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Sennheiser CX 870 Review

Tuesday, January 11, 2011 11:56:15 PM

bass driven, sennheiser, headphones, bass precision, sennheiser cx 870

If you like me are an audiophile have been wandering for the past two weeks which headphones to buy, then let me introduce you to my current favorite Sennheiser CX 870 - Bass Precision. And as they're called the CX 870 are so bass driven you might either love them or hate them. To make things clearer to understand when I say bass I mean the banging sound when you listen to music. Turn on your stereo do you hear how the loudspeakers play as if they wanted to jump up and down do you hear(feel) how the diaphragm beats? That's exactly the feeling you can get when listening to new Sennheiser headphones. In the box besides the headphones you get 3 different sizes ear adapters (S, M & L), one additional diaphragm guards, cleaning tool (see pictures). The shame is that there is no case coming with them, I would expect one for the price, which varies from ~£45 to around ~£70. I got mine for almost ~£50 off Amazon.

So how they sound? I would say it depends, if you're an music addict who rips all his/hers CDs at 320kbps or in lossless format (FLAC) then they will sound amazing and you will love them. But the more precision the more you hear the imperfections of the songs, be warned. In another words, take a song ripped at 64kbps and rip the same song in 320kbps, do you hear the difference? I sure do. Less the precision of reproduction of sound the less you see the differences between the quality of the songs. In layman words the worst headphones you have the less the difference of quality between the songs ripped at 64kbps and 320kbps.

Back to the headphones though, I tested them out on different kinds of music to see how they perform. First came metal

on the deault/normal equalizer, and as all metal fans know, metal is different from other kinds of music, why? Well first of all there is a DRC, which pretty much screws up the quality really bad. Anyways CX 870 suprisingly did really good on metal, I've tried all kinds of metal on them from hardcore to death and doom metal all accross, but I warn you do not try them if you have songs ripped at less than 256kbps, the sound might not that be that good, because that is how you ripped your songs

so it's your fault, the headphones are perfection. Rock with these headphones is another tale. The first songs I played were Audioslave from self titled album, and my first impression was

"what the hell?" but I've changed equalizer to Rock and I loved it, the sound was alive it felt like I was there at live show watching them play, amazing!

As for acoustic versions the voice and guitar has been very clear, the piano is as clear as vocals it's great you can really hear everything just like you were standing beside the piano, and one thing I really loved was that you can really hear the bass being played very very clearly.

As for trance/house/electro/techno music it's heaven as the bass is ALL you really want in this case. My head moved on its own accord to the old beats such as Brooklyn Bounce's Tiempo De la Luna. And good thing is that when it comes to this type of music it doesn't have to be an 320kbps rip for you to love it, I went through many songs ripped at 192kbps and they all sounded all right, but if you want really clear vocals while listening to house you would have to rip them at higher bit rate. The bass is perfect thought.

Classical music, I've turned on my favorite Bach and it sounded awesome, just like it should to. Violin concertos were my delight so crisp and lovely (for a second there I though I could ditch metal xD).

I've been telling you all about how great they sound but what are the bad points? When it comes to sound I found that if you move your head too much around you might hear the sound of the headphones scratching against you ear, and I am not joking here, I've had this with my lovely Sennheiser CX 300 II as well. There of course is a resolution to this problem and very easy one, you just have to push the headphones a bit into your ears, not just put them lightly. Besides that I found that bad quality ripped music can sound really terrible, but ripped to 320kbps is awesome. The cable is symmetrical, meaning that left and right cable are the same length, you won't be able to put them just on one side (left or right). And I am really disappointed that for the price there is no headphone holder of any kind... besides that the headphones seem a bit fragile at the beginning, for me at least they seem even more fragile than CX 300 and CX 400, probably because there is no visible metal parts in them and I might add I really wonder how much time they will last. I really hope they will not get squished to "death" in my handbag

Update: CX 870 aren't as fragile as they looked, and they really grew onto me even more. And it seems like the chrome parts are really made of Chrome.

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