Sennheiser's immense HD 650 headphones are down to £229 from Gear4Music
An audiophile's dream.
If you've been a reader of this fine website for the last few months, you'll know I've been on a bit of a journey to becoming a fledgling audiophile, taking a look at some amazing headphones and brilliant speakers on the way. There are actually a few more things to come with that, including me taking a look at some legendary Sennheiser headphones. To whet your appetite for it, allow me to introduce you to the Sennheiser HD650, which you can grab for £229 from Gear4Music currently.
So, what's so special about the HD 650? Well, in one form or another, Sennheiser has been making the HD 600 line of headphones for nearly the last 30 years, and over that time, they've marked themselves out as one of the best pairs of headphones for audiophiles to use due to their nature as reference headphones. This means they offer a true to life presentation and the sound you here is as it was intended to be heard by the original artist. The audio on offer through these should be warm and expansive, as well as being precise across the frequency range, helping to make them an engaging listen for a variety of genres of music, as well as games, too.
A big reason for the HD 650 being able to offer such a wide and immersive listen is because these are open-back headphones. This means they let all kinds of noise from around you in, as well as letting the noise of music out, all in the name of a wider soundstage. It means that the HD 650 is a pair of headphones suitable for home listening, as opposed to taking out with you. The other big thing that makes them suitable for home listening is the fact they need a lot of power to run. With an impedance of 300 ohms, it means you can't bung them into a regular headphone jack on your MacBook. Instead, you need a dedicated DAC which is capable of working with the HD 650s to offer enough power to run them. I've got a Chord Mojo 2 here, but you don't need to spend that kind of money. There are some fantastic options such as the Fiio BTR5 and the iFi Go Blu, which offer you the benefits of a powerful DAC as well as the convenience of Bluetooth audio (between the DAC and the host device) for between £100 and £160 or so - they're great products for the price, and can drive the HD 650 no problem at all. For more info, this video from DankPods is a great starting point - the guy's a whizz.
As well as offering some of the richest and most precise audio for the price, the HD 650 should also offer a comfortable fit, if the other headphones in this line from Sennheiser are anything to go by that I've used in the past. They have a bit of a tight clamping force, but there's enough padding around the headband to negate it. The HD 650 also weigh just 259g, which makes them especially light and means you should be able to wear them for hours on end, and their titanium finish also makes them rather sturdy, too.
The HD 650 from Sennheiser are a fab set of headphones, and with this deal from Gear4Music to bring them down to £229, they're at a good price, too.