Today I’m going to play audio reviewer; my subject is headphones. For whatever reason, I have a goodly number of cans sitting around the house. My everyday home-listening headphones are exalted high-end puppies, Sennheiser HD 800s—top of the line from an outstanding headphone manufacturer. But are Senn 800s really worth it? Is the sound so much better as to justify the layout of (gulp) fourteen hundred dollars for a pair of headphones?
From one point of view, the answer is simple: I adore my Senn 800s and I consider $1400 a fair price. So they’re worth it. But in terms of comparative listening, are headphones really all that different? Obviously Senn 800s are going to blow away a pair of $20 el-cheapos, but what about good, but nowhere as expensive, phones?
So I collected my stash of headphones from utterly humble to utterly exalted. I decided to listen to each one of them playing three different musical selections, all well-recorded but exposing different aspects of a headphone’s performance. First up: the third movement (Hail, Bop!) of John Adams’s Century Rolls with Emanuel Ax on piano and Christopher Dohnanyi conducting the Cleveland Orchestra. Century Rolls is filled with interesting sounds, from quick trumpet blasts to the piano to the strings and winds. It’s a good test of a headphone’s ability to deliver punch and impact. I listened to the first minute or so of that one.
Second: the song "Evenin’ Star’ from the 2007 Broadway revival of 110 in the Shade. A male singer with a small orchestra in the background, complete with winds, triangles, vibraphone, harp, and even a tambourine for a moment. The singer is placed securely forward, but not overly so, and so this will test imaging abilities, as well as the challenge of sibilance—a potential Waterloo for a badly-designed headphone or speaker.
Third: the final Allegro from Handel’s Trio Sonata Op. 2, No. 1, in a performance by the Accademia Bizantina, for flute, violin, and continuo. This will challenge the resolving powers of just about any speaker or headphone: a wooden keyless flute, harpsichord, violin and cello, recorded fairly closely in a large, reverberant room. There’s a lot that has to be gotten right: air space, the organic nature of the instruments, stuff like the quills and jacks in the harpsichord, the air flowing through the flute, the interaction with the distant but encompassing room.
So with the test selections established, here are the headphones I heard, listed in order from least to most expensive. All were powered by my Benchmark DAC1 USB with its clear-as-a-bell, honest-as-Abe-Lincoln headphone amplifier stage. All three of the listening sources were Apple Lossless format, with iTunes as the transport but the Benchmark handling all of the digital-to-analog conversion.
Cheap:
Sony MDRV-150 (list price $19.99; street $15 or so)
Sennheiser HD 202 (list price $39.95; street about $27)
Midrange:
Grado SR80i (list and street price $99.95)
Shure E3c Earphones (list and street price $179.99)
Medium-High:
Beats by Dr. Dre (list price $349.99; street $300)
Sennheiser HD 600 (list price $519.95; street about $350)
High:
Sennheiser HD 800 (list and street price $1399.95)
I would prefer to make more general remarks about the headphones than sloughing through my tests of each in turn. Two headphones in particular deserve special mention, but for diametrically opposed reasons.
The Sennheiser HD 600s are just dandy, musical, warm, and honest. They produce a clear, well-defined soundstage with air around the instruments, create a fine spatial image, and scrupulously avoid anything artificial or goosed-up. The singer in "Evenin’ Star" was clear and forward, but not sibilant. The 600s had the punch for the Adams but could deal with the delicate textures of the Handel with flying colors. They would be well worth their full retail price of $500 plus change, but because you can score a pair of them on Amazon for a measly $350, they sprout wings and a halo. My pair of 600s go back a ways; I bought them when they were the absolute top of the Sennheiser line, instead of being third-banana to the 650s and 800s as they are now. Over time they became dreadfully worn and so I treated them to new cables and ear pads, and now they’re virtually brand new. Senn 600s are not iPod headphones by any stretch of the imagination; they need plenty of amplifier power. But the only headphone that bested the 600s in my test was the vastly more expensive Sennheiser HD 800.
