The latest in a long, long line of HD 25 variants, Sennheiser puts new clothes on the Amperior with milled aluminum cups and a new cable. Is it just bluff and bluster, or are these new cans worth nearly double the price of the HD 25-1 II?
I'm thinking so.
The DIY headphone contest will be over on April 1st! If you want your cans measured and in the running, you'll need to get them in quickly as there's only a month left.
Want a look at the latest batch?
One look at the Sennheiser HD 800 and it's quite obvious that this headphone is in a class of one. Seemingly as much architecture and structural engineering as it is audio, this headphone is a technological marvel and delivers incredibly accurate audio fidelity.
It's nearly perfect ... nearly.
Generally speaking, my teenage daughter couldn't care less about headphones. But when I brought home a pair of purple Philips Citiscape Downtown headphones, she was almost breathless as she said, "Oh dad! Purple is my favorite color. Those are so cool!" Later, I peeked into her room; she was laying on her bed, knees up with legs crossed, one foot happily tapping the air.
It was with both pleasure and dismay that I realized I had just more fully enabled her connection to Justin Bieber.
Like most people upon first hearing the Audez'e LCD-3 at last year's CanJam at RMAF, I was struck by the quicker sound of the new planar magnetic headphone over its predecessor, the LCD-2 Rev. 2. Definitely a step in the right direction. Then they started shipping ...
... and all hell seemed to break loose.
Seems like every other day a new celebrity headphone comes out. And they're not cheap! Three hundred dollars used to buy you near-world class headphones. How come there's so much bling in headphones these days? How come they're so expensive? How the heck did we get here?
And more importantly, do these headphones sound any good?
With about 27% of the population over age 50, and roughly 30% of all headphone purchases influenced by celebrity endorsement, I can understand why Koss turned away from the heavy competition for the younger generation's wallet and focussed their attention on the baby boomers with the introduction of their Tony Bennett headphones. Personally I prefer Tony Bennett to Dr. Dre, Ludacris, and 50 Cent, but I'm not sure the geriatric headphone buyers are really part of the 30% of purchasers who are influenced by celebrity endorsement.
Let's see how they sound.
Call me out of touch with pop-culture, but I had no idea what the "True Blood" referred to on V-MODA's V-80 True Blood headphone. A quick Google and I know we have a new kind of celebrity headphone, one endorsed by a T.V. show about vampires. Fine with me because ...
... these headphones are AWESOME!
When I first saw the Monster Beats by Dr. Dre Solo ($199 MSRP) I thought they might be the most beautiful headphones I’d ever seen. The fit and finish is stellar; the styling superb; they fold beautifully; the cable is pure sex; they’re comfortable … the Solos are just gorgeous. At the time I thought, “These may be the headphone of the year!”
Except for one little thing …
I've got an open invitation to visit Skullcandy's headphone R&D labs in Park City Utah ... and I'll be taking them up on it sometime soon. Why? Because I want to see what they're doing that let them build a few darn good sounding headphones lately.
The Mix Master is one of them.