Sennheiser HD 435 Headphones

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Mark Korff
Kurtis
Sennheiser
Mar. 19, 2006

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Testing

Music

I began the listening tests by hooking up the HD 435s to my PC which is equipped with an Audigy 2 ZS soundcard. I tried to cover a wide variety of musical genres so my song selections included The Dave Matthews Band - Two Step, Darude - Sandstorm, Wumpscut - Evoke, Hans Zimmer - Gladiator Theme, and Fat Joe - What's Luv, to name a few. The first thing I noticed about the HD 435s while listening to these different songs was that they all seemed to be bass heavy. I checked my equalizer settings and was surprised to notice that I actually had the lower frequencies all turned down compared to the mids and highs. After setting all frequencies to neutral, the bass was obviously accentuated even more. While I'll be the first to admit that I love my bass, the mid and high frequencies are just as, if not more important depending on the music you're listening to. I was disappointed that even after compensating for the HD 435's bass heaviness that the mids seemed relatively muffled. It almost seemed like the bass was given emphasis on these headphones in order to hide the lacking clarity of the midrange.

Gaming

For game testing I chose two games I'm all too familiar with, Counter-Strike: Source and World of Warcraft. As with the music testing, the HD 435s heavily emphasized the bass with these games. It was definitely nice to have relatively powerful bass for all the gunshots and explosions in Counter-Strike, but there were times where I wished for more clarity in the midrange which would've helped to be able to better identify distant footsteps and other audio cues as to the whereabouts of opponents. In World of Warcraft sound is used more for atmosphere and isn't nearly as critical to a gamer as it is in Counter-Strike, but I still had moments where I would've gladly given up some bass in favor of midrange.

Movies

When it came to movies I sampled portions of Sin City and some episodes of the first season of Lost. There really isn't anything new to add here because by this point my observations were just becoming further emphasized. Low growling voices in Sin City and the exploding plane in Lost were wonderfully recreated with the HD 435s, while any detailed sequence from either DVD was somewhat lacking.

Conclusion

While I'm sure that many of the high-end headphones that Sennheiser is known for are great products, I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed by the HD 435s. I must admit that my normal everyday headphones are Grado SR80s which cost about $25 more than the HD 435s and are well known for their exceptional sound quality throughout the entire audio spectrum. I say this because I don't want to unfairly criticize a product that is significantly cheaper than what I'm used to, but the HD 435s still cost nearly $70 and that's not chump change for most of us either.

It's evident to me that Sennheiser's focus for the HD 435s was in recreating strong bass, and unfortunately not much else. If bass is all you care about and the HD 435s are within your price range, then you'll probably want to give them a listen. I'd hesitate to recommend these headphones to anyone that's looking for a crystal clear midrange, or who prizes headphone comfort above all else though. As I've mentioned earlier, there is a lot of competition in the $50-$100 price range for headphones, and unfortunately for Sennheiser, the HD 435s don't do enough things right in order to set themselves apart from the crowd.

Pros

Nice bass
Volume control
Generous cable length
Modern styling

Cons

Midrange is disappointing
Uncomfortable after long periods
Questionable value for the money

Bonus Image

Kurtis: While I had the headphones for pictures, I decided to take a shot of the HD 435s next to my HD 497s, a little more high-end set of cans (and circum-aural rather than supra-aural) that have been around for a while.

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Page 1: Introduction & First Impressions
Page 2: Testing, Conclusion

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1 User Comment

1 - Posted by anon on March 14, 2008 - 9:40 am

A thorough and fair review. I bought these headphones (prior to reading your review unfortunately) and have to agree that the sound quality was not what I would expect from Sennheiser. I also find that they become uncomfortable after a while too....

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