of dollars on extremely dubious products like “balanced” cables etc)

Exactly, some people will do anything to defend pure greed lol.

To counter, not caring about anything you've just written and looking purely at the end result is also part of the economy.

Consumers generally don't want to sympathize with companies and I don't think it's healthy if too many people did either. It's a tug of war to find a balance.

The core of this issue to me is about feeling lied to through vague implications. The product number is higher, the physical appearance of the headphones look better, it cost more, so therefore they must have put more effort into it to justify the price so the sound quality must also be better.

I agree. I don’t mind something being more expensive, but I feel like companies should have to ‘show their work’ to some degree. That way customers can gauge if the additional effort was worth the price difference.

I’m sure most customers in this case would not feel like this was worth the price difference.

But they are selling the premium tier for $150. It's the same set of headphones.

It would be as if Apple sold you one computer for $1,000, but the exact same computer in a different case for $2,000, with the only difference being they put a bunch of malware on the first one so it runs slower.

That's not "re-use design and manufacturing processes for multiple segments", it's intentionally breaking half the product line to sell at a lower price.

> That's not "re-use design and manufacturing processes for multiple segments", it's intentionally breaking half the product line to sell at a lower price.

Sure, you can call it like that if you will. You are free not to buy any products from a company doing this if you don't like it.

As I explained above, they could stop doing that, but then the product would cost more. That may be nice for somebody who wants the premium product version for $280 instead of $350. But I'm sure there are people around who are fine with the simpler ("broken") one if that means they only need to pay $150. And since there are, there is obviously a demand, so it's obviously not all bad what the company is doing.

Again, if you don't like it, don't buy it. (Oh, and in this particular case, you can just buy the cheap one and do the mod. Be happy that you saved $200 instead of ranting that this is wrong in the first place. The more you rant, the harder they will make it for next time.)

>Again, if you don't like it, don't buy it.

Obviously? I'm not searching for a personal shopping solution in this thread; I would hope it's obvious that I'm not going to buy this pair of headphones.

>The more you rant, the harder they will make it for next time.

I think, and this one might just be a wild and crazy idea, next time they can not deliberately break their product line to sell at a lower cost.

My hope when I buy a product is that the company is selling me the best product they can at a particular price point. I don't mind the company making a profit. In fact, I want them to! I just don't appreciate the expectation that I need to break apart every product to determine if they are intentionally sabatouging their product line.

That checks out for consumer vs business pc's/laptops shipping Windows

That was Quadra and Centris iirc

The Centris -> Quadra transition was a similar computer, but not the same. For example, the Centris 610 was a 20 MHz 68LC040 and the Quadra 610 released shortly thereafter was a 25MHz 68040 (some shipped with a 25MHz 68LC040, though).

So right. I think I was thinking of the Performa sub-brand.

The Macintosh Performa is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1992 to 1997. The Performa brand re-used models from Apple's Quadra, Centris, LC, Classic, and Power Macintosh families with model numbers that denoted included software packages or hard drive sizes. Whereas non-Performa Macintosh computers were sold by Apple Authorized Resellers, the Performa was sold through big-box stores and mass-market retailers such as Good Guys, Circuit City, and Sears.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Performa

Maybe you'd be interested in reading about Guitar Center's concept of "jip". Unfortunately, no quick links.

How many times have I heard, "you know, since you're a cool dude, I can knock off X% for you"? Every. Single. Time.

“Jip” is phonetically identical to a slur that refers to ripping someone off, so I was curious about what you meant and found this forum post that goes into detail. Kind of fascinating to think of the incentives and how they play out.

Message #33 in this thread: https://www.strat-talk.com/threads/why-guitar-center-salesme...

This person seems to leave out some info. A previous coworker spent some time as GC employee. He would tell stories of each month's jip awards to the employees that brought in the most jip. There's the price on the sticker, and then there's the absolute lowest price GC will sell for. As the comment in that thread suggests, buying from GC is something to not be done without researching first. Similar to buying a car

I’m pretty sure it’s “gyp”, as in “gypsy”. (Yes, exactly what you are thinking)

Remarkably few people whine about the use of VW branded parts that are used in VWs, that also show up in Audis, Porsches, Lamborghinis, and Ducatis. (Mostly because it lets them buy replacement parts at a fraction of the price than if they'd only ever made a few hundred of those parts just for the Porsche GT3.

> Everybody angry at this practice needs to understand that they couldn't just sell the premium tier for $150. They'd need to sell it for $250, or whatever the weighted mean is.

it should be stressed that this is only true if we add the assumption that they must make the same amount of money, which isn't part of the thought exercise

thus, "need to" should be "want to, because they want more money"

That’s a really long way of explaining what a ripoff is.

Unless Sennheiser can prove that the 555s are being sold at a loss, there is no "cross-subsidizing" happening here. You talk as if "the markets" and "the economy" are some naturally occuring phenomena that are matter of fact and non-negotiable.

> Unless Sennheiser can prove that the 555s are being sold at a loss, there is no "cross-subsidizing" happening here.

Nope. That's part of the misconception here. It suffices that they are being sold for less profit than the target profit margins of the company. And that's very likely the case, given the situation with the premium-tier offering. Every reasonable company cancels projects not bringing in enough profits, since shareholders want to see a return on investment. Non-zero profit is not enough.

> You talk as if "the markets" and "the economy" are some naturally occuring phenomena that are matter of fact and non-negotiable.

I'd indeed claim that market mechanisms can be treated like natural laws, just like gravity or natural selection. You can steer them with taxes or other incentives, just like you can steer how gravity or natural selection impact you. But the mechanisms themselves work no matter if you like them or not, or if you find them "evil" or not.

And I say this as a lefty who is in favor of radical inheritance tax and such. It's important to understand the thing you try to regulate.

> Every reasonable company cancels projects not bringing in enough profits, since shareholders want to see a return on investment. Non-zero profit is not enough.

I see very little reason in cancelling profitable projects. Also, framing my comment as a "misconception" is kinda indisgenious. This is a philosophical disagreement, hard to frame my point of view as objectively wrong.

> I see very little reason in cancelling profitable projects.

Happens all the time everywhere. Money wants to maximize profits. If company A brings you 2% return and company B 5%, then the money will gravitate towards company B. It's not that company A doesn't have profitable projects, perhaps all of their projects are profitable. But just less so than company B, on weighted average. And that's not bad. A reasonable society prefers to use its resources optimally. That's where market mechanisms and society objectives align, and that's why we are embracing a market-based economy. (There are other factors than profits of course, and that's where government regulation comes in. But all else equal, the above example of companies A and B holds and illustrates my point.)

I encourage you to try a management role in a for-profit business and after a few years we can chat again.

> Also, framing my comment as a "misconception" is kinda indisgenious.

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend. I just see this line of arguments now and then and it seems to me that there is some fundamental knowledge of the involved mechanisms lacking.

