Sennheiser HD 599 Special Edition, Open Back Headphone, Black - Exclusive to Amazon

Product Information

The Sennheiser HD 599 headphones give a mature sound with a colorful midrange and a delicate and beautifully extended treble. Read everything you need to know about these headphones in our Sennheiser HD 599 review. When you look at the HD599’s press material you immediately notice this headphone is branded as a top of the line “do-it-all” headphone for watching movies and for listening to music and basically anything that can be done with a headphone. The HD6XX and all the higher end models are marketed as pure audiophile headphones for music listening. Assetto Corsa Competitizione has amazing sound design, and you can really appreciate it with these headphones, especially using the in-car view. It feels like you’re in the car, and you can accurately hear the curbs, other cars, and even how your tires are doing based on the sound alone. Grenades exploding in the distance, footsteps, and gunshots around you in Counter-Strike are goosebump-inducing with how wide the sound stage sounds on these headphones. Imaging Don't give up on your HD600 for gaming just yet. A headphone doesn't need to be 'designed for gaming'. If you read such a thing that is pretty much marketing.

The sound stage is quite good on these. I won’t talk about it in terms of listening to music, as it’s rarely ever recorded in a way that makes you appreciate the sound stage of headphones. Should you fork out the bills for this one? If you’ve been searching for an impressive dynamic sound with plenty of highs and plenty of lows – and the HD 598 just didn’t cut it for you – I’m willing to bet you’ll love these cans. To my own ears, they sound just a tad cleaner than the 598, but don’t tell the fanboys I said that. The HD555/595 design that the 558/598/599/etc are based on were never designed for gaming, they were designed for music, movies and media devices.

In 1960 Sennheiser presented the MD421 to the world and it put the Sennheiser name on the map. Four years later Sennheiser created their first headphone, the HD414. I’m sure you’ve seen it before as it is very easy to remember with the yellow colored pads. Sennheiser produced it for 15 years and sold over 10 million units which is extremely impressive. They patented the open ear design for 25 years. Sennheiser employs 1300 people in Germany (of which 400 are in production) and 2800 people worldwide.

The best gaming headphones IMO, are the ones that are best at reproducing binaural soundfields accurately. Newer game engines are becoming more realistic with spatial audio and headphones such as the 600 can actually create a more realistic sounding reproduction of a binaural sound field over the 598. It's the reason both HD700 and HD800 are good for gaming as well.If an even-to-flat sound is your cup of tea, though, you’re better off opting for the slightly more-expensive HD 600 – for a clinical sound, the 600 reigns supreme. Disclaimer: The Sennheiser HD599 was sent to us on loan by Sennheiser’s PR agency. It will already have been returned when this review is published. Even when listening to discs on which bass was not skewed (Paul Simon “Stranger To Stranger”, Radiohead “A Moon Shaped Pool”), one does not feel their exaggeration. But that’s not all – good control of this range is complemented by clear, transparent, and saturated sound colors. When needed, the low components can surprise you with real momentum and freedom, but even then each hit seems precisely programmed. The specific “violent storm” known from the HD 589 has given way to “accuracy of mathematical machine operations”, which turned out to be good for the whole presentation.

Like most Sennheiser products, the HD 599 are made from high-quality materials and promise "audiophile grade" sound.The mids are well balanced on the HD 599 SE, but similarly to the HE400se, they tend to drop off at around the 1.2-2kHz range, though not nearly as much. I suppose this is done on purpose to reduce the “shouty” frequencies that tend to make the listening experience a bit harsher. I also found out you can put the 598CS pads on the 599, this makes the sound closer and bass heavy, on the other hand the 599 pads on the 598CS makes the sound super tinny and just awful. I think the 599 is basically a perfect headphone, for my taste as is, I don't even need to EQ the bass unless I'm listening to literal basshead stuff. I wish I could try the HD600 "to see what lies beyond that" but I can't afford them.