Yesterday, I had chance to hear those three cans in one of Hi-Fi stores. Nothing is better than hear them in real life when there is so much noise. To comparison, I brought my own Sennheiser HD650 and Beyerdynamic T1 (I found out I did not need to, since the store had those headphones as well). You can check my profile at Head-Fi (exactly same ID there) to see what other headphones/setup I currently use/own.


HD700 : They are seriously low-fi, and I am quite shocked to find that they are probably even worse than Sennheiser's entry lineups such as HD555.... well, at least to my ears. Unlike many Sennheiser headphones that cost over $200 or more, I don't find these phones even remotely revealing, nevermind it has $1000 price tag.

Unlike many others saying, I found HD700 being actually far harsher than HD800 (not as bad as Ultrasone, but when I first heard it, I honestly thought Sennheiser might outsourced HD700 to Ultrasone.) while still being very low detailed. The only good things I can say about them are very large soundstage and good tonality other than treble area.

These phones are sadly failure (and I normally don't use such strong word on headphones other than Ultrasone until this time). These phones are worth at best $150, not $1000.


SRH1840 : They are sounded very good. Other than bass detail is rather low, I had very hard time finding any problematic faults on them. They are indeed decent headphones with very HD650-like sound signature, which undoubtedly will be liked by many. The problem is price. Honestly I don't think they are better than HD650, with HD650 have better imaging and far better bass detail, and HD650 currently cost $500 while 1840 cost $700. I might had picked it up right away if they were like $350 instead.


D7100 : I suspect those who are bashing new Denons are the ones who never heard old Denon series in the first place. To my ears, they are quite similar to old Denon series, which all of them have overpowered bass. One thing I noticed is that they finally fixed painful treble present on old Denon headphones, however they have slightly stronger bass response, which I disliked.

I say the value of these new headphones are not much different from older series. My recommendation is wait for inevitable price drop, or make a deal with a retailer if you can, or just grab Kenwood KH-K1000 and be done with closed headphones in general. New Denon D7100 are fine closed headphones for 700~800 bucks, like old D7000 were.


And there were some other headphones on the store, such as HD650 and T1, LCD-2 and LCD-3. Like previous experience with these headphones, LCD-3 sounded like AM radio, far worse than any other high-end headphones I've heard exception of Ultrasone headphones in general. That said, only headphones sounded worse than LCD-3 on the store were HD700. The store's HD650, T1 and LCD-2 sounded almost exactly same as ones I own, so I won't comment on them.







No wait, I must comment.



After hearing all of these new headphones, I plugged my beloved HD650, and felt such immense irony that despite it's been a decade HD650 have been released, even today, very few headphones suppress these old Sennheisers regardless of the price range. Even today's $500 price tag, they are really decent headphones for the price its asking. I don't understand today's status of headphones. While I understand they can hike up the price thanks to Monster and Dr.Dre's ridiculous marketing, but at least sound quality should have been improving..... just where were those engineering achievements gone to?

Really, these days, only company that improved sound of their product, and launched new products that do not suck is ironically Grado. Tomorrow, I will try listen to Focal's new headphones. Wish me luck.




Conclusion & TL:DR : HD650 sounded so good, you must have buy one if you haven't.