The cross-subsidy means that while they have gross margin on the 555, it would not be enough to cover R&D & make net profit without the additional sales of the higher margin 595. In other words, they could not afford to develop & bring the 555 to retail by itself, even if the sale price is higher than the simple cost of manufacturing.

That wouldn't be cross subsidy, that would be selling at a loss, right? I don't think any item has ever been sold for the sum of its bill of materials. The price is always bill of materials + labor + some profit, and here "labor" includes R&D.

Sounds like a "bullshit job". Note that I did not say: it should be illegal, or that it’s not maximizing profits for ownership, so please go away if that’s what you want to say to me.

No, sounds like "maximizing profits". Nobody is suffering here, so I don't really see how this should be illegal.

> it's not about being evil, it's about economy

Instead of justifying the status quo, I think we would all benefit if we retired the concept of an economy that incentivizes companies to act evil in order to succeed in it.

Edit: 'evil' is a loaded word. I'm generally referring to profit being the only measure of success. I for one would like to see other KPIs enforced by government institutions, such as 'environmental impact' or 'human benefit'.

I don't get what's evil about it. If you want the expensive headphones and can afford them, get them. If you think they are too expensive, get other ones.

Edit: want I wanted to say is, that prices are arbitrary. They are a number on a label. As a customer you pick what suits you best. If you think Sennheiser or Apple is overpriced, buy something else. It is their decision to set a price, as it is your decision what to buy. You are also not an "evil" customer, if you don't buy their headphones.

I said companies are acting 'evil', not that customers are evil for not spending money.

You don't get what's evil because you're reacting to the environment you know, but you don't have to. Imagine a better environment where your options are not limited to "expensive headphones" or "less expensive headphones".

The alternative to the "'expensive headphones' vs 'less expensive headphones'" choice is not "less expensive headphones". Best case scenario, it's "slightly less expensive headphones but still more expensive than the originally less expensive ones". Or perhaps "they stop manufacturing headphones".

We're not living in a dream world. The conditions you set have consequences in how people behave. Not just individuals, but also companies.

Everybody arguing like this in the thread seems to be missing that the company is offering cross-subsidized headphones for $150. If you actually make them stop the two-tier system, then they would stop offering those for $150 and would need to sell the single-tier product for over $200. There will be some people who can't afford that. So your activism would prevent them from getting nice headphones for $150. Who's evil now?

Very correct, but you’re missing their point. What’s “evil” is that the folks who’ve spent their life designing, optimizing, investing in, and producing these products aren't doing it purely out of the goodness of their hearts, but selfishly in the pursuit of a better life.

What is “evil” to these posters is always “profit above the value of goods provided”. It doesn’t matter whatsoever that the (subjective) material and emotional situation of every happy sennheiser buyer, employee, and investor is better than before.

> What’s “evil” is that the folks who’ve spent their life designing, optimizing, investing in, and producing these products aren't doing it purely out of the goodness of their hearts, but selfishly in the pursuit of a better life.

Sure. That's true though to different degrees for everybody participating in a market-based economy. You can call all of us "evil", but then the term loses most of its meaning.

As a circuit designer and audio tech person I'd highly caution against simply equating "visually the same" with "technically the same" without measurements and thorough checking.

E.g. I could easily build exactly the same circuit multiple times, once for x Euros once for 10x Euros and once for 100x Euros just by picking the best components out of a heap and having them go to the 10x or 100x models.

Visually this would look exactly the same, but in terms of tolerances there would be a huge difference. Same can be true for mechanical parts.

I am not saying corporations are not greedy, I'd just say without measurement we can just assume it is the same without knowing.

I don't believe Sennheiser still make or sell either of the mentioned models. I might be wrong, but I recall them both being superseded some years ago.

In any case, for less than the 595's original MSRP, these days you can get an HD 6XX that very perceptibly outdoes both 5-series models in frequency response. Yours is more of a 2013 complaint than a 2023 one, I think.

Yes, the post should really have a [2008] tag. These are not current models.

Amazon still has some 555s but the top hits for the 595s list them as discontinued. I was trying to determine the price difference since I didn’t spot it in the article.

It was somewhere around a hundred bucks, as I recall. The argument you're making wouldn't necessarily have been a bad one in its day, but its day is long past; the current successors of these models, the HD 569 and HD 599, differ in price by $20.

Yeah I don’t think I’d be too keen to disassemble my headphones and potentially break or chip them to save myself the price of lunch. If it was a difference of half the price? Maybe. But not 15%.

> Sennheiser should be embarrassed. I hope buyers take notice and send their money elsewhere.

Hell to the nah.

Sennheiser is the last decent manufacturer of headphones. Everything else is literal garbage (especially headsets, which prove that there's some law of physics by which if you add a microphone to a pair of headphones the entire thing will fall apart in around a year).

I just hope they stay in business. Logitech's gotten way more of my money over the years as I've bought replacement after replacement headset once they invariably break down, as well as proprietary lithium batteries that literally last a fraction as long as the rechargeable AAAs in my Sennheisers (which haven't even ran out once in over a year of using them ~15 hours per day)!

I'm not sure I'd call them the _last_ decent manufacturer of headphones - perhaps if you only include brands that target the consumer/prosumer space. Beyerdynamic, for example, still make excellent products, including headsets and supply spare parts for headphones manufactured decades ago.

> Sennheiser is the last decent manufacturer of headphones.

Are you just not familiar with many headphone manufacturers? I had Sennheisers years ago and they were fine, but since then I've had headphones from Sony, AudioTechnica, and Shure (just to name a few) which I've much preferred to the Sennheisers I had.

For many consumer products, the R&D cost is most of the cost. The actual parts and raw materials are normally only a small fraction of the cost.

Therefore, the $350.00 'rip off' may not in fact be a rip-off. In fact, with the quantity of them they sell, they may barely cover the R&D costs.

Not if you're Sennheiser. Can certainly be true for smaller brands

It isn't a given - we have no idea how much R&D went into those... maybe to design the shape of that plastic entire research teams invented new methods of acoustic modelling...

IP shouldn't exist

Both the HD555 and 595 were very competitively priced (!), were popular and sold well. How exactly do you think that companies price their products other than "what enough people are willing to pay"?

There is a significant gap between charging high prices for a quality product that people want to buy, and charging even higher prices by deceiving your customers about quality.

I remember the times these cans were priced way cheaper. This is a fantastic rip off across all brands.

I’m curious if the chi-fi market will take over headphones in the coming years.

IEMs are a bit easier to be competitive at, not having to worry about acoustic effects of ear/head shape, ergonomics/comfort is much simpler with IEMs, etc.

But clearly good headphones are still working on a massive margin.

> I’m curious if the chi-fi market will take over headphones in the coming years.

For me, it already has: more choice, better quality, unmatched comfort - and that's fully leaving aside the costs.

My favorite brands are SIVGA and LINSOUL.

