Currently in the process of buying some new headphones. Now while I am bumping along the bottom tier of the price brackets, this caught my eye.

Sennheiser Orpheus HE 1060

£35k, and comes with solid marble valve amp.

Just check it out being turned on 😯

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-eANv_Qxv0[/video]

I can never afford it, but I am kind of glad it exists.

I’m not sure getting Gregory Porter to test them with that hat on is going to prove much.

Mmmmm, nice.

*starts writing 2016 Xmas list*

Valves in HiFi equipment?

That’s going to colour your tone for a start. In guitar amplifiers that’s the point, it colours you tone and distorts in a helpful way. Listening to data files?

8hz to 100khz?

Engineered in such a way that it’s impossible to hear?

I’m so glad they exist! 😉

The world needs more beautiful bits of kit like this!

£35k?

You could buy an artisan scarf for that!

Does it say Rapha on it?

Engineered in such a way that it’s impossible to hear?

It’s quite well accepted, even by engineers, that sound in frequencies the human ear cannot hear, change the way the audible frequencies sound. This is why frequency response above 20KHz is still very important.

Some Audiofiles crave the creamy sound of valves as they do analogue (vinyl). I suppose these fall into the ‘If you have to ask…’ category but could equally be ‘A fool and his money…’ candidates…

Some Audiofiles

Need to do some double blinds

It’s quite well accepted, even by engineers [etc]

Got a link for that?

Got a link for that?

Probably saved in his philes.

Geetee1972

I know you pointed at above 20khz, but why do sound engineers and mastering “masters” cut everything below 30hz and above 17khz to clean up the mix? It’s either mud or tizz.

Nice bit of engineering, but all of those motors are going to add noise.

Amps sound different to each other.
Is there anyone who genuinely believes they don’t?

I can never afford it, but I am kind of glad it exists

This^^

The film of it starting up was great.

I would spend all day switching it on and off 🙂

A product designed to solve the problem of having more money than sense….

Got a link for that?

Here’s one article

Here’s another

It’s an interetng phenomenon.

I know you pointed at above 20khz, but why do sound engineers and mastering “masters” cut everything below 30hz and above 17khz to clean up the mix? It’s either mud or tizz.

No idea; I don’t know enough about the subject other than to point out that sound above and below the audible (human) spectrum does still have an effect on us and how we then ‘hear’ things and that consequently ther are hifi products that either add back into a system those frequencies lost by design limitations of the kit or else they seek to increase the frequency response natively.

Have they actually made any of these? That ‘video’ is an animation.

If you can afford it, then why not?
I struggle with the ridiculous cost of ‘Beats Audio’ headphones though, so doubt I’d ever be considering getting them even after a Euromillions win.

I suppose these fall into the ‘If you have to ask…’ category

No need to ask, It’s £35k. It’s in the title.

Have they actually made any of these?

According to the internet:

The Sennheiser Orpheus HE 1060 headphones and Orpheus HEV 1060 amplifier are expected to go on sale mid-2016 for around €50,000 and expect to be able to produce one unit per day and a maximum of 250 units per year

So there will be a few knocking about in the classifieds maybe 😉

Surely Richer Sounds can sell em a bit cheaper?

I’d get pissed off that every time I wanted to use them I had to wait 20 minutes for the bloody case to open

I struggle with the ridiculous cost of ‘Beats Audio’ headphones though

That’s because they are genuinely cheap headphones made more pricey because of the name they attach.

The Sennheisers, while not ‘£35k good’, by which I mean they are not 3500 times better than a pair of HD800s at about a grand, are priced like that because it reflects the development cost.

I struggle with the ridiculous cost of ‘Beats Audio’ headphones though

That’s because they are genuinely cheap headphones made more pricey because of the name they attach.

..and made artificially heavier to give an impression of quality.

Richer Sounds tried a high-end store but it didn’t work out and they closed it.

A mate restored some Pye HF25 tube amps from 1957 (I think) and they went all the way up to 160KHz :

http://www.audiomods.co.uk/pye1.html

Home hifi is imperfect and the recording studio environment is different from a live venue, if the distortion added by turntables and tube amps makes the reproduction sound more ‘authentic’ then that is good.

I have heard some fantastic tube amps and the one I had was pretty good and it has proved expensive to try and get the same ‘beauty’ from my solid state kit.

The big and expensive Brystons I have tried have sounded terribly ‘processed’ compared.

The difference between something sounding ‘lifeless’ or ‘clinical’ is often just a bit of ‘flower’ in the upper bass, or a touch more midrange around 1KHz, which is what you often get from tube amps.

My local HiFi place recently had a Musical Fidelity A1 in for £150.00.

Gone before I could rip their arms off.
🙂
Still not very grandchild friendly, but better than valves.

More hearing damage than I used too and tend to find cheaper valve amps a bit warm these days.

