Sennheiser HE1 Experience

Today was an exciting day for me and I think any other sound engineer who would get to know that Singapore’s one (and so far, the only) Sennheiser HE1’s experience station had been launched in Connection IT, Somerset 313. This headphone is world’s most expensive headphones, standing at €55,000. The announcement was in presence of Sennheiser’s CEO, Mr Daniel Sennheiser and the hands on, 1-to-1 experience with "the beast" was the highlight of the event to me! Here is why.

When I call it “the Beast”, I'm not kidding. Sennheiser HE1 is literally the best headphone I've ever tried. The audio quality was incredibly smooth and clear. Of course, clarity and quality are what most of luxurious audio devices have but for this one particular product, it was really taken to a whole another level. As Sennheiser claimed – and to be frank they had delivered their claim in the most fantastic way – the focus for this overhead headphone is more than “just a perfect audio quality” and it is focused specifically on “emotions” of the audio piece. The way the amplifiers work makes the flow much more interesting. When you hear a piece of music with it, you can perfectly exactly imagine the feelings and emotions that the creator of that piece was trying to pass you.

Sennheiser HE1 is made from 6,000 pieces and interestingly it was not only the headphones itself. It comes with a control center, containing external tube amplifier which let’s be honest, beside the warmth it adds to the audio, the vintage look on it is incredible, a built-in box to host the headphones while not in use, in a temperature-controlled and dust resistance case covered by a hydraulic glass lead and a remote control.
The whole system is built from a combination of gold, marble and leather. The cool part for nerds like myself, would knowing about the external 500-volt tube amplifiers that produce an incredible warm and crunchy sound and beside that there is a the built-it amplifier inside the headphones which reduces the distortion to 0.01 percent and frequency-wise it covers the range between 8Hz to 100kHz. Basically, most of this range (below 20Hz and above 20kHz) can’t be heard by human ears but we feel it, and that to me is one of the big factors that sets HE1 apart from any other headphones I had ever see!

As the only kind of negative point about the headphones I’d say can mention its heavy body which when it is held in hand it feels kind of heavy (but still in a good way that makes you sure it’s the real deal), but when you put it on, you won’t feel any heaviness, thanks to the awesome design on the body and the great weight balance. While I was listening to a few songs on it, I had completely forgotten about the weight until I took off the headphones and it was again “wow this is heavy!!”.
As a conclusion, this hands-on experience made me completely understand why Sennheiser is proud of HE1 being world most expensive headphones and the quality will make you appreciate for every single cent of this device!

Author

Hangi Tavakoli is our in-house established and professional music producer with more than 14 years of experience in music production, mix and mastering, recording engineering, live sound designing/engineering, lyrics writing and music arrangement. He has produced more than 800 and written more than 2000 published songs to-date, including some major hits in international scale.Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.