Going by Crinacle the current king of chi-fi is Moondrop.

Personally I own Moondrop Aria IEMs for on the road, and for home Shure 840a cans with 1540 pads to kill the extreme treble. My cans before that were Audio Technica M40x with felt mod + new pads.

I’m excited to see if chi-fi will be able to dethrone either of those bang-for-buck kings.

How’s the battery life and noise cancelling?

It’s already getting there because the margins on things like planar headphones and anything else novel has been completely bonkers

I still like Sennheiser. What makes you think elsewhere is any different?

Note that the customer headphones Sennheiser brand was sold to Sonova in 2021. Sennheiser company only makes professional equipment.

How do I know which is which?

If it would be easy to find out who actually makes the stuff no one would buy the brand.

Seriously, EU should make some legislation against this kind of shady shit. It's confusing the consumer. If you don't want to make headphones anymore stop making them. Or license the "technology" but make them say "Sonova headphones with Sennheiser technology"

Does this make the practice any better?

No. But I didn't think it was that bad in the first place. They offer a product for a price. As a customer, I'm free to take it or leave it based on merits. I'm not familiar with this model, but at least one thing must be true.

1. A competitor offers an alternative product at a better price. 2. Sennheiser produces these more efficiently than anyone. 3. All alternatives have similar margins. 4. No other manufacturer has a similar product.

Whatever the case may be, it will inform the rational comparison shopping process. This is a discretionary item. There's probably some economics name for this, but it's not insulin. Sennheiser isn't coercing anyone.

Why don’t you give 1$ to everyone, they would be happy. Not doing it is not that nice.

Same logic after reading and accepting the comments above.

> I hope buyers take notice and send their money elsewhere.

I'm currently in the market for both in-ears and over-ears. Was looking into HD 25 model for over-ears. What other brands are worth looking into? KEF? Focal? Meze?

I personally like Beyerdynamic.

MX 150/100 if you want to have a mic, DT990 Pro if you want open-back and DT770 Pro for closed-back.

Worth mentioning that they're studio headphones, so if you like headphones with a lot of bass you might have to consider other models.

At home I use Sennheiser Game One, before they were rebranded to EPOS. I really, really love them so if you can find them second-hand, go for them. They're hooked up to a Sennheiser GSX 1000. I use this setup for almost three years now and I'm really happy.

For in-ears I use Marshall Mode EQs, I'm on the third pair now and am also really happy. They've got a lot of bass but when I'm commuting I actually prefer it over "true" sound :)

As always with headphones, YMMV. I care about good sound but I'm not that much of an audiophile to care about exact frequency curves etc.

I wonder why you're on your third pair of Marshall Mode EQs :)

I'm partly having a go at them because I have a pair lying around that broke in less than a year. I usually go through a pair in a year (a year and a half) as I'm not very careful with the way I take care of my heaphones/in-ears. However, having said that, I think the EQs have a pretty mediocre build quality. For example, with the way I handled them, the cover of one in ear piece, fell of after a couple of months, and 6-8 months in the jack connector wires got a bit too much wear and tear and no longer connect properly. Also their EQ toggle made the treble (for the Electronic/DnB/Metal music I listen to) a bit too harsh.

Personally for earbuds/earphones I'd recommend anything which is as flat as possible and then you can boost up your preferred range. Alternatively you can go with a pair that has a measured profile (https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq), which you can use to normalizes the frequency response and tweak it after.

For example I went with the cheap AKG Type-C earbuds, which have very harsh mids towards treble (https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/samsung/akg-type-c), but because their sound profile is within the database linked above, I could use Wavelet on Android to compensate for it (and EasyEffects on the desktop) to have them be as neutral as possible, and then boost on top of that. For a ~$10'ish pair of earbuds I am quite impressed. I also had to chose them because I have a "modern" phone that decided that a Jack is so 20th century.

> I wonder why you're on your third pair of Marshall Mode EQs :)

I guess it's a mix between nostalgia and me just liking how the songs I like sound on them. They're the first pair of in-ears I bought myself.

> I think the EQs have a pretty mediocre build quality

I'll agree with you on that. The first pair lasted a year and the second not much longer. Then I just went with whatever. Two years ago I wanted to try out "good" in-ears and bought a pair of Moondrop Starfields. They were okay, but a bit flat, the cable broke, bought a different cable, which I've stepped on. Then I remembered that I was a fan of the Mode EQs like 6 years ago and bought a pair out of curiosity, which was end of 2022. And I just really like how they sound, and that they're light, and that they fit well, and that they look good. I don't know...I just like them :D

Your explanation about measured profiles and Wavelet/EasyEffects sounds intriguing. I think I will try this approach with a different pair of headphones, I really wonder what you can get out of cheap in-ears. I tried to use EQs from time to time but I always end up tuning things for 30m without especially satisfying results. AutoEQ would help because it's automated :D Thanks!

Beyer also recently release the DT 700/900 Pro X are someone of a spiritual successor to the classics. Importantly they now feature a detachable cables, includes a USB-C one with internal DAC and mic.

You're right! I didn't want to recommend the X versions because I never tried them myself, but I think judging by the feedback they get online they would be a good choice as well.

The only downside is the cost. The non-X versions cost $140, the X-versions $220. Not sure if the $80 are worth it for me.

I picked up a pair of the 700 X's a couple of weeks ago - no complaints so far. The replaceable cable removes the only weak point in an otherwise completely repairable product. That lets me amortise any difference across a decade or so.

Beyerdynamics are wonderful. I'd add SIVGA, far better than the Sennheiser I had!

I'd suggest the SV021 if you want bass, or the SV003 if you prefer the flatness of studio headphones like the Beyers.

I use them with a Sony Walkman DAP: best money I've ever spent!

Good bass matters for some styles: the SV021 is better when I listen to say Моргенштерн

> I'd suggest the SV021 if you want bass

Hmm, I actually am considering buying bassy over-ears, because all the over-ears I have are pretty neutral/studio sounding. I game a lot of singleplayer story-games and sometimes I feel that a bit more bass would be enjoyable for explosions, gunshots etc.

Thanks for the recommendation, never heard of SIVGA :)

It's the most comfortable over-the-ears I've ever had - far better than anything several times the price!

If you only have USB-C, pair them with a Moondrop DAC

>the SV021 is better when I listen to say Моргенштерн

when you listen to what now?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenshtern

It's Russian rap - though for the last few years he's been moving more into RnB, which I don't like as much

Beyerdynamic makes great headphones. Personally though I love my Audio Technica cans. I find I want different ones for different reasons - a flat frequency response isn't always the most pleasant

Air Pods Max. Totally worth it. Automatically turns on/off, automatically pairs with the device you're using. Active Noise Cancellation is a godsend, i.e. if you have people with lawnmowers around you, this will improve your life more than anything else you can buy. Effortless to clean. Ear cushions come off and you can just put them into the washing machine. Great build quality, has a nice volume dial with click sounds. Build-in microphones. Sound is top notch too.

