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How $1,500 Headphones Are Made
CNETNate writes "A tour of Sennheiser's Hanover factory reveals for the first time how its audiophile headphones are assembled by hand. The company recently announced its most expensive and innovative headphones to date, the HD 800, which discarded the conventional method of headphone driver design for a new 'donut-shaped' ring driver idea. Only 5,000 of these headphones can be made in a year, and this gallery offers a behind-the-scenes look at the construction process."
I'm not convinced there's a point anyway. With headphones, you get so much difference in sound just from how little or how much the foam pads are compressed that I can't imagine anyone being able to use the word "accurate" when talking about headphones unless it is tongue-in-cheek. For accuracy, nothing beats a well-designed listening room with good speakers. Headphones are fundamentally "ballpark" at best.
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If accuracy across the audio range is of primary importance, headphones will always severely pale compared with a set of reference monitors (a.k.a. speakers) due to their physical limitations.
Loudspeakers have to be placed somewhere.. Usually in a room. The acoustics of the room (echo / reverberation / cancellations) will severely impact the sound of speakers, and there's no way around it without spending thousands on deadening and soundproofing the room. Yes, you can RTA and EQ, and get speakers sounding almost as accurate as cans, but it will never be as tight, unless you have a sonically dead room.
A pair of reference cans, on the other hand, interface with your ears much more accurately, and are not at all affected by room acoustics. If they have flat frequency response on one pair of ears, chances are they will have flat frequency response on most other pairs of ears too.
My work requires me to critically listen to music almost constantly (I write audio algorithms / processors for broadcasting). I normally listen to music on calibrated speakers, but when it's time for extra critical listening, my I put my HD650s on. Speakers are no substitute -- they hide too much, smooth over problems. Reference cans give you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth (whether you want to hear it or not!).
I currently own a pair of HD650s and they were worth every penny at around $500. Electrostatic cans (STAX brand) would be another step up in accuracy, but comes at a hefty price (cost, fragility, special high-voltage amplifier etc). Until I can audition a pair of HD800s for free, I'll stick with what I have. :)
Wait... what? No.
You mention how much the compression of the foam pads makes the sound sooo different that you can't call headphones "accurate" yet speakers in a room some how end up more accurate? The number of speakers, the size of the room, the material of the room, the position of the speakers, the positioning of yourself and so many other factors arguably make the room and speakers far less accurate than headphones.
And just what do you mean by "accurate"? For the sake of argument lets say accuracy is sounding as close to real life as possible. So we have our hypothetical concert with ourselves seated in the 2nd row. We can get a dummy and shove two microphones into his dummy ears for recording the sound. Do you think a 2/4/8 speaker setup would be more "accurate" than headphones? The headphones are practically stream audio directly into the ears.
Consider the professionals. What do you think all those stage technicians, sound engineers, etc. etc. use when dealing with audio? That's right, headphones.
Maybe... maybe we're not dealing with music. Maybe you just want "accurate" sound reproduction and ignore things like audio positioning, head transfer functions and the likes. Take for example an explosion. Then I guess the headphones loose out to the sub woofer.
And I also bring up the car metaphor. Headphones are the motorcycles of the audio world. Sure the top end cars are faster/better but motorcycles are so much cheaper. Buying a $1500 pair of headphones is a lot more accessible than buying a well designed room with speakers.
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Nah, you are getting that one the wrong way around:
The reason speakers need multiple drivers is because they have to create the sound waves "into infinity", while the headphones only have to create a wave in a small volume of air between the coils and the earsdrums.
A typical rule of thumb is that frequency reproduction of a headphone is about as good as of a speaker 25 times its price.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
They are however excellent when it comes to playing games at a fun volume...
Just keep in mind that that "fun" volume is causing permanent hearing loss. :-)
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It's all just a matter of priorities. Some folks think spending over $10,000 on a car is dumb, others see spending more than $500 on a computer, or more than $50 on a video card is stupid. For anyone who thinks that spending $1,500 on a pair of headphones is crazy, the simple fact is that you're not the intended audience.
I don't necessarily trust what I read from so-called 'audiophiles'. Being an 'audiophile' is a little bit like being a 'photographer'. Just because you took one good picture of your dog doesn't mean you're now an expert on all things photographic. The audiophile world is, IMHO, similar. The only way to *know* what "good" stuff sounds like is to listen to the "good" stuff for yourself. You can read hundreds of reviews that describe 'veiled soundstage', or 'low-oxygen connectors', or 'velvet midrange', etc. But it doesn't mean a whole lot if you can't put it into context. The only way to do it is to listen and decide for yourself!
About a year ago, I decided that I wanted a *good* pair of headphones for my office. I exchanged several emails with the folks at headphone.com about this, and with their blessing I ordered about $1,500 worth of headphones and amps from them, knowing that $1,000+ of it would be returned.
I spent several weeks comparing and contrasting a half-dozen of their 'best' headphones. The result? There is a big difference between $100 cans and $500 cans. Try it for yourself. Some people might not be able to tell the difference. And that's cool, buy the $100 pair and be happy. But just as some people enjoy wine, cars, cigars, cheeses, types of underwear, video cards, {whatever!} more than others is why the market supports so many varieties of, well, everything. And at different price points.
FWIW, I ended up keeping a pair of Sennheiser HD-650's because their sound was simply incredible and they were comfortable for long periods of time.
Huh? This is the exact opposite of what most audiophiles say...
Audiophiles also pay $10,000 for wooden knobs, $5000 for foam pads, $20,000 for pieces of hardboard....
Personally I would think saying the opposite of what audiophiles say is a good thing.
Do you want my gf at less than $1,500? She could scream your ears to flat and yank things off your apartment.
;-D
No thanks. I have a wife for that. That's why you'll probably find the biggest buyers for headphones are married men.