Sennheiser HE 1
Successor to the legendary, nay, mythic Orpheus, Sennheiser’s flagship headphone would be ridiculous did it not sound so mind-calmingly magnificent.
Just a teeny price hike to our final entry, Sennheiser’s $85,000 (or thereabouts) HE 1, likely out of reach for all those readers not involved in crime of some kind, but one which can be experienced on audition in several Australian locations, should you wish to establish a benchmark against which to judge all other headphones.
Like Sennheiser’s original Orpheus 25 years earlier, the HE 1 uses electrostatic transducers, “but better”, Sennheiser’s Axel Grell told us when we quizzed him about it, “and 20% larger. This helps to reduce harmonic distortion and intermodulation.” It’s esoteric stuff, with platinum-vaporised diaphragms and gold-vaporised ceramic electrodes, techniques which are “close to the limits given by physics”, says Grell.
We suspect that some owners of the HE 1 were nudged into purchase not only by the sound, but by the start-up procedure. When inactive those preamp valves atop the partnering amplifier are hidden, as are the front knobs, retracted within the Carrera marble platform, ready to respectively rise up and slide out when activated, in a display which never fails to elicit an ‘aah’ from everyone present. Should you book an HE 1 audition and arrive to find it powered up and ready to play, leave immediately and insist they power it down before inviting you into the room again. It’s part of the experience.
How do they sound? We are hampered here by having only our listening notes from which to enlighten you, which are unusually breathless in their enthusiasm. We ran all our test favourites. With kd lang’s version of The Air That I Breathe, we were astonished by its delicacy — “Snare SO soft!”, we wrote, “Crescendos perfectly handled with no congestion at all.” The opening of Venus from Holst’s Planets suite had the isolated horn emerging over utter silence. Bonham’s famously squeaky bass pedal on Since I’ve Been Loving You was as clear as we’ve ever heard it, indeed even the tape hiss of the recording was audible, yet over this the slam of the snare was shocking: “Jesus!” we wrote.
We’ve heard other headphone systems at (even above) this price since the HE 1’s launch. They don’t come close. Nearly all Sennheiser headphones perform well at their price, and given free rein to hit the heights, its engineers delivered utter musical truth in the HE 1.
SPECS
Sennheiser HE 1 c.$85,000
Type: Open over-ear electrostatic wired Driver: unstated
Inputs: RCA unbalanced, XLR balanced, optical, coaxial and USB digital
Outputs: 9-pin HV for headphones (780V DC), RCA unbalanced, XLR balanced
Weight: 550g; (headphones), 21kg (amplifier)
Contact: Sennheiser Australia Web: www.sennheiser.com.au