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.

Sennheiser HD 559 Review - Major HiFi

After listening to speakers and other headphones for years, something seemed off. They were a little too congested, veiled, and boring. They immediately felt like the 3-headed blob of sound. The sound stage wasn't very wide. They were also quite fatiguing after a while because they were too polite. It's as if they were too relaxing and safe that it felt like a huge weight was dragging them down. A few years ago, I could find no fault in these headphones, but tastes and experiences change, I guess. The oval cups give plenty of room for the ear and the pads don't touch the ear at all, giving a really nice feeling of freedom.

Said to myself to give it some time to break-in and see if there was a difference after a couple of days. Single-entry cable. I've grown tired of the double entry. Ok, that wasn't a must, but it would be a bonus.

Sennheiser HD 559 vs Sennheiser HD 599. Which is the Best Sennheiser HD 559 vs Sennheiser HD 599. Which is the Best

I think part of the reason I didn't notice this at first is because I was so used to speakers over the last few years. These are voiced similarly to mid-fi speakers in that the timber has a cardboard flavor to it. They do sound very fun, though. That hasn't changed, but I won't be using these for long sessions or critical ones, either. 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 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.It's not really a big deal, but at this low price you will need to add ~20euros for a new cable if you need it. It's defintely wider than the HD 650, and most definitely wider than the HD 569. I'd say the sound stage is about on par with the LCD-2F. There's no 3-headed blob here. Sounds pan left and right very nicely. There's no congestion, either. The torture test I put them through is Brian Eno and David Byrne's "Home." The HD 559 passed with mostly flying colors. I also play Rush's Tom Sawyer to hear how the drums pan right to left. No issues here. In lesser headphones, they pan from your right ear, over your head, to your left ear. With the HD 559, they pan through your head. Impressive. At 50Ω, the HD559 are at the boundary between low and high impedance. While they are not that hard to drive at 95dB/mW (don't be fooled by the 108dB/V given in specs, as the voltage sensitivity is always much higher), most low power devices won't be able to drive them hard, meaning you will only get a medium to reasonably loud volume.