Sennheiser HD 559 Open Back Around Ear Headphone - Black/Anthracite

Product Information

To be completely honest, at the price these sell for the only serious complaint I have is the recessed treble.

Sennheiser HD 559 - 4Audio Sennheiser HD 559 - 4Audio

I used to be active on these forums for years, and I thought I did a decent job of building a mostly endgame system for myself within my budget: Teac HA-501 amp, Schiit Gumby mulitbit, HD 600, HD 650, Shure 1540, DT990/600, and LCD-2F. I even had a Trafomatic amp in rotation before it developed a static. Still never got that repaired, mainly because the Teac sounded so good to me. The impedance seemed high at 50Ω, but I said to myself that I can use the power amplifier which I had connected to my computer as that has a 6.3mm headphone output.

Suffering from the slight compression in the upper mids (a recurring theme we’re seeing with a lot of the new Sennheiser models), the HD 559 may not do some vocals justice, but the rest of the midrange remains largely intact, with adequate detail and good clarity. So in regard to comfort, for the money you're paying (as of 2023 these are available for ~70euros) you really get very good comfort.

HD 559 | Sennheiser HD 559 | Sennheiser

All of these criteria, through extensive searching on web, led me to the Sennheiser HD 559. There's not a lot out there, but I was able to find enough matches to my query that prompted me to pull the trigger on these. I got the HD599's on offer at half price. No amp or anything and wow! I had sold my HD600's but in my head there couldn't be much in it? Well i got the HD600's again and amp. The HD599's even with low power demands still benefit but don't NEED an amp. Being made of velour, the pads are way more comfortable than leather and they will also last much longer.The SR80e is more high-mid-centric. As a result, vocals are beautifully detailed and crisp in addition to sitting a bit higher in the mix than they would otherwise. This high-mid emphasis combined with the warm and colorful high frequencies — a Grado signature in my opinion — makes vocal breath and cymbal sustain sparkle in a unique and warm way across genres and vibes. As a result, the high-mids have a nice sense of depth and contribute to the detail of its expansive sense of width. Well anyway, I recently decided I wanted to use closed headphones to watch movies at night as to not disturb my girlfriend or downstairs neighbor. No problem, I'll use my Shure 1540. But, despite being properly stored in their box for years, they still managed to fall apart within a few hours of use. The ear pads disintegrated and the headband pad fell apart. Geez. That was discouraging. The SR80e doesn’t have a lot of low end extension, and has modest lows in general. However, it regains some of its energy down there by a boost in the low-mids, where bass guitars love to bump.Due to a scoop in the midrange, music with a lot of electric guitars and synths feels a little thin and less powerful than one might want. Therefore, these headphones are better for folks listening to acoustic music such as folk, jazz, Bluegrass, or any vocal centric music that don’t rely on low-end for emotional impact. Sennheiser HD 559 Sennheiser also offers a 2-year warranty and there are replacement earpads available if you ever need new ones. Next day, after cleaning the headband and pads a bit, I decided to give it a listen on one of my cassette walkmans. I would not use it much with a DAC/amp or a DAP, as for serious listening I have much better pairs.