will cost “around €50,000” (£35,886 or US$155,165). USD55,165 surely or are you involved in some forex dodgy dealing syndicate?
Sennheiser announces €50,000 headphones (we checked, no typos)
Sennheiser has announced a new pair of headphones it says will cost “around €50,000” (£35,314 or US$54,279). The forthcoming “Orpheus” model boasts silver-plated copper cable and “gold-vaporized ceramic electrodes and platinum-vaporized diaphragms … exactly 2.4 µ thick, the result of extensive research that shows that any …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 18:10 GMT Dave 126
>I'd point you at a basic primer on how genetic inheritance works but I suspect it would be futile..
Or, rather, redundant.
I was attempting to highlight the wit of the editor who derived Muphy's Law from Murphey's Law, and then deriving my own humour from drawing parallels with typos and the random mutation (which is then naturally selected) of DNA - as a call back to the question of whose cousin is it? viz an individual could be a cousin of the Rev Sod, Dr Murphey and Mr Muphy.
Like I said, it was an attempt at humour, but evidently not a success! : )
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 06:47 GMT Christian Berger
OK... tube amplifiers
Seriously that's what actually debunks it. It's not precision device, but instead a "musical instrument". That's not bad by itself, but you have to keep in mind that it's obviously made to change the sound in a certain way instead of trying to give you an as good as possible representation of what's actually there.
That's BTW why studios typically use headphones in the range of 100-300 Euros.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 08:54 GMT wolfetone
Re: OK... tube amplifiers
"No, what will actually debunk the whole thing, is that some fucking pillock will use a tatty MP3 player as a source."
I remember the days when MP3 players were 32MB and you had to compress the shit out of the music files in order to get maybe two albums on one device.
However, most of the chavs on the bus in my yoof decided to take things a step further and play really REALLY badly compressed music out loud on their mobile phones on the bus. In since transpires that the music they played was actually crap to begin with, so the reduction in quality didn't affect the music too much.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 15:03 GMT Francis Vaughan
Re: shit music
I really hope you mean Johann Strauss and the other members of his family. Richard Strauss has no relationship to them, and did not compose sickly sweet waltzes and dance music for polite Viennese society. Richard Strauss wrote seriously good powerful music. Sunrise from Also sprach Zarathustra is of course very well known from 2001. But Salomé, Electra, his Last Four Songs - just to pick a few high points. Richard Strauss was a giant.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 18:29 GMT User McUser
Re: shit music
@Jon Massey - In addition to being a year on the Gregorian calendar, the number "2001" is also the commonly used short-hand title of a film produced in 1968, the full title of which is "2001: A Space Odyssey." The first part of the composition "Also Sprach Zarathustra" features prominently in the film's first act.
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Thursday 5th November 2015 03:56 GMT msknight
Re: shit music
El Reg... can we have a version of the pedantic grammar nazzi alert for the audible arts as well as the literary ones please?
I put forward the suggestion of an icon formed from a still of one of Lindsey Stirling's performances, probably, "Shadows," and the legend, "Micro Adjustment In Tone Alert."
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 09:13 GMT Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese
Re: Valves?!
<quote>Valves == Warm distorted sound.</quote>
True, that what made a certain Dr Marshall so successful, but I can get a great clean tone on my tube-based guitar amps as well.
That said, I agree with the general sentiment, that valves' selling point is quality of tone (subjective) rather than fidelity (more scientific)
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 08:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 1%?
Don't kid yourself, the money is concentrated finer than that. More like the 0.0001%
You're not far off. According to the 2014 Wealth X report, the Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) segment was 0.004% of the global population.
Having said that, you don't need to be in the UHNW band to buy this. I know enough City
wbankers who would buy this just to show they have money which, if you have read comments under previous articles, is more an indication their richness is pretend or at best new, as really rich people don't have a need to show off - rather the opposite.-
Wednesday 4th November 2015 10:15 GMT James Micallef
Re: 1%?
