"Timbre, but make it uWu"

Zach himself measured the pads and showed them to have significant differences in bass, midrange, and treble. Probably best for any prospective buyers to use those measurements to guide any purchase decisions.

HD600 is the most legendary dynamic driver headphone of all time. DT1990 is a sibilant mess. Seems an easy pick.

The moment they do this is the moment hundreds of Sennheiser enthusiasts will declare them a dead firm.

They are basically one of two big firms still interested (afaik) in the dynamic driver headphone, and IMO if they just add another flagship planar to the market, no one really gains anything. It being their first planar would mean it likely wouldn’t be very good, so they likely wouldn’t gain many customers. They’d lose some “market share” of dynamic driver lovers to Focal, and consumers would lose big because then the DD market is literally just Focal, and their build and product support is terrible.

My brother in christ, this is r/headphones. Half of the users here are basically EQing their headphones to Harman (might as well be HD600 + bass) 🤣🤣🤣

Honestly, I think a lot of the advancements aren’t going to be in the way of headphones themselves, but how manufacturers and the community test, measure, and discuss headphones.

Headphones.com, LMG, Crinacle and others are getting or already have B&K5128s and I feel like the increased resolution as well as accuracy of the new system is going to be a massive boon to understanding differences between headphones as well as things we’ve had trouble unpacking from FR in the realm of what we call technicalities.

Past that, I don’t know. IEMs are gonna continue optimizing at super low prices until they literally can’t anymore, that’s all I know for sure.

Hopefully Sennheiser releases something great soon because headphones in general—but specifically dynamic drivers—aren’t getting the love they deserve; the market as a whole has really stagnated and I think a lot of us still consider HD800 the biggest single technical leap forward in the modern hobby. I think for many of us, we’re looking for the greatest headphone company of all time to make something to beat HD800 while being well-built and not crazy expensive (looking at you Focal and Hifiman).

They changed the packaging.

Source: I work at a music instrument retailer.

Yeah, definitely an uncomfortable pair.

Honestly I’m pretty sure its from the midrange scoop robbing the sound of most of its textural overtones. Most Hifimans kind of sound like that.

560S hits around 2%THD at 20Hz at listening volumes iirc. 6x0 is higher for sure but, to be clear, are you claiming you can hear 5% bass THD? Would love to test that theory.

The headphones that tend to have problematic distortion in the higher octaves are (funnily enough) usually planar magnetic headphones.

There’s an entire section labeled “Alternatives”

Most competently designed over ear headphones have low enough THD not to be a problem.

Any headphone will be passable/good with EQ provided you know how to EQ. I don't think we can expect readers to do that.

I heard the unit they reviewed. It was not good, but definitely not broken.

As someone who also had these two back to back... I have no idea how people are recommending the HE400SE. 560S sounds like a normal headphone (flawed sure, but normal) while the 400SE sounds broken in more ways than one.