Annoying and soon-to-be-obsolete Lightning charging port, though. I plan to buy the AirPods Max once they come out with a USB-C version.

There are lots of magnetic charging adaptors on Amazon and eBay which come with USB-C, Micro-USB, and Lightning tips, all of which share a common interface with their cables. Most of them seem to come from the same manufacturers; there are about three styles, and while no two are interchangeable, it's usually not hard to find a variety of sellers for whichever style you want.

Don't expect much in data support even from versions that claim to offer it, but they all deliver power just fine, and it's been getting on for a decade since I've had to screw around with finding the right cable to charge anything. Saves insertion cycles on the device connector socket, too.

Hard no on yet another adapter.

I love my AirPods Max, but the automatic pairing never worked very well for me. I ended up disabling it.

AudioTechnica have been consistent in quality over the years. They have a number of models to choose from for every purpose, at fair prices. The models don't change every year and are supported and field repairable. I still use the ATH-M40fs I bought 20+ years ago. The newer ATH-M50 would be my choice if I had to pick a new pair today.

i've had two pairs of ATH-M50s (one black, one white) and they both turn into a giant mess once the painted vinyl (or whatever it is) starts flaking off after a few years.

Just bought a pair of ATHM50x. Well worth the cost. Been out in the field recording with them and mixing in studio as well. Loving them so far.

interesting. Mine are both in great condition ~10 years later. You can buy replacemnt ear pads, but only in black AFAICT.

it was the headband that got flakey. maybe mine were exposed to more light or something.

I had the HD 25 and found them super uncomfortable. Sold them and got a pair of Sony MDR-7506 for 100$ years ago. Haven’t looked back. The ear pillows (not sure how they’re called) are made of pleather which eventually delaminates. Replacements are 30–45$ which is a bit much. But with some patience you can rub it all off and expose the velvet underneath which makes them perfectly useable again. The pillows sometimes split at the seams but again nothing you can’t fix with a bit of thread.

Compatible replacement pillows exist but I’ve sampled some of them and they made the sound more muffled and bassy with less trebles in my opinion so I went back to the original pillows. Im not audiophile at all but could hear a difference when comparing them side to side (I have two identical pairs)

They also come with an exploded diagram on the box so you can take them apart if you wish.

And they’re extremely comfortable. I’m not a pro but I understand they’re made for sound engineers to be worn all day.

I don’t know about their cans but I do know that in the early days of ear buds I played a Cat and Mouse game with Sony where about every second new model they produced had really good bass response, often in a fairly reasonably priced model. I ended up buying backups to carry me through to the next next model. Looking back, I wonder if Sony had two teams with alternating release cycles, and the engineers on one team were better than the other. If it was some sort of marketing strategy it’s over my head.

AFAIK the 7506 have been around since the 80s or 90s, and they’re still making them today.

I thought the only problem with MDR-7506's were that they were not comfortable enough for wearing for long periods? All reviews I read online said this.

I find them super comfortable. They don’t feel like they’re squeezing my head unlike others that are too tight, they’re not very heavy, they cushions are wide and spread the pressure well without folding my ears uncomfortably… I personally find them very comfortable.

After reading this I bought a pair, you were right they are great.

For over-ears is good to decide if you want open or closed cans. That can make a huge difference, especially if you are going to use them even in slightly noisy environment.

I'm very happy with DT-1770 pro by Bayerdynamic for closed. And *extremely* happy with Focal Clear for open back.

I occasionally also mix on them.

Be warned, this is an addictive and pricey hobby, although not nearly as spendy as speakers.

My current rig is a Schitt Jotenheim DAC/Amp driving Hickman Ananda’s. (Roughly $600 amp driving $900 headphones).

I'm currently using a Schiit Modi for my DAC and a Schiit Vali 2 for my headphone amp. They seem to work pretty well to my ears, whether they're driving my Meze 99 Classics headphones, or the PreSonus Eris E4.5 powered speakers.

You're right, it's definitely an expensive hobby and you can spend a lot of money chasing that dragon so to speak. I was lucky in that I got something that sounded very good to me with my first set of purchases, but I was obsessed for a while with reading every detail about potential purchases.

It'd be a lot easier to get a "personal" end game setup off the rip these days.

My first setup was a "Zero" DAC/AMP off Ebay in 2008, paired with Grado SR-80s. The Zero amp was something some dude in like hong kong was building. The actual amp was nothing fancy, but it used an opamp that was super high end for a budget component way back in the day.

I would try a few different ones if you can. I tried Meze, Sennheiser, Audio Technical, Bose wireless, and many others over the years and some just didn’t fit my head or ears right or sounded off in some way. Everyone has different head and ears and personal preference for different sound and it’s very hard to know if it will click with you by reading reviews or marketing materials. It also depends on what it is you listen to the most. If you’re all about big orchestral pieces or chip tunes then your choice will be very different.

Personally I found wireless and active noise cancellation worthwhile tradeoffs to some audio quality because I end up wearing them when doing chores and on the plane and on calls when my kids are being loud.

I think Sundara HifiMan might be over your price range, but these are my current favourite headphones, some internet person who knows more about audio than me [recommended them](https://old.reddit.com/r/bapcsalescanada/comments/vn53cw/hea...)

I got the Bower Wilkins PX8 about 6 months ago and love it. I originally went with the PX8 over the Focal Bathys due to it being $100 cheaper than the Focal Bathys, more compact form factor, and the reportedly better noise cancellation. MDs have widely-reported problems with their Bluetooth connectivity.

However, I am Focal-curious. Some reviews have the FB noticeably better sound. And, right now, B&H is offering the FB at a $150 discount, dropping it below the BW.

I wouldn’t get HD25 unless you’re planning to DJ or play live in clubs. They’re not the most comfortable and sound is ok but not really enjoyable.

I picked up a pair of Phonon SMB-02 a few weeks back and they’re the best studio headphones I’ve had in 20 years of DJing and producing. The space they reveal is amazing and feel close to studio monitors.

All the audiophile in-ear headphones I’ve ever bought broke in less than a year; but none of my “cheap” headphones ever broke. Except my apple ear buds: those wore out pretty fast too. The cables are really low quality

I use AirPods atm: you don’t have to fiddle with getting a proper seal, you can still hear what’s around you, the open back sound stage feels great in all headphones, there’s less pressure buildup, and it has good software integration. I’m never going back to cords again if I can help it

I'm very happy with my Meze 99 Classics.

The price a product sells for is driven purely by the market that you are selling it into. If the market will bear a higher price to maximize profit then it is in the company's best interest (and is indeed their responsibility to their shareholders) to sell it for that price. That actual cost to make the product has practically zero bearing on the pricing, other than setting a floor for which the product will make a profit.

