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.
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.
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.
Unlikely, since the replacement part is the same for both models. From the link:
> 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”.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
> 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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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 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
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.
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'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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
So it is not about looking the same with different internals .. it basically is the same just without the dampening.
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.
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.
> 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”.
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
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".
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Also known as "rip-off".
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.
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.
How many times have I heard, "you know, since you're a cool dude, I can knock off X% for you"? Every. Single. Time.
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"
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'.
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.
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.
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)!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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'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.
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.
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 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.
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
Dead Comment
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.
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.
Deleted Comment
You’re not paying for the bill of material. You’re paying for the research, the engineering, the design and the brand.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> How to do the mod
> The foam cushions are removed simply by pulling on them.
Lol.