Then there are the Beats by Dr. Dre. They are, in a word, vile. The more refined the sound becomes, the more miserably they fail. The Beats feature heavily doctored sound, hyped up for their targetted hip-hop and rap audiences. Perhaps they are good for that; I wouldn’t know. But when it comes to reproducing the Handel Trio Sonata movement—by far the most challenging of my three selections—the Beats were utterly and hopelessly out of their league. The harpsichord came off sounding synthesized, the violin like some nasty scratchy little thing, and the poor flute lost its organic quality and started sounding as though it were made of lead, and not wood. The Beats turned "Evenin’ Star" into a hissy hash of sibilance. Given that you can have the sainted Sennheiser HD 600s for more or less the same price, why bother?
Neither of the cheap headphones sounded worth a crap, but between the two, the Sony MDRV-150 was a tad less awful than the Senn HD 202s. Both products suffer from overhyped bass registers, especially galling since neither phone can produce anything like a real, natural bass and therefore that overcooked bass produces an ill-defined thwomp. The Senns are particularly bad in that regard. Neither offers any clarity, producing their sound out of a billow of acoustic cotton. Both cans had a terrible time with "Evenin’ Star"—sibilance was rampant nor was the singer a living, breathing human being. Neither could deal with the Handel; it just came out like glop.
A few more dollars can make a lot of difference. The Grado SR80i performed extraordinarily well for its price range, not only annihilating the two el-cheapos, but also tossing the Beats under the bus. You can’t expect SR80is to perform like Senn 600s, but at the same time they’re damn good for their modest price. They had plenty of punch for the Adams, without overdoing it in the bass, and they kept the sibilance to tolerable levels in "Evenin’ Star." They separated the instruments well enough in the Handel, and even if they couldn’t keep the ‘cello as distinct or the room as delineated as I would have liked, they were very, very impressive for such relatively inexpensive cans. I could live with the Grados on a regular basis, and in fact they are the headphones I keep tucked in my backpack to use at my school office or on the move. They aren’t noise-cancelling and in fact pick up a lot of ambient sound, but they’re fine and honest.
The Shure E3c Earphones belong in a category of their own, given that they’re earplug-type rather than over-ear phones. They’re damn uncomfortable if you’re going to get the best sound; you have to insert them fully and make sure there’s a tight seal or the sound quality suffers dreadfully. But if you get them seated right, they’re sonically somewhere a bit above the Grado SR80i, but still well below the Senn 600s. They’re overall a little tight, a little hard-edged here and there. However, they get a lot of it right, and reproduced the Handel quite well. I wasn’t happy with the way they pushed the singer in "Evenin’ Star" right into the middle of my forehead, though, even if he wasn’t very sibilant. I can’t say I like the Shures very much, given the combination of earplug discomfort and their snippily officious audio quality, but I do respect their quality.
And, finally, the Sennheiser HD 800. At $1400 they cost beaucoup more than anything else in this group. But they are the only headphone in this group that trumped the Sennheiser HD 600s, and there was nothing subtle about the victory, either. It’s more a difference in degree rather than kind, however. Everything that’s wonderful about the 600s is in the 800s, but there’s a lot more of it. They were most impressive in the Handel, which they absolutely nailed: each instrument in its own space, having its own air and its own organic life. The room was expansive and palpable without a hint of cotton batting around anything. The Adams was punchy and powerful without being thwocky or boomy, the piano crisp and clear and very much organic. "Evenin’ Star" revealed the singer without a trace of sibilance, put him firmly into a deep soundstage and gave him plenty of room—no poking out of the middle of my forehead here—and every nuance of the colorful orchestration, including the bell trees, tambourine, vibraphone, and harps, defined and allowed full breath. (Sometimes listening to the aftersound is important with instruments like harps and bells: what do you hear after the initial impact?) Just to add more sugar to an already sweet package, the 800s were the most comfortable phones of the group—seconded only by (guess what?) the Senn 600s. (And just to be altogether fair, the Beats were the third-most comfortable cans in the group.)
So it would appear that you usually do get what you pay for—provided you steer clear of the Beats—but there are some bargains to be had, especially the Grado SR80i’s and the Senn 600s.