If this pricing model is enough to get you to not buy a product then you probably will have a hard time finding anything to buy if you have a clue how much things actually cost to manufacture. I often look at products and get pissed off when I see the price because I have a good idea what the actual manufacturing cost is.

Lol, why embarrassed. Sennheiser was happy and still is happy, this tutorial will not reach nearly enough people to make a difference in their sales. It is a very cool tutorial, though.

Yes, they probably don't care. In some circles, quite often the ones where the most money is, a hacked pair of headphones will always sound worse than an untouched one, no matter if lab instrumentation would say otherwise.

You're looking at this all wrong.

The 595s were competitive at their price point. They reviewed extremely well. They are considered good value.

The 555s were excellent value, using the same driver.

Neither is a ripoff. They're both good to excellent value when looking at the market.

I’ll never understand that people get angry about this stuff but not about luxury bags or iPhones.

You’re not paying for the bill of material. You’re paying for the research, the engineering, the design and the brand.

I'm angry at neither Sennheiser nor Apple. First Sennheiser does its research and uses engineering to differentiate a product, and that's fine for me.

In Apple's case, more money generally gives more hardware. LIDARs, GPS modules in GSM iPads, more cores or more co-processors, etc.

I'm very aware that I generally don't pay for the bill of materials, and it doesn't bother me, because I get a far superior experience for a longer time.

My newest toy is 3rd generation AirPods my wife got me for my birthday. Do they sound better than my highest end headphones, no. Are they "monitor-flat", again no. But, they are practical, sound enjoyable and useful. Also they do a great job at projecting voice (podcasts, calls, audiobooks) at my ears with utmost clarity even in noisy environments without being loud, fatiguing and uncomfortable, and you know what? This is great.

Also, it renders Atmos audio beautifully. I enjoy listening to them, and this is what matters for me on the go.

And, they're paired to an iPhone X, and it's going out of support this year. I'll again get the latest and the greatest in shortest time possible and forget about phones for ~8 years.

Yeah, my boss has latest and greatest iphones and airpods pro, and everytime he uses them compared to dirt cheap Jabra headset company gave us, I know. How? He sounds like crap, voice dropping, volume jumping up and down, sometimes audio disconnections, while literally everybody else on the call is fine. Pairing issues half of the time.

But he refuses to use what company gives to him. He ain't complaining, because he hears rest of us perfectly fine.

Btw all that hardware you listed, its in other phones too, for much less. My phone from last year has ie Lidar, that's not something fancy these days, and its pretty accurate for common stuff. I won't build shelves just by using it but otherwise measures OK.

I use AirPods Pro for hours every single weekday in meetings and have never had a single complaint about quality. Never any pairing issues, and I frequently move between my work MBP, personal iPhone, and personal MBP. They switch flawlessly.

I do notice that the cheapo company supplied headsets sound scratchy when others use them over personal AirPods.

Funny how we have exact opposite experiences.

> Funny how we have exact opposite experiences.

Just a crazy thought, but perhaps the parent was trying to connect to a device not created by Apple?

Any tips for Atmos? I've tried turning on "spatial audio" for albums that support it on apple music, but it just sounds more distant and echo-ey. It sounds so bad that I can't imagine anyone liking it, so I must be doing something wrong

Honestly, no.

I gave a couple of shots with some albums, with the AirPods, only. The way Apple puts it (scan your ears with FaceID camera to optimize things) makes a convincing performance of positioning music, but it's not better than a honest stereo album with a good pair of speakers.

Upmixing stereo to spatial is not very good, too. Just look for Dolby Atmos albums on Apple Music.

Huh, I didn't know about the ear scanning thing. I'll give it a try, thank you!

Atmos is a scam to sell more speakers. The spacial audio is the same lame fake surround sound trick that never sounded good. Either listen to Atmos mixed music, famously hated by artists and producers alike, or just listen in stereo and enjoy the music.

Oh yeah I'm fully aware, I just want to give it an honest shot, but everytime I did it sounds the same as or worse than stereo, even watching/listening DolbyTM AtmosTM Certified ContentTM on DolbyTM AtmosTM Certified DevicesTM

> You’re not paying for the bill of material.

They’ve added more material (and cost) with the foam, and to make the product worse.

A cheaper iPhone isn’t usually a crippled high end model.

Take apart the phone and look at individual parts and you will find that this is absolutely the case. Every large scale electronics manufacturer uses this strategy.

And specifically in Apple's case they do spend more money doing stuff like soldering ram to the motherboard so customers can't upgrade them.

As much as I dislike Apple policies on general, the RAM is not soldered, it's integrated in the SoC, and it makes a HUGE difference in terms of SPEED.

The soldered disk on the other hand... fuck that

They started soldering the RAM to the logic board on the mid-2012 MBP.

Initially this was discussing the iPhone.

It’s one of those happy times when everyone is right.

> And specifically in Apple's case they do spend more money doing stuff like soldering ram to the motherboard so customers can't upgrade them.

Doesn't soldering RAM to the motherboard cost less?

100%. Soldering RAM makes the engineering quite a lot easier, prevents a RAM module vendor from making profit, and gets rid of an entire assembly step because now you no longer need to install the RAM module.

The downside is a lack of flexibility, because you are now committed to a very specific RAM chip and you need to spend effort if you ever need to change that - rather than just plugging in one of a dozen modules.

I’ve got news for you about how flash memory and processors are manufactured, binned, and fed out to distinct product lines.

The general strategy is to make everything with the same die, and then bin the output based on manufacturing quality, defects, etc.

Quite often, the manufacturing is too good, and therefore perfectly capable hardware is feature-limited in order to fill the lower end product lines.

And plenty of people buying those processors feel it's their right to 'overclock' to get the performance of a more expensive product - In the early 2000s people would even bridge connections on the chips with pencil to reverse multiplier locking.

Slot 1 300A Celeron pencil trick was the best. I lived with that for a while, and then I got a dual socket 370 533 Celerons on the BP6. That was an absolutely insanely overpowered machine for years.

their options are to: * do novel research into making a sku that produces exactly $199 worth of sound quality, no more no less (more expensive) * sell everything cheaper, which is equivalent to making both skus sound identical (less profit) * not make a low end sku (pricing out potential customers) * create a low end sku for lower binned drivers (least bad option)

You missed the point entirely. “The research, the engineering, the design and the brand” is almost exactly the same for both models. The problem is that Sennheiser charges you $150 more for pretty much the same headset.

So if Louis Vuitton made a version of their bags that’s the same but a different logo, at only a 50% margin instead of 98% or whatever their current margins are, you’d be angry at them too?

But because they only sell the version with the super high margin and not the “crippled” cheaper kind, it’s somehow just fine?

Same with iPhones, those margins are huge, they could totally sell you a crippled cheaper version of the same hardware and still make money. They just choose to only sell things at the highest margins, because their UX and brand are so strong. How is “pricing everything super high” fine and “also sell a few cheaper options with lower end-user value” terrible greed? That’s totally upside down to me.

