briefly - these beauties left me breathless... as if I was blind and now I could see....HD600 are without a doubt an ultimate sound reference of my hardware and recordings. Powered by Musical Fidelity's X-CANs via Sonic Link Violet SE these headphones deliver amazing detalisation and clarity.. probably beyond abilities of my Cd player, which I am now wishing to upgrade !!!!!!! 5 stars, best buy, WOW ! highly recomended
p.s. 580's are quite nice as well but these are full notch higher from any point of view

Near perfection.

Just bought the HD-600 two months ago and it was my first headphone purchase since the early 1980 and I was not disappointed with the build quality and most importantly, its sound. The airy, details, bass, and the comfort are what I like the most about the HD-600. Primarily used for late night listening since I do want to wake up my family. The HD-600 is plugged into my Sonic Frontier Line3 headphone jack that comes with an internal Headroom amp built-in. Ahhh...heavenly music!

I have to agree with the rest of the posts on this product. Last night I was enjoying my Japanese import CD version of "Annie in Wonderland" by Annie Haslam (lead singer of the 70's prog rock band Renaissance - this is her 1977 solo album) for about the 1,000th time. However, this my first time through the Sennheiser HD-600's. The sound was absolutely amazing. The sound was so clean and clear you could distinguish how many times her voice was being overdubbed, or how many male singers were singing in the background.
I have listened to the 545's and the 580's, but neither can match the performance of the 600's. The 545's were a bit too murky. The 580's are similiar, but the 600's have an edge in clarity and soundstage depth.

If you need to listen through headphones this is to way to do it without comprising high end performance, 5 big speakers (or in this case headphones)!

Associated equipment for review:
Anthem Pre-1L Pre-Amp with headphone jack
Pioneer Elite PD-65 CD Player
MIT Terminator interconnects

I'm the proud owner of a HD600. Great sound quality, nice bass en clear high's. But also problems with the cables. I called the dealer, who was aware of these problems with some early samples. Within 2 weeks my headphone had new cables and binding posts; the problems are all gone! Now I can walk around, lie down, cough and sneeze and do other things and the phones stay connected. Definitely 5 stars.

The problems others have stated with the cords must be an early production problem because i have had absolutely no problems with this on my 'phones. In fact, i have to yank on them rather violently to even budge them. Actually, i really like the fact that the cords are removable as they are usually the first thing to break. Bravo for modular construcion! Anyway, to the review! Let me state unequivically that i love these cans! Their detail, balance, and resolution are unmatched. Let me share a story with you - while i usually use these for music late at night, I decided to watch a movie playing on the independent film channel. It was a very strange movie called the Addiction. It was a post modern vampire film - the symbolism was interesting, comparing vampirism to heroin addiction and attempting to present pure evil allegorically through the existence of the vampires, drawing strong parallels to the holocaust. Being an athiest, I do not have any truck with the belief in vampires, but this movie was a very interesting exploration of an ancient myth. There is one scene were the recently turned vampire attacks a man on the street in the middle of the night. No film music. No background sounds. All you hear (faintly) through the sennheisers is very soft breathing and a slight suckling sound. The sennheisers put you right in the middle of this scene, and believe me, it was *very* disturbing, i had an almost visceral reaction of disgust. I had to take the headphones off in order to breath. But of course this is exactly what the director intended. I watched the movie when it came on again the next day through my speakers, but it did not give nearly the same level of intimacy and intensity to the movie. And of course these headphones are great on music as well. If you are like me & like to listen the large scale orchestral pieces late at night, these may be the only way to get the same sound you get from your $5000 speakers and not get evicted! They also do bass well and even handedly. In fact they do bass notes just as well as my big NHT speakers, which are exceptional in this regard. My Portishead cd sounds simply awesome. So does Holly Cole. So does Fiona Apple. In fact, vocals are a real strength over these guys. They do not make it seem like the singer is standing in front of you performing. It makes her seem like she is sitting in your lap whispering in your ear. I paid $600 for these guys and the X-Cans headphone amp from Audio Advisor. Worth it even at 3 times the price. 5 stars!

I have the 50th. aniversary 580 Jubilee cans from Senheisser which are the sameas the HD600, or so says the rep. in my So. CA area. They work GREAT with the
McCormick Audio: Micro Headphone Amp!!!!! No complaints on sound quality or
comfort!!!!! The only problem is, like in other posts, is the cable. If you look
at it sideways, one side goes out!!!!! Don't even think about coughing or sneezing with these things on!!!!! Other than that, "AOK"!!!!!

I just received the HD-600 and it is simply amazing. The transparancy and warm sound is just captivating. It is a HUGE leap forward from the HD-545's that I was using. I am running it through an EarMax phono tube amp and the combination is just outstanding. My highest recommendation for this outstanding product.

openness, detail, neutrality, comfort

see below

I'm using the 'phones with a "Little" Headroom amp ($179.) and I'm quite impressed with the combination. I started off listening to just the HD600s through the CD player's jack (had volume control) and they sounded like good headphones. When I put the "Little" in the chain, the sound opened up and the detail improved to the extent that I thought I was listening to my friend's Lambda Pros I had on lend for 6 months. Well, the Lambdas are still my reference--they have deeper, more palpable bass extension and the distance impression; i.e. where the sound seemed to be coming from, was more outside the head and forward than the HD600/Little. Not by much, though--this combo easily has the same openness and neutrality as a top-grade electrostatic, for about 1/4 the price my friend payed for the Pros. They're so clean--I'll have to make sure I don't push the volume too hard (I value my hearing!). This combo seems to be pretty popular, and I can hear why.
One reason I decided to go Sennheiser over the Stax Omegas, for example, is because of parts availability. It is impossible to find replacement parts for my Lambda Jr's (my dog ate them. I'm not kidding.) and besides, they were torture to wear for more than 5 minutes. They sounded pretty good--they were electrets, not true electrostatics, so they were lacking that special something the Pros had. Still, they jaded me toward using headphones because of the fatigue. Not these babies! Outstanding combination--I would bet that the HD580s and the Little would be a stellar performance also, but what the hell--I sprang for the 600s. Glad I did!

Similar Products Used:

Stax Lambda Jr, Stax Lambda Pro

You may be interested in this (quite positive) review of these headphones here: http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/reviews/audio/sennheiser_hd600/

This review also explains what the various specs actually mean for those of us who have no idea what such things as "Nominal Impedance", "Frequency Response", and "Total Harmonic Distortion" are.

My ratings are what I feel the reviewer would have written based on his review.