Submitted by Key-Combination-7474 t3_zqjcly in headphones
The day has arrived! After over one YEAR of back-and-forth, this massive carton showed up at my apartment.First was a giant plastic box...
Inside was a wooden box…
That took two people to lift out...
And then inside the wooden box was the treasure.
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So what led to this post from someone that's never used Reddit before?
I've been quietly into headphones for 20 years now.
Even though I've never really posted anything online… I've read my fair share of forums, reviews, etc.
Yet I've never once seen anything posted about the Sennheiser HE-1 from an actual owner.
No impressions… no reviews… no unboxings… nada.
You'd figure by now there'd be at least ONE thread like this.
But nothing.
So it felt like a duty to the community to put something out there. If only to pay back for all the years of great information I've consumed from others.
The HE-1 marks the capstone of a 20-year journey that started for me when I was just 15.
I had some money saved up from working at a smoothie shop and stumbled across a $300 pair of newly debuted headphones called the HD-650s from this strange sounding company called "Sennheiser."
Curiosity got the better of me so I pulled the trigger on impulse. I couldn't fathom what a $300 (!!!) headphone could possibly sound like.
I remember them arriving in the mail…
Excitedly putting them on…
And then playing a favorite song.
I remember it being this soft, gentle, warm signature… and I was hooked. I had no idea music could sound so intimate and so good!
Through the rest of high school / college, I dabbled around with similar headphones like the Beyerdynamic DT770 and the AKG-601, but none of them sounded as good to me as the HD650s. They were the OG.
As a busy college student, I opted for some IEMs (I think they were called Future Sonics), and then switched over to Sennheiser's IEMs over the next handful of years (IE-8s and some others).
Once I made a little bit of money I went a little harder into what was then TOTL.
Prices had skyrocketed since my college days but I was curious.
I beelined for the HD800 (but unfortunately way too harsh), Focal Utopia (quite good), Hifiman HE1000SE (too thin), Susvara (also too thin), before stumbling into the Audeze LCD-4s (which I loved and bought).
Paired the LCD-4s with some of the good stuff from Schiit and was in audio bliss. Felt very endgame to me.
But a part of me was always drawn to the idea of the Sennheiser HE-1.
They had this aura about them.
I knew they were special.
And those HD650s were such a defining part of my youth...
I sought comfort in them when my high school sweetheart cheated on me...
Raged music through them when was I mad at the world...
Melted away into countless sleepless nights with them...
And as strange as it is to say, those simple $300 headphones were a huge part of my life!
I loved the Sennheiser brand because of that.
So when a few things in my life fell my way, I found myself in a position where I could pull the trigger on this.
It's taken 15 months since my first outreach to Sennheiser and over 100 emails exchanged before they landed at my door (yesterday).
It was a very exciting day.
I carefully got everything setup…
Took a bunch of pictures and videos…
Finished whatever I had to do for the rest of the day...
Then I posted up in bed, packed a nice big bowl of weed, and took them for a spin.
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https://reddit.com/link/zqjcly/video/uh79ekv6p07a1/player
First impressions?
Man, I'm not going to lie… they really f*cked me up.
Blown away would be an understatement.
Over the years I've made a few playlists of songs I think sound particularly good on headphones. Also songs that have been particularly meaningful to me.
And when rolling through those tracks, I was simply overcome with emotion.
If I had to describe the sound in one word it would be "overwhelmingly beautiful."
Honestly, beautiful to the point that I couldn't comprehend that something could sound so good, so sweet, so earnest, so real.
And over the course of the first ~20-30 songs…
*I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS NEXT PART* I felt a tear forming. And then tears forming. And before I knew it I was just outright sobbing. Sobbing at the beauty of the music. The pureness and earnestness of the sound. The sweetness of it. All wrapped in this feeling of nostalgia, past memories, and a deeper sense of humanity.
Frankly speaking, it's the hardest I've cried in nearly a decade. I rarely cry.
So for me, this was a very touching and probably once-in-a-lifetime experience (the first time is always the sweetest right?).
Just wow.
I spent the next 8 straight hours going through all the songs I could think of that ever meant anything to me. It was like experiencing some of them for the first time again. That's priceless tbh.
Did not move, just stayed in bed for 8 straight hours. No breaks. Melting away in audiophile nirvana.
Before I knew it it was 6am and I had to pry myself off the headphones to get to bed.
It's now a new day, and here I am writing this.
So how do these compare?
How do they compare to the LCD-4s I know so intimately and the other TOTL cans I auditioned? To my ears, none of them come anywhere close. Nothing has moved me to tears before — so I would say that's something special.
The HE-1s break the wall of audio fidelity to the point it sounds like you're in the studio with the singer or instrument. That's seriously impressive.
Using Schindler's list as an example…
I've heard this song hundreds of times.
But through the lens of the HE-1, I was suddenly brought back to the music wing of my high school hearing real violins playing. Real live string instruments have such a distinct sound and it's something the HE-1 is able to capture and miraculously reproduce.
Hearing that for something as iconic as say Schindler's list is quite the experience.
Everything from techno, trance, pop, ballads, orchestras, soundtracks, etc. all sound stellar.
So imho, the HE-1 is orders of magnitude better than the LCD-4 (which I adore) and the other headphones in that range.
But is it worth $59k?
Here's how I see it… a mid-tier Rolex or entry/mid-tier Audemar Piguet is roughly in the same ballpark cost. So if you're in a position to buy one of those AND you have a history of deep enjoyment of audiophile headphone sound, then it's something worth considering.
That being said… I randomly fell down the headphone rabbit hole when I was young and took to it. I still don't know a single person in my network and extended network that share the same interest. In contrast, I know countless people that would enjoy a Rolex or whatever. So I guess it's a pretty niche market to begin with.
The registration card says 0138 for the serial number so it would seem only 138 of these have ever been sold?
Anyway, I couldn't be happier. Worth every penny to me and well worth the wait.
Happy to open up an AMA (it's the least I can do), so feel free to send any questions my way and I'll do my best to answer them. I'm not super techie or technical so prob not the best person to answer those kind of Qs. But anything else is fair game.
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EDIT: A lot of requests for the playlists I was using. Here they are:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1wFuxlLRsvWFWGmrRcqStt?si=7892af2a9e1b4ffa
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Skyk6j6kQ4A4EsZ8tp6ZM?si=a36b87b51d094cbd
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