> So if Louis Vuitton made a version of their bags that’s the same but a different logo, at only a 50% margin instead of 98% or whatever their current margins are, you’d be angry at them too?

Useless comparison, bag here is only fashion statement, not something you use for technology.

And it's weird assumption they made any of them "first", they most likely designed both in parallel (design time != start of production time) and just put worse sounding version in cheaper one to not cannibalize the market.

If LV did that, it would damage their brand. People justify paying for premium brands by convincing themselves they get something exclusive. If LV showed you can get the same product, just with a different brand, then it's no longer exclusive. Those who previously believed in the brand would be angry.

And the difference between the different products sold by software people is frequently just a few bits here and there. The "Pro" version might allow bigger files or higher resolutions or whatever, the "Lite" only does 20 projects at a time, whatever. The cost for these differentiated products is exactly identical, the underlying product is precisely the same, yet they have the audacity to charge (often a significant) price differential. And you even already did all the work for the Pro Ultra version! How dare you artificially cripple it to sell it at a lower price! Disgusting and reprehensible. Software developers should be ashamed of themselves.

It's known as "market segmentation" and it's been around forever. Look at CPUs, car engines, smart phones - same hardware with different feature bits enabled allows you to sell the same widget cheaper to a different demographic without destroying the value proposition of the more expensive variant.

Yeah, this sounds like textbook price discrimination via market segmentation to me. Producers do this to capture more of the consumer surplus value (willingness of some consumers to pay more than others). The alternative is to offer a single model for a price somewhere in between. Without the segmentation the richer / more willing to spend consumers save some money, but some of the poorer / less willing to pay consumers get priced out of the market. With effective price discrimination, the supplier gets higher profits, but there's also some cross-subsidy from bigger spenders to the more thrifty ones, so there's also some progressive redistribution.

You can look at it from a different angle, that you pay $150 less for pretty much the same headset, as the more expensive one paid the research.

I can argue that why do I have to pay 1000$ for a software, when the hobby tier is free, it is pretty much the same application.

> I’ll never understand that people get angry about this stuff but not about luxury bags or iPhones.

What makes you think same people do not get angry about those ?

> You’re not paying for the bill of material. You’re paying for the research, the engineering, the design and the brand.

The annoyance is having to navigate what you pay for. I don't want to pay for the design and the brand, I want to pay for engineering and research

You also pay for quality control. Cheaper brands often have decent audio quality on average but high variation in between individual pairs of headphones. They also tend to fall apart after 1-2 years of use in my experience.

I don't mind paying for the research, engineering and maybe design but I won't pay for "brand". Same as I don't buy luxury bags or iPhones or clothes.

Are headphones still getting better?

Welp. I tried this and can’t hear a difference. I guess I might not have the proper audiophile training. Or maybe excessive levels of skepticism made the placebo effect not work.

Luckily I didn’t damage them so no loss. I wish there was some more objective way I could measure. Though that’s difficult for obvious reasons. In fact, after getting covid I had tinnitus and everything felt muffled. An audiogram showed that I have above average hearing. But good luck telling my brain that. It’s constantly convinced that everything is muffled and there’s a ringing.

FWIW in my experience these changes are not immediately noticeable, but once you do get used to better gear, if you were to go back to the old one, then you'd notice the difference. Perhaps not a very viable experiment with this mod, but worth taking into account in general.

For almost a decade I've had a modded HD555, and another one that's not modded. I have never been able to tell a difference in audio output between the two. By contrast, moving to strictly better gear (as when I got the first HD555, or when I got the HD6XX that's replaced them both for music listening) is an immediately perceptible step change.

Basically, the foam mod is nonsense. I get why it was popular, especially in audiophile circles where snake oil is always at least on the menu and often just is the menu. (Green marker around the rim of a CD, anyone? It makes the bits sound warmer!) At least in the case of the foam mod there's a physically plausible mechanism, which puts it head and shoulders above most audiophile nonsense. But it still does not make a perceptible difference in practice.

That’s how so much of life is. Moving up is somewhat “meh” and disappointing, but moving back down feels like a huge downgrade. It’s sort of a bummer!

That's why I've tried to stick with my cheaper stuff like Monoprice earbuds, haha.

I don’t think it’s “meh”, but I was surprised by the scale factors. High end product might cost 10x more, but it often feels like it’s only 50% better. It was disorienting given my misinformed understanding of wealth & the wealthy.

See refrigerators. The units in the homes of the wealthy are way better than a $300 special at the big box store. But they are also still pretty much ordinary refrigerators.

That's an old canard. I tried that about 10 years ago it degraded the quality of the 555. The foam is there for a reason. Ended up buying the 650 which I love to this day.

Another vote for the HD650 here.

I bought a pair nearly 20 years ago, and they have had plenty of use. About two years ago, I picked up Sennheiser-branded replacement padding for the headband and earcups. Feels like new. You can also get a replacement cable, as it plugs in to the earcups rather than being soldered.

It's a nice change from planned obsolescence.

Unless someone has actually measured the frequency response, I wouldn’t assume this mod covered 100% of the differences anyway.

Sennheiser has several models where the only difference appears to be a trivial piece of damping material, but the measured difference between the two is substantial. You also can’t get the exact foam piece yourself so mods aren’t possible.

Agreed: removing the foam gave me headaches

Didn't expect to see this here.

I heard this rumor a long while ago (15+ years) while still in school. I did it to my headphones but learned that it pretty dramatically increased sound leakage. I'm not sure if was the exact same models of senns, but the trick has been around awhile.

Same here. Did it and got complaints about sound leakage from my colleagues.

Don't buy open-backed headphones to use in a place with colleagues.

This. I’m on (maybe?) my third pair of HD 280 in the office so I can work without hearing everyone nearby, which apparently means they also can’t hear my music.

Do buy open-backed headphones if you want your ears to breathe. I cannot wear closed headphones for more than 30 mins, while open-backed can be used all day.

(thinking emoji) We need openable vents.

You can't just take open back headphones and close them up, it will sound terrible. And conversely you can't open up a pair of closed headphones without the same problem.

If you could make a headphone that can do both and sound acceptable, it would probably much more expensive than just buying a two pairs, one open and one closed.

I did like using open-backed ones for cycling, can hear what's happening on the road. I was using Grado SR-80 and was kinda surprise how much abuse they handled (in rain/get sprayed by passing car etc.)

Yep, I read about this and did the mod on a pair of 555s back in the late aughts. I didn't notice a difference.

At the onset I thought this would involve something to the effect of flashing the firmware or baking the circuit board, but:

> How to do the mod

> The foam cushions are removed simply by pulling on them.

Lol.

HW engineer here. So it’s generally not true that you’re getting the same product at half the cost. Firstly, while all the HW may actually be the “same” it’s probably been binned for different specs. This means that the yield is lower for higher performing parts. 2nd is that for the same HW there may be additional FW and test time associated with that HW. Both of those items equate to higher cost.

