Maybe I'm Not Nuts (Headphone Driver Matching)

[Jarick]

I bought a pair of Sennheiser HD 600 headphones last week to see if they were an improvement over my HD 6xx models. Was impressed with the overall sound, but felt like the two sides seemed slightly off. Instruments and vocals that should have been center panned smeared a bit with the upper mids leaning slightly left and the lower mids leaning slightly right.

I've noticed this issue on about half the headphones I've purchased, and came around to realizing my hearing is slightly off between the two ears due to wear and tear and damage over the years. My right ear volume is down just a tick from the left it seemed.

But I decided to roll the dice and order a replacement pair, which just arrived. And lo and behold, the center image is in the middle! It's a subtle difference, but the image doesn't seem to be smeared in terms of frequencies. It's still panned the tiniest bit off center due to my ear issues, but much better than before!

Anyone else noticed headphones not being properly matched?

 

[Orvillain]

RE: Your ears. Worth getting them tested, and also checked for minor infections that you're living with, without realising it. Ask me how I know!

 

[Jarick]

RE: Your ears. Worth getting them tested, and also checked for minor infections that you're living with, without realising it. Ask me how I know!

Had them tested and they are “good”, but didn’t get them audiophile tested. Audiologist says everything looked good but another hearing specialist thought my ears were likely extremely sensitive and that I may have lost a tiny of some frequencies most people won’t notice or hear.

 

[Whizzinby]

How did the match up to the 6xx?

 

[Jarick]

How did the match up to the 6xx?

Really similar. The 6xx has a tiny bit more low end and sounds just the slightest bit warmer in the high end. But it’s even closer with the new better matched drivers. It’s probably not worth having both to be honest.

I’ve got too many sets of headphones and I don’t use most of them, so I need to clear them out at some point. I certainly won’t need four pairs of them, just have to figure out which ones go.

I did try to set up a DIY headphone testing rig and measured a bunch of headphones, but I don’t think the seal and positioning was good enough for consistent results. Like I could see minor differences between the headphones but I think the margin of error is too big to make any pronouncements.

One thing I could see was the closed back headphones all had a huge bump in the lows and dip in the mids, where the open back headphones were all very flat in the mids. Reminded me of old headphone measurements before Harman target curves.

But something must be off because I have a pair of Meze 99 Noir headphones and everyone measures them at like +10 dB in the bass. I measured them to be pretty similar to the AKG K371 which everyone loves for being fairly neutral. It’s funny though because sonically, that’s kind of what I hear, but it can’t be that everyone else is off. Maybe my headphones or pads are unique.