Here’s one article

Here’s another

It’s an interetng phenomenon.

It’s interesting, but it’s not quite what you said. To wit:

It’s quite well accepted, even by engineers, that sound in frequencies the human ear cannot hear, change the way the audible frequencies sound. This is why frequency response above 20KHz is still very important.

Ignoring the appeal to authority and appeal to the masses for a moment; I don’t doubt that frequencies beyond our audible range may still cause a physical reaction, that doesn’t necessarily imply that it magically changes what we can hear. If I shone a laser into your eyeball that operated in the non-visible spectrum it doesn’t mean that the beam will suddenly become visible (though there’s a good chance that plenty of other things might become less visible pretty quickly).

So, whilst there’s potentially an argument for filtering out what we can’t hear (because, why amplify inaudible frequencies?), I’d hazard that the notion a system is superior because it operates in a spectrum beyond audible is pure snake oil. (There needs to be a name for this hifi-marketing BS; audiophoil?)

You could always just have a listen and make your own mind up?
🙂

I always preferred vinyl to CD, until I bought a pair of speakers with an extended bass – so much more info on the CD.

That’s very kind of you. What time shall I come round?

Whenever you like.
We can do the speaker cable experiment whilst we’re at it.
🙂

I’ll buy the pizza, you bring the amp and the headphones, OK?

The BBC specified supertweeters on some of their monitors from the late 1960s.

The LS3/6 had a response to 25KHz.

But maybe they didn’t know what they were doing ?

I have plenty of CDs that go waaaay below 30Hz.

The BBC specified supertweeters on some of their monitors from the late 1960s.

There’s that appeal to authority again. (-: I can only speculate as to why they did that. Maybe there were valid reasons I’m not aware of; maybe they were simply over-engineering; maybe they believed marketing; maybe they had a budget to spend. Oh hey, maybe they were making programmes for dogs?

Ah, Google.

http://www.markhennessy.co.uk/rogers/others.htm

the BBC started the LS3/6 work again and finished it. Rogers took on the manufacture and they proposed adding the HF2000 super tweeter which the BBC approved.

So the BBC didn’t specify it on that speaker; rather, the manufacturer suggested it and the BBC didn’t say no.

Maybe they used their ears?
I genuinely don’t know.

Surely we can rig something up to test this.

Anyone know any Cathedral organists?
They use sounds way beyond the standard range of human hearing, don’t they?
A bit of Googling suggests 8Hz.
Link.

So the BBC didn’t specify it on that speaker; rather, the manufacturer suggested it and the BBC didn’t say no.

Supertweeters were also used in the Spendor BC-1 and SP-1, maybe the designer also didn’t know what he was doing and had learnt nothing from his pioneering work at the BBC Research Dept (the BC-1 was designed whilst he worked there and was later used as a monitor by the BBC).

the addition of the superteeter “improved the overall dispersion characteristics”

see : http://www.cicable.de/pdf/bc1story.pdf

I always preferred vinyl to CD, until I bought a pair of speakers with an extended bass – so much more info on the CD.

Of course there is, the top and bottom frequencies are cut or EQ’d when the studio master is made, to avoid problems when the metal stamper is cut; the very highest frequencies to avoid ‘ringing’ which can cause the cutting lathe head to overheat, (I understand it’s down to harmonics, or like running your finger around a wine glass rim), and the lowest frequencies to avoid transients causing the grooves to run into one another, and the stylus jump grooves.
To this day I can’t listen to Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way without expecting it to skip a line of lyric a couple of minutes in. With a magnifying glass I could see the groove cross over, and that wasn’t the only album that happened on.
It’s why 12″ singles were so good for remixes with extended bass.
HiFi News and Record Reviews used to go into lots of detail on mastering vinyl, I used to buy it for the album reviews and found all the background info fascinating.
It must be said, early CD’s were often pretty crap, the record companies just used the master tape EQ’d for vinyl, so top and bottom were compromised.
Pretty sure most of this is basically correct, I may have muddled some details over the years, I used to read this stuff back in the early eighties, so I’m happy to be corrected by those with more up to date tech knowledge.
There’s a great book, ‘Perfect Sound Forever’, which covers a huge amount as well.

I think that video was made for April 1st and deemed to stupid to bother with at the time. I mean, who would fall for that?!

the addition of the superteeter “improved the overall dispersion characteristics”

see : http://www.cicable.de/pdf/bc1story.pdf

Nicely cherry-picked. “This addition was for purchase tax reasons” is what that document says, the improved dispersion characteristics (whatever that means) and broadcast breakout detection (presumably looking for out-of-bounds signals?) are listed as happy side-effects.

I’m not convinced, sorry. Sounds to me like a tax dodge hidden in a spot of audiophile smoke and mirrors, and any differences in sound is for the benefit of detection equipment rather than human ears. Which, y’know, are all valid reasons but won’t improve your listening experience one jot.