They are often intentionally mis-binned, though: it is quite common for there to be more high-specced parts than there is demand for, so they'd rather downgrade it to a cheaper variant than have it rot on a shelf. So if you're lucky, you end up with a product which significantly outperforms its official label.

There is something called yielded cost. The actual same part that yields to a higher bin costs more due to lower yield. So it’s very unusual to sell it for less. You see the same thing in TV monitors. The best displays, representing the best of the distribution sell for way more. What does happen is that you can get parts at the edge of the spec that are almost as good but whether you get one of those is purely random.

I believe anybody who's shopped for a desktop CPU in the past decade knows this. The difference is that a Ryzen 5600X costs 10-15% more than a regular 5600, not twice as much and then some.

Reminder that in hifi, price and performance are only very loosely correlated, if at all. This is even more so the case for headphones.

I can agree that dac+amps make almost no difference, and there is a metric fsckton of snake oil.

I do find that the difference between a pair of 100 euro headphones and 400 euro headphones is quite obvious, though. Can you elaborate a bit?

I think over about 800, the difference is pretty much gone -- with the caveat that might not hold if you're buying a set with a specific freq response in mind (e.g Beyer Dynamics cans tend to boost low and treble a bit, which is good for mixing, or Grados which make acoustic music sound absolutely massive etc)..

I generally agree, but to counter that I have worked in audio studios with full stack audio setups with some of the best professional gear available at the time and the audio that came through even a cheap pair of monitors was better than anything I have heard before or since.

I'd speculate that in audio studios a lot of thoughts/work go into acoustics of the rooms themselves. And it is done by professionals who have to work in that environment every day for several hours.

Yep this. A studio engineer mate of mine recons room treatment is maybe 80% of the difference you can hear.

Not many people are willing to install that much foam panelling, though.

I agree that there is a metric ton of snake oil but make no difference? That’s not true at all. Power consumption and capacitor sizes make tons of difference. Well warmed up Class A amps are great. Sad I don’t own one.

DACs? Beyond a very very cheap entry point they make no difference. Anyone telling you that DAC A is warmer sounding than DAC B is almost certainly a cork sniffer.

Amps, however, obviously have an impact on the sound delivered — especially for high impedance headphones, or those that are otherwise difficult to drive (think some planar magnetically, etc). Again, though, anyone who thinks that relatively powerful amp A is significantly different to equivalently powerful amp B is almost certainly more interested in impressing other people with too much money than how kit actually sounds.

_almost_ no difference. Maybe I just have crap ears, but I’ve tried blind comparing headphone amps and honestly can’t tell any difference between my chord mojo, my schiit Valhalla and my ifi or dragonfly…

They’re all fairly low end though I guess.

True, but I'd argue that the effect only starts to kick in at some point around $400 or so for a pair of headphones. Above that point the curve of performance/price flattens fast and soon you're getting into the esoteric territory of directional cables. But go below that point and the sound quality enters a steady decline noticeable to most experienced listeners- HD 595 were great and inexpensive, but objectively not as good as HD 600. The Momentums sound nice but they're far from perfect. AirPods Pro 2 are amazing, and have solid, respectable sound, but they're far from what really high-end in-ears can get you.

Except at the very low end. The £2 earbuds from Flying Tiger are going to be very bad.

I have some $50 Soundpeats Air3 Deluxe HS earbuds. They have the high end LDAC codec with 14mm drivers (far bigger than your ear canal / drum). Absolutely amazing and pass all the Sonus Faber tests [1] to these 59 year old ears.

[1] https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnSJ7ZX2HMpsNMKj8IH...

I think it depends how much of a hobby hifi is for a person. I like headphones that have a flatter frequency response, and then just boost up what I like for the songs I listen to. On the other hand I also very much enjoy open backs as the bass has room to evacuate and the music is a bit more spatial, which in some stereo mixes makes the songs you are already accustomed to sound fresh again.

I have a pair of $20 202 IIs that sound very good. Easily comparable to much more expensive headphones. I stopped using them about a year ago as I switched to wireless headphones, but if all you want are simple wired cans you can get great sounding audio cheap.

Idea: Scientific headphone studies

Double-blind / blind headphone testing where price and manufacturer / model are not revealed. Possibly additional methods; multiple tests in a long timespan, multiple people testing, different locations (studio, sports etc.) and so on.

The reviewers are allowed to use any and all digital measuring tools in addition to listening by ear.

A rigorous version of this would integrate above in rtings.com headphone testing method.

People in Audio Science Review forums do scientific studies of headphones: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?forums/he...

A problem with this is that our ears are very different in shape and size from one person to the next. This can have a non-trivial impact[1] on what a person hears, especially for in-ears.

Thus a pair that might measure great might not sound good with your ears.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y41oQTfDWiI

There's a great lecture by Floyd Toole on exactly that for speakers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrpUDuUtxPM.

Linus Sebastian from Linus Tech Tips is doing just that, but better.

He got some professional testing equipment and he's building a proper testing environment for headphones and other stuff.

Additional details in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwPLhyUgm-g

disclaimer: i'm not affiliated with LTT in any way

You don't need human test subjects. You can very accurately measure frequency response.

I have those and have done that immediately when I go them, more than ten years ago. There’s even a Level 2 hack: the honeycomb mesh that the black piece is attached to? That can all go, you can literally cut it out with nail clippers or a similar tool, which gives the headphones even more space to breathe and makes the sound a bit more behaved.

Superlux HD681 Evo (offbrand AKG) + cheap USB DAC (FiiO E10K or so) + Equalizer APO (https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/tree/master/results) = basically as good as it gets, without breaking the bank.

Equalizer APO doesn't list the E10k.

Could you recommend a different one? I'd like to go and test that since my headphones broke last week and I've been too lazy to dive into the audiophile depths.

The parent comment probably referred to the headphone eq settings that can be exported from AutoEq into Equaliser APO. AutoEq deals with headphones, not amplifiers.

Not the same, but there was a Blu Tack mod for another model.

http://musicalmusings.themindofgame.com/2010/02/hd280-pro-bl...

This one DID noticeably improve the quality of sound / bass response.

There’s also the mod for the HD-439 where you cut away some tape that covers up some holes and you get markedly more bass.

This post ticks multiple boxes for me — taking things apart and love of a bargain.

2011 discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2214158

Really surprised to see no objective comparison (frequency response curves etc). Are people really happy with a guy pulling out foam from his headphones and saying they sound a bit different (no shit) And he doesn't even own the other model?

There’s a recent buy-it-for-life thread with moderate advocacy for cheaper models. I’m waiting for my £20 ones from Amazon. Let’s see…

“Any recommendations on Bluetooth earbuds that are sweat/waterproof, reliable, and well designed?”

https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/14a2hry/any_r...

