Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've been using a pair of Sennheiser PC 151s for a couple of years now and I've always been pleased with their performance. After listening to a friend rave about his recent acquisition of Razer's newest stereo headset offering, I figured I'd try upgrading to something a little more high-end. And hey - who doesn't want to look like an air traffic controller or a football coach? As everyone else has raved, the packaging is top-notch. Incredibly easy to open while also conveying that this is a premium product that needs to be shipped safely. But not to worry - these cans are built like a tank. They have considerable heft to them while the plastic feels very solid, even if the metal hinges are mostly for show. I have a big head and these headphones fit shockingly well - snug, but not tight. The large ear cups surrounded my ears completely and the foam isolated me from the room so much that I didn't hear my phone ringing while it was sitting just a few feet away from me. I also really liked the solid feel to the cord, the thin nature of the cord on my PC 151s is a constant annoyance to me, I'm always afraid that I'm going to snag or snap it. All in all, these are well designed headphones. Sadly I'll be returning them anyway. Why you might ask? I can't use them without spending at least another $100 and possibly modifying them to void the warranty. If you look at the technical specifications of any of the other Sennheiser headsets or even any of the headsets from Logitech or Razer, you'll see that their nominal impedance is rated at 32 ohms. This headset? 150 ohms. It's a much harder load for the weak onboard soundcard's amp to drive. Highs and upper mids sound well defined and rich, but mid and low bass material is weak and ill-defined if it exists at all. I found myself wanting to turn the music louder and louder to try and compensate for missing frequencies on material that was familiar to me - and that's a great way to acquire some hearing damage. I went ahead and borrowed a small Yamaha mixer from my office to test and ensure that the load on the soundcard's amp was my issue. With the headphones powered by the more significant headphone amplifier on the mixer these headphones sounded absolutely wonderful. With some extremely minor (~10% above flat) boost to the mid and low frequencies these headphones sounded really quite good. I enjoyed the tightness given to the bass definition by virtue of the sealed enclosure. Some people have instead chosen to modify their PC 350s by drilling ports into the enclosure to enhance the low-end response and follow that up by packing the rear cavity with fiberfill as well. (Search head-fi.og for "modding the pc350" if you're curious for the details.) So, I'd have to buy a headphone amplifier to really make reasonable use of these headphones. For anything of reasonable quality we're looking at ~$100, minimum. The final straw that lead me to decide to return these headphones was actually the reason I'd bought them to begin with - they isolated too well, really. When I finally tried to speak to a friend on ventrilo while wearing them the result was.... odd. I couldn't hear my voice in the room, just the sound echoed back from within my own head - almost as if I'd had a bad headcold or a horrible ear infection. If there was any noise in the headphones I found myself shouting to compensate for it, which was just obnoxious. So, between the expense of the headset itself, the added expense for a headphone amplifier and the additional possible need to modify the design, I decided it just wasn't worth it. My old PC 151s still work as well as the day that I purchased them, and they're already paid for and can be powered perfectly by my soundcard. I'll just continue using those, I suppose.