How $1,500 Headphones Are Made 353
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."
Re:Sarcastic or not? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
1) Slashdot advertisement 2) Appropriate for Onion (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:1) Slashdot advertisement 2) Appropriate for On (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope, this is an honest review, but its just not very professional.
In my opinion there isn't a person on earth that would need reproduction that accurate. Seriously 6Hz?
Re:Sarcastic or not? (Score:1, Insightful)
...and the room design, the speaker position, the number of speakers and the tons of other factors for a "well-designed listening room with good speakers" creates a much smaller difference in sound than the positioning / compression of the foam pads.
Re:$1500 headphones (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In case there's someone here that doesn't know. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Sarcastic or not? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:3, Insightful)
I was trying to decide between the HD-555s and 595s about two years ago. I went with the 595s, and I'm confident I made the right decision (for myself). At the time, I had only the reviews for the two, with a pretty consistent conclusion: the two are very similar. Pretty much same comfort level, and maybe 10% better sound. For double the price.
So why were the 595s the correct decision for me? Because I use my headphones for about 4 hours a work day, 50 weeks a year. At 1000 listening hours a year, I expect to get *at least* 5,000 hours out of these headphones, probably more. Worst case, that's like three cents an hour.
Frankly, even if I could only subconsciously detect the difference between the 555s and 595s, the 80 extra dollars I spent on my headphones are virtually nothing compared to the peace-of-mind that I didn't skimp on something I use so much.
Re:In case there's someone here that doesn't know. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many different standards for "accuracy", including "repeatability" and "flat", which are not the same. Headphones are superior to speakers for repeatability, when measured at the ear canal entrance. But they are not "flat" because they include a built-in simulated "free field response" HRTF that modifies the signal (at least, all consumer-market 'phones include this filter), plus some other geometric design issues.
With some work it is possible to get loudspeakers to give a flat response at a fixed reference listening position, but given two individuals it is impossible to guarantee that they will hear the "same" thing at that spot since there is no control over the HRTF--so, the repeatability isn't really there.
Also there is a difference between listening for artifacts (e.g. compression artifacts) and listening for mastering. Usually headphones are preferred for the former, but for mastering people usually prefer loudspeakers.
BTW I use the HD650 also, they are awesome.
Re:All headphones are hand-made... (Score:3, Insightful)
Headphones could be a LOT more reliable if someone would take some damned time to find a more reliable way to deliver signal than a tiny wiggly wire and a bit of rigid solder.
Aw, c'mon. There's no profit in that. Like you said: you keep buying Sennheiser, even though they're not reliable.
Re:I guess I don't know ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Sarcastic or not? (Score:5, Insightful)
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. :-)
Algorithms - Fuzzy math for music or just fuzzy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Algorithms for compressing audio and/or encoding it for transmission? You have to test them for quality before you can even think about using them for broadcast...
Ah, I'm not trying to offend you directly here, but I AM curious as to who's really thinking about it and what their standards are?
Radio certainly doesn't give a shit about the compression or "exciter" limits they may add to ensure maximum volume/output for their 150,000 watts of broadcast. As long as they're louder than the next station on the dial, who cares.
The music industry as a whole (90% of recordings) doesn't give a shit about quality, as their levels of mastering and "exciting" are all turned up to 11 to make sure THEIR sound is the "biggest"...on the radio.
And talk radio? Please. Most of them still live on the AM dial, like it's really going to matter on "surround-sound" XM? Audiobook recordings are still done on LOW quality MP3 mono.
Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Sarcastic or not? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Sarcastic or not? (Score:3, Insightful)
No thanks. I have a wife for that. That's why you'll probably find the biggest buyers for headphones are married men.