These Headphones Are Too Good — Part 1

Sennheiser’s affordable open back reference changed the market

Photo taken by the author.

I used to cover tons of headphones and audio products on my blog here on Medium, but lately I’ve drifted away from those things. It’s not for lack of interest in the “hobby,” but rather because I feel like the market caught up to my personal needs and has more than met them.

Without the chase after better performance, the game isn’t nearly as fun.

This is part one in a series looking at headphones (and later on gaming headsets) that ruined headphones for me. It’ll highlight particular standouts that are so good they are proverbial thorns in audio companies’ sides, hindering their capitalistic quest to get customers to keep investing in new gear.

I could never start a series like this with any headphone other than the Sennheiser HD 560S, as it is just that significant. But first a bit of background.

Sennheiser has a long legacy of crafting iconic audio products for a wide range of use cases. Their studio production gear is truly legendary, whether that be stalwart monitoring headphones like the HD280 Pro, or higher end classic reference models like the HD600 family.

In the consumer space, they’ve made lots of popular stuff too. I was first exposed to…