" an indication their richness is pretend or at best new"
'Net worth' is very different from 'richness' - being rich for me means having enough income from non-employment sources to at least cover all your expenses. A city banker making $1M a year with mortgage, loan repayments, lifestyle expenses etc of $1M a year is just a hamster on a (very expensive) treadmill, stop 'running' and they would go bankrupt in a few months.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 15:08 GMT Francis Vaughan
One of the most common studio headphones is the Sony MDR 7506. Whilst not the absolute best sounding, or the cheapest, they are pretty good, and a known good standard that is still made, robust, and has a service backup via Sony's pro distribution and service network.
But for artists to monitor sound as they perform there are many other phones commonly used. One of the key points about these is that they don't leak sound back into the recording.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 18:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Might have been the Sennheiser HD414 which are sadly no longer made. They were not just good, they were also pretty close to indestructible. If someone stood on the cable the earpiece would just come off the head bracket so you just pushed it back on and continued working. The on-ear foam also made it very light and comfortable to wear for a long time.
I think they have a replacement model, but I haven't done studio work in ages so my knowledge is not that current.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 07:59 GMT harmjschoonhoven
Hand-crafted in Germany
For the price of one Sennheiser Orpheus you can get a front-row subscription to the Berliner Philharmoniker for two persons for the next 63 years.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 09:31 GMT Dave 126
Re: Hand-crafted in Germany
In the early eighties, when Walkmans were a new thing, the front cover of a UK comic book the Beano had a lad walking along with his headphones... then he spots Richie Rich strolling down the street with some hi-fi speakers, suspended from a helicopter, on each side of his head. I can't the picture on-line, but this one amuses me (and if I post it here I can find it again for the next Smart Watch article):
http://flickrhivemind.net/blackmagic.cgi?id=7160108497&url=http%3A%2F%2Fflickrhivemind.net%2FTags%2Frichkid%2FTimeline%3Fsearch_type%3DTags%3Btextinput%3Drichkid%3Bphoto_type%3D250%3Bmethod%3DGET%3Bnoform%3Dt%3Bsort%3DDate%2520Taken%252C%2520new%2520first%23pic7160108497&user=&flickrurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/59414209@N00/7160108497
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 10:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Hand-crafted in Germany
That must be their comfortable soundproofed cellars then...
Oh wait. If they were that good accoustically then they wouldn't need these things then?
I suppose there are a few (c)Rap artistes out there who will go for the bling factor and listen to their tunes with these before heading off to their club in their Baby Bentley (gold plated naturally)
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 08:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Tube Amp
The previous comments about tube amps may be true for tube amps for low impedance devices (like speakers and, up to a point, regular dynamic headphones). Because these tube amps usually require an output transformer, which is providing a major contribution to the 'tube sound'. At least as long as you run the amp in the linear region of the tubes.
However, according to the pics and el reg's description, these aren't dynamic headphones but electrostats. Which usually run at a few thousand volts and negligible currents. If you used a transistor amp, you'd need an output transformer in order to provide the high voltage. Or you can use a tube amp, without an output transformer, and get a better fidelity.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 09:59 GMT Dave 126
Re: Tube Amp
Seems @frank ly's guess is correct, since the product page makes mention of " the Orpheus is the first electrostatic headphone with a Cool Class A MOS-FET high voltage amplifier integrated into the ear cups. ".
Other techie stuff from the page:
"it also accepts high-resolution PCM and DSD data. Music data is converted to analogue signals using the 8 internal DACs of the ESS SABRE ES9018. Four channels in parallel are used for each stereo side to enhance accuracy and decrease distortion and noise level."
I tried to look at the ESS website, but all I got was the message "Waiting for available socket". Many of us feel like that from time to time, but we don't feel the need to broadcast it over the web.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 10:15 GMT Stoneshop
Re: Tube Amp
Electrostats need a) a static voltage of up to a couple kV and b) a signal voltage of up to maybe a few 100V (I have a pair of electrostatic tweeters from a Grundig valve radio that do allright on 20..30V signal with 200V DC bias). Requirements for electrostatic headphones would probably be closer to the latter than the former, so little need for transformers. Plus, transformers can work quite OK with high-impedance loads such as electrostats anyway.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 10:50 GMT Tom 7
Re: Tube Amp
I doubt there's a transformer in there. For electrostatic headphones you'd only need 300V a side - the sound goes straight into your ear so there's no square law to worry about and 1/2w will push you eardrums together in the middle.
