New headphones I really like - Sennheiser 560s [ Edited ]

[OskooI_007]

I bought some new Sennheiser 560s headphones and absolutely love them for playing Battlefield. I can clearly hear where all the footsteps are coming from with these headphones. It's like a 3D sphere of sound is surrounding my head. The soundstage and imaging of these headphones is impressive.

Sennheiser 560s

Their positional audio is quite a bit better than the purple Audio-Technica 700AD headphones I was using and vastly better than the Beyerdynamic 900 Pro X headphones I bought but ended up returning because I couldn't hear a single footstep with them.

The 560s headphone drivers are angled slightly, which helps reflect sound into the ear pinna at a more natural angle. This helps open up the soundstage so it sounds like audio is coming from outside the headphones instead of right next to your ear.

They're also 120-ohm which helps produce tight bass. I've learned higher ohm headphones usually have tighter bass response due to increased driver damping.

Damping is basically the amplifier's ability to control the driver's diaphragm movements as it vibrates back and forth. Higher impedance headphones allow for high voltage, low current loads which is ideal for driver damping. Compared to the low voltage, high current loads with low impedance headphones.

A higher impedance also allows for thinner and lighter voice coil wire to be wound around the diaphragm more times to produce a stronger magnetic field compared to ticker and heavier voice coils in low impedance headphones.

Interview with Beyerdynamic's Senior Product Manager Gunter Weidemann, explaining why high impedance headphones generally perform better.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/headphone-buyers-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-low-vs-high-impe...

Just wanted to share my experience with these 3 headphones and some of the things I learned along the way. I also learned the Sennheiser 800s drivers are hollow in the middle. It uses 'ring drivers' and it's these donut shaped drivers which allows it to produce such a wide soundstage. Having a hole in the middle of the driver allows it to project a flat wavefront. This flat wavefront mimics the shape of distant sound waves when they travel over longer distances to reach our ears. It's also why planar driver headphones tend to have larger soundstages than dynamic driver headphones, due to their perfectly flat drivers.

Sennheiser 800s ring driver

Flat wavefront vs round spherical wavefront

Unfortunately, the Sennheiser 800s is outside my budget, but I'm enjoying the 560s headphones and would recommend them to anyone looking for some new gaming headphones with excellent footstep positional audio and pleasing soundstage.

[sk1lld]

@OskooI_007

Sporting the Audio Technica ATH-M50x here, looked at these to replace them. What size headphone jack do these have?

EDIT: nvm 1/4"

Guess I need an adaptor to.

[OskooI_007]

@sk1lld There's two versions of these headphones due to a slight revision.

The original version comes with a 6.3mm plug on the end of the cable, and also comes with a 6.3mm to 3.5mm adapter in the box.

The revised version comes with a 3.5mm plug on the end, and comes with a 3.5mm to 6.3mm adapter in the box.

I own the revised version that comes with a 3.5mm plug.

Both versions have a detachable twist locking cable you can twist to unplug from the headphone housing. It's a 2.5mm plug for the headphone housing. A ModMic might be possible but I haven't tried using one.

[sk1lld]

@OskooI_007

Thank you.

[ATFGunr]

@OskooI_007 Had a set of Sennheiser 3D G4me 7.1 when they were new. I’d never spent that much on headphones before, but they were amazing. I used the hell out of them for about 10 years until they died. I’d had some kids since I’d first got them so didn’t have the budget and settled on Sennheiser 350GSP. They’re ok, about $130cdn, but they were not anywhere near as good. Was surprised after a year the covering of the cups started to release at the seams. I’m still a Sennheiser fan boy, but not quite as much due to the quality.

[AngrySquid270]

Were your old headphones the AD700 or the AD700x?

The old purple and gold AD700's were my first real headphone. Loved em.

[OskooI_007]

@AngrySquid270 I have the old Purple 700AD headphones. What makes them so great for footsteps is the entire mid-range is boosted by +5dB on the 700AD.

I recorded some footstep audio in Battlefield using Audacity, then ran it through a frequency spectrum analyzer using foobar2000. The sound frequency for footsteps start at 172Hz and continued to 1,000Hz. I was surprised they covered such a large frequency range and started at such a low frequency.

[RayD_O1]

@OskooI_007
Nice piece of kit, enjoy. !! 👍

[OskooI_007]

@RayD_O1 Thanks! I also noticed I can hear footsteps super clear if I set the DAC to 24-bit depth and 48,000Hz for audio playback while playing Battlefield 1. In-game settings set to stereo and large speakers.

I believe Battlefield audio files are 16-bit 48,000Hz, but I find setting the DAC to 24-bit 48,000Hz lets me really hear the footsteps for some reason. I tried 32-bit too but that made footsteps hard to hear. Same with 16-bit.

[OskooI_007]

Decided to return the Sennheiser 560s. It has an extremely focused center channel which is great for pinpoint positional accuracy in gaming. I find it fatiguing for music and movies though. Plus the center channel is slightly elevated upwards towards the front of my forehead which feels weird.

I've been looking at the Hifiman Edition XS and might try it out next.

I found some binaural sound demos using in-ear microphones and thought the Edition XS sounded clear.

https://youtu.be/fz5JhQUfhSk @ 10:30 timestamp

https://youtu.be/VcF2w4CgZkg

Wish I knew of some other killer headphones out there for under $500. Something that's a good all-rounder for movies, music, and gaming.