Loved my HD555s, did the foam removal instantly, but wouldn't say it was a game changer.

Rocked the Zalman clip on mic and moved on to doing the 3.5mm detachable mod and used a V-Moda BoomPro.

Still a great setup today, especially for gaming. Sadly lacking in bass.

Pretty fascinating find and a great insight into manufacturing different SKUs. I thought it was neat the lower end product actually had one extra part compared to the higher model – in this case a small piece of foam to slightly tweak the output to a slightly less desirable shape.

It's similar to how motorcycles are derated.

In Europe there is limit to the kW output of motorcycles someone with a learners permit can drive, so in a lot of cases the output of a more powerful bike is limited so they can learn on the same bike to what they will be driving.

To achieve this on some bikes you can restrict the air flow through the carburettor, which can be as simple as adding a piece of cardboard in the right place...

A few years ago the EU introduced a change/addendum to the A2 class restriction barring holders of that license class from driving bikes that were too limited in order to get their vehicle certification:

Motorcycles of a power not exceeding 35 kilowatts (47 hp) and with a power/weight ratio not exceeding 0.2 kilowatts per kilogram (0.12 hp/lb)

  and not derived from a vehicle of more than double its power.

My very first bike, and those of all my friends who rode, was the same. The process (called derestricting) usually involved removing a cross feed pipe between the exhaust and the intake.

This reminds me of when I flashed the bios of my AMD gpu to make it into a more expensive model.

Back then not even GPU-Z could tell them apart… “6850? 6870? Ehhh let’s say ‘a 6800 series GPU”

Drivers seem different to me. Other components don't matter as much. What am I missing?

The picture mentioned is in the article, just below what I quoted.

Drivers are the same, this is covered at the end of the article.

> However, Head-fi member MCC posted the smoking gun; a picture of the original Sennheiser replacement driver labelled “HD 555 / HD 595”.

This mod has been going around for years. I bought a pair of HD 558s in 2012 — phenomenal headphones, still going strong — and I found a number of posts suggesting I do the same thing.

I paid $148 USD for the HD595s in 2011. They still work just as well today, but I'm disappointed to find out 14 years later I was conned into paying more for a false premium.

I did this to mine. I think the sound did get slightly more airy but also the sound leakage was through the roof. If you're single though, I can only recommend.

I did this years ago to one of my two HD 555s. As with comparing an unmodded 555 to a 595, I've never really been able to hear a difference.

I have the 555s. Can confirm this works.

Had my Sennheiser headphones for more than 20 years they still work and sound great! :)

has anyone actually done the science and done measurements? with the web awash in measurement nerd hifi addicts you'd think this would have been established. though a moot point as this is an old article, referencing a model no longer available.

Hd201,about £20 when I bought them ten or more years back. Worth the money. Anything more than this and you're into diminished returns, it just doesn't make sense to step outside the lower part of £30.

It's absolutely worth to go up to the $100-150 range, the difference is very noticeable. The returns don't diminish as fast as you suggest.

Highly subjective of course. And you are way into diminishing returns even at £20.

These days I have dialed in my sweet spot to around £100 for headphones

We are like 11 and 1 o'clock, so close yet so far.

I can't see 100 quid getting five times the headphone experience. Given these have lasted a decade, I don't see myself needing to replace the five times over during the rest of my life. I don't think my ears would be able to distinguish the difference, especially not from pc sound output.

> I can't see 100 quid getting five times the headphone experience.

Just to be clear, this is not what I'm claiming either, when I choose the £100 headphones. I don't think anyone would make that claim. I find them to be "better", and worth the premium, but absolutely not five times "better".

> I don't think my ears would be able to distinguish the difference, especially not from pc sound output.

That's all that really matters I guess.

You could try to find a way to test a "better" setup (source device + headphones) to see if you are missing out. But you could also absolutely just avoid doing that and just stay happy.

I appreciate the article, but if you really want to buy headphones, HD6xx are a better choice.

Yep, the hd600 is amazing, I was introduced to it by an old friend in my teenage year and immediately got hypnotized by its sound, the most amazing piece of hardware I've ever tried but was only able to afford it after my first engineer pay check a bit more than 10 years ago and have never found anything better to this day. I've tried a lot of them since that time but in my ears it put everything else to shame, if HN got some suggestions to find what could be an upgrade from the hd600, I'm all ears!

One of the issue of the hd600 is it makes you picky about sound, in the same way like pluging an old gibson onto a marshall amp, it's hard to get back to a cheaper alternative once you try the magic. Also the same friend that introduce me to the hd600 bought a hd650 as he lost the hd600 on tour but I was very disappointed by the sound of the hd650 which in my ear is nowhere as good as the hd600

As an HD600 owner, I can confirm: This is the headphone to get. Comfortable, Neutral, Accurate and Durable.

And I do not like the HD650 either; it's just a worse headphone to my ear. Clearly colored to sound a certain way.

Ridiculous lol

Designing things that way (especially firmware crippling) should be illegal

The alternatives are:

- merge the two products in one: the higher-end users would pay less (for the same quality), but the lower-end ones would pay more (for a slightly increased quality); lower-end clients (which make up the majority of the client base) would likely end up buying other products instead, since the product wouldn't meet the price point anymore

- make the products physically different: both higher-end and lower-end users would pay more, for the same quality

Artificial product differentiation is ugly, but it does have a purpose.

> it does have a purpose.

yes, the purpose is to maximally profit off the product line.

Consumers hate it. Companies that do it are costing them reputation, if consumers get the hint that they're being price discriminated against.

they could just add a design detail (like not having sennheiser logo, or having it in a different color) to signal the costly model and that would be fair for everybody

Why? Are you not getting what you paid for? Why should it be your concern to dictate a company's manufacturing process, supply chain and other internal business decisions?

Maybe? I mean a whole bunch of people got the more expensive version of something for a bargain. So …

I’ve never been able to get the hype on Sennheiser. My Sony noise cancelling Bluetooth headphones blow everything else away I’ve ever tried. Even with a DAC (tried two). Sold all my audio gear, no more spider web of Schitt or Focusright gear.

There is absolutely no contest between an open-back audiophile Sennheiser like HD600 or HD800 and any ANC headphone. I own both these headphones and formerly a Sony MX3. The MX3 is also beaten in sound quality by a Sennheiser Momentum 4. The default sound of the Sony was frankly awful, bloated bass (+5db) that bleeds into the midrange, almost certainly not what most artists intended. They were better with EQ, although still muddy and the built-in EQ didn't work with LDAC. So I never bought another.

The HD800 are the best pair of headphones I have ever owned. Incredible soundstage and imaging. They are probably the best anyone could ever do with dynamic drivers. I have a lot of music that I save for these headphones, never wanting to play on the go via Bluetooth. My HD600 are still going strong (having been purchased in the early 90s), thanks to a quality product and availability of spare parts. Sennheiser are a fantastic company and I hope they keep making headphones.

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