Sennheiser HD 419 Review

I would like to thank Sennheiser Canada for providing me with these headphones to review and to inform everyone that these were provided by Sennheiser for me to review.

Pros

• Punchy bass that should satisfy most bassheads
• Great soundstage
• REALLY LOUD! For those of you who enjoy abusing headphone drivers these things can go to speaker-like levels fairly easily.
• Sleek and streetwise looks
• Durable headband (See picture in review)
• Toned for more "mainstream" genres (pop, hiphop)

Cons 

• Not analytical at all, if your goal is precision audio reproduction, look elsewhere
• Drivers are slow and lack separation for quicker songs
• Thin cable

When looking at these headphones, the words target audience is key. But to understand that, a bit of simple marketing knowledge is needed (skip the points if you don't really need to know):

• When designing a product you have to keep in mind who you want to buy the product
• Look at what that group values
• How are you going to make that group interested in your product
• Why a consumer would take your product over a competitors

Now after listing  all that I would think that most of the people reading this right now would belong more in the "audiophile" group, those who value sound quality above all else. I can tell you right now, THESE HEADPHONES ARE NOT FOR YOU! They were not designed to compete with the headphones you would find on the "audiophile" market (ex. Shure SRH series, Grado SR80i/SR60i) these were designed more for the general public, or rather the teen market("street" brands like Skullcandy or Beats). So I'm going to answer this right away, if you can forfeit features for most accurate sound reproduction (including isolation, leakage and cable length), there are better choices.  But if what you're looking for is something a little more streetwise, toned towards mainstream music and something that will survive everyday abuse, the HD419's are something you would want to consider.

A little side note, things to consider about these headphones:

• Designed for teens
• Teens generally prefer mainstream genres (pop, hip hop)
• Active life usually means poor product care

When it comes to review music these headphones have absolutely no synergy at all with almost anything audiophiles would consider "reference". Stuff like bluegrass jazz and classical sounds fairly distorted and odd to my ears with the HD419. Switch over to mainstream genres like rock, pop, hip-hop, and dance (to name a few) these headphones come to life.

Overall sound

The HD419's are really laid back with lots of energy in the lower frequencies very nice for the teen who loves to go "NEEDZ MOAR BASS!!!!!!!" but without compromising much of the mids and highs. These are ultimately effected though and I do notice the mids being veiled by the bass on a few occasions. Now the biggest problems I have with these headphones are clarity and speed/separation. Overall these problems are still around but are a lot less noticeable with more mainstream genres. To me these headphones sounded a tad muddy and lacks the clarity of analytical phones in it's range like the Grado SR80i's or the Shure SRH440 but improves a decent amount over the Skullcandy competition. The sound of the HD419 goes more for enjoyment over reproduction, when I play music by people like Glenn Gould and Miles Davis distortion becomes really apparent. Switch over to more mainstream genres and I have no problems at all. Now being an analytical person who's heard a number of quality headphones I notice these flaws, but to non-audiophiles, these are solid headphones.

Reactions:

Twin Brother's: "These sound better than my Skullcandies 0_0."

Friend: "Hmm not bad *takes headphones off and turns to max volume*... Hey look! I can use them as speakers!"

Basshead: "Not bad, it's got bass... but Beats are better."

It has a really laid back sound signacture that never feels too aggeressive to my ears and kinda reminds me of the IE8's. The soundstage feels really pushed back and is never upfront.

Bass

Anyways going a bit more in depth with the sound, the basshead has a point, these headphones have bass. These headphones have a good amount of bass, enough to satisfy a basshead. When you compare the HD419's bass level to more analytical headphones like the SR80i and the SRH440 the HD419's just blows them out of the water in terms of bass quantity, but falls behind a little in bass clarity.The packaging itself claims that these headphones have "punchy bass" and they really do have punchy bass. In general the bass gives off a muddy but impact, it lacks clarity but definitely gives off a nice BOOM. I find bass drum impact on some tracks lacking though, it tends to be aired out and lacks driving force behind it, but this is only for a few tracks though. Overall these headphones great bass response, leaving a bit to be desired in clarity but still beats most of it's competitors.

What I find in terms of bass:
Street brands (ex. Skullcandy): Muddy and plentiful
HD419: Not too muddy, but fairly impacting 
Analytical: Clear but lacking

Mids

When I first listened to the mids of the HD419, I was fairly happy, not drowned out by the bass and fairly clear. After a little time goes by I noticed that the mids, even though they were clear, they sounded veiled. To my ears, the HD419 sometimes sounds like a speaker with a thin piece of foam blocking it and at other times sound distant and pushed back. Though percussions in particular on these headphones are very vibrant and have a fairly strong impact.

Treble

The treble's description follows the mids, laid back and a tad veiled. For those who have heard the IE 7's this is you will understand when I say the treble is clean but it sounds sharp and aggressive. This is the exact opposite, rolled off near the end and feels slightly overshadowed by the bass.

Durