SennheiserHD 600 - Audiophile Hi-Res Open Back Dynamic Headphone

Excellent sound and clarity. A big step up from the HD 280, HD 380, and HD 599 I've used previously. Well worth the the price tag if you care about your sound.I don't need to EQ these at all for 98% of songs, but sometimes I turn up the lower end very slightly and turn down the upper end very slightly. I listen to EDM, Rock, and Jazz and they sound great for all. I've read that some people don't like the bass for EDM, but it sounds fine. They're headphones, not a subwoofer strapped to your head.You don't NEED an amp to drive these volume wise, but if you want better sound it could help depending on what your setup is. My motherboard has a Realtek ALC1220, which I feed to a mixer that drives these. If I plug them directly into the motherboard they are LOUD, but they could have distortion which an amp could fix. If you don't have the money for a separate amp and you have a decent audio chip in your PC then don't worry about it. Really.These are fairly high impedance so I don't hear the noise interference from my GPU or mouse that I used to hear from lower impedance headphones, but this is true for any high(er) impedance headphones.I've seen some people talk about a strong clamping force which I haven't experienced. They "clamp" tighter than some other closed/open back headphones, such as the HD599, but it's not painful or uncomfortable to me, even while wearing them for hours. But, I have worn headphones daily for years so I'm used to it. This gets better as they're broken in as well.Noise cancellation is non-existent; they're open back headphones. Leakage is not too bad, but you can definitely hear them in the proximity of someone wearing them.Build quality seems solid enough, but we'll see how long they last. I haven't read any complaints about build quality anyway so I'm not worried about it.Overall I'm very impressed. They made me upgrade my library because I was able to notice how poor quality some song files were.

For $300, the HD600 even with it's current cheaper -feeling build is still a great value. If you're not an audiophile or don't listen to music with much care for the detail or production, then you probably don't need them. Ironically, the HD600 just so happens to be a headphone that really reveals the quality of the track your listening to. It has a relatively neutral frequency response, but that honestly doesn't say much by itself.The headphone is primarily great for enjoying mids, while providing sufficient bass and delivering a nice and stinging snare (the way you should want it :O). The imaging and soundstage is relatively narrow, but actually exists unlike on the HD6XX, which lets the HD600 actually let vocals pop-out more. The sound is very in your face, it delivers intensity and a certain rawness without sounding too harsh. It still has detail and reveals the timbre of instrumentals really well. As long as you're driving these headphones pretty well with a good DAC/Amp setup, they should sound magnificent. Acoustic guitar, male vocals, and instrumentals in general are among my favorite type of music for listening to with the HD600.The only thing, which I think is kind of up for debate is the so called "veil". When I first listened to the HD600 they of course sounded amazing, nearly perfect. When I tried another headphone, however, the Hifiman Edition XS and then switched back to the HD600, things got a little weird. I felt like I couldn't recognize the same sound I had once heard from the HD600. Things just started to sound unclear, but after a day to let my mind refresh, the HD600 sounded fine as they normally would. To this day I'm still unclear as to what the Sennheiser "veil" is supposed to mean, but it might certainly exist. However, this is not an actual problem if you drive these headphones daily.You don't really even need to read my review to understand how important these headphones are. The tonality of these headphones and what Sennheiser has to offer is pretty much embedded within these headphones. They've withstood the test of time for nearly, what, like 25 years? They're a part of most of audiophile collects I bet, and I know quite a fair number of people who either have the HD600 or the HD6XX. If you want a more neutral and intense sound with actual imaging for more well-produced songs, go for the HD600. If you want a similar sound to the HD600, but something more comfortable in exchange for less soundstage, go for the 6XX, they're better for instrumentals I find.