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."

Comments

Sarcastic or not?

[tpgp]

From TFA:

moist-making and grin-producing...we-would-genuinely-consider-intercourse-with-these-headphones scale....Fo' shizzle...clarity was mesmerising....experiencing these headphones is akin to having your head oiled and massaged by Mother Nature herself.....Teflon-insulated oxygen-free cabling.....mouth-wateringly gorgeous and stunning

Honest to god, I can't tell real audiophile reviews from the parodies anymore :-(

Re:Sarcastic or not?

[Shadow of Eternity]

They are however excellent when it comes to playing games at a fun volume and getting decent positional audio.

And flattening my ears. And yanking things off my desk.

Re:Sarcastic or not?

[Hal_Porter]

Honest to god, I can't tell real audiophile reviews from the parodies anymore :-(

I bet you're reading it on a cheap LCD display that discards all the engrams in the article so it is impossible to spot parody, irony or sarcasm. If you really want to be able to appreciate this sort of thing you need to read the page on a real man's display

Re:Sarcastic or not?

[ninjackn]

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.

Re:Sarcastic or not?

[jsse]

And flattening my ears. And yanking things off my desk.

Do you want my gf at less than $1,500? She could scream your ears to flat and yank things off your apartment.

Re:Sarcastic or not?

[Jurily]

And yanking things off my desk.

Doom 3, Nightmare, in total darkness except for the screen. You know what happens when your cat touches you?

Re:Sarcastic or not?

[JRIsidore]

Most of the time you'll have total darkness on the screen as well...

Re:Sarcastic or not?

[mh1997]

Do you want my gf at less than $1,500? She could scream your ears to flat and yank things off your apartment.

I've had your gf and I'd like my headphones back please.

Re:In case there's someone here that doesn't know.

[Liket]

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. :)

Re:In case there's someone here that doesn't know.

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently bought a copy of Closer by Plastikman...

Ah, the ultimate irony of audiophiles! They get so distracted by picking out which gear meets their exacting and nuanced specifications that they forget they're listening to shitty music.