The thing is it wont be long before you get an annoying hiss from things that get into them and cause low level discharge. I get that in my electrostatics and its OK if you play music much louder than the hiss but loud music really requires physical bass so its quite shit in headphones.
Mind you most sennheiser headphones are disappointing for the price.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 12:36 GMT AndyS
Re: Tube Amp
Interesting stuff, I hadn't come across electrostatic speakers before. But can you expand on this?
"the sound goes straight into your ear so there's no square law to worry about"
From Wikipedia, it looks like the electrostatic bit is simply a different way of generating a moving diaphragm, which creates the sound. So, from the diaphragm to your ear drum the same physics apply. Or am I missing something?
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 12:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Tube Amp
Inverse square law only applies to the 'far field approximation', i.e. when you're sufficiently far away from the source that you can approach it as a point source. With electrostats, you usually have large diaphragm (look at the picture) that's moving without too much bending, so the distance between the sound source and your eardrums is, at the most, at the same magnitude as the source size. Which means you can't use the far field approximation and things become real nasty (if you want to do it exactly).
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 13:12 GMT Stoneshop
Re: Tube Amp
"the sound goes straight into your ear so there's no square law to worry about"
Inverse square law applies to the amount of (acoustic) energy that reaches the sensor (your ears) from the source (speaker/headphones). It also requires the source to be viewed as a point, which applies if the distance is at least an order of magnitude larger than the size of the source. As the area the wavefront covers increases with the square of the distance between source and sensor, the wavefront energy per unit area (and with it, the sound pressure level) decreases with the square of the distance. With a close-field system like sealed heaphones, the wavefront doesn't spread out like it does in a system where the inverse square law would apply.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 14:07 GMT silent_count
Re: Sigh....
@Lost All Faith
You're so right, mate. It's an obscene amount of money to be paying for something which obviously could not possibly be worth that much.
Incidentally, if any Senheiser customer reads this and discovers their €50k headphones don't have a long enough cable, you're in luck! I can sell you a genuine analogue (far warmer and more organic than the digital rubbish you get these days) audio extension cable sheathed in real unicorn scrotum. Sure, it won't be cheap but you just can't put a price tag on the envious looks you'll get from your guests when you brandish your €100k audio cable.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 10:55 GMT Tom 7
Re: Bloody audiophiles
A heavy material is useful on a valve amp that is under sonic attack - if you have some speakers turned up loud next to a valve amp they will exhibit a microphone effect.
Given this is feeding into headphones it highlights Sennheisers desire to confuse the customer and con them out of some more money.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 13:38 GMT Stoneshop
Re: Bloody audiophiles
Why should marble be any better than chipboard or any other non-conducting material anyway?
Because it looks and feels nicer. If I were building an amp like that, I'd go for a case that does justice to the electronics. Might well be marble indeed if I had the skill to work it, although something dark like granite would be more to my taste.
Somewhere in my pile of semi-finished projects is a nixie tube clock, and a nice piece of hardwood with a hole cut out that's going to take the clock and some additional electronics to control a wake-up light. I've made cases out of raw circuit board material, soldered together at the edges, but I considered the clock deserving a decent case.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 11:03 GMT TheOtherHobbes
Re: Diminishing returns
HD-25s are the DBs - accurate sound, very affordable. You have to pay 3 or 4 times as much for Grados to get something significantly better.
But these supercans aren't really cans - they're "look at me, I'm filthy rich" public money masturbation.
Should be a big hit with oligarchs everywhere. They'll fit right in the with the classy and understated decor on the megayacht. And why not get another pair for the 737-BBJ?
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 18:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Reminds me of a story in 2008...
...Monster cables versus a coat hanger:
http://consumerist.com/2008/03/03/do-coat-hangers-sound-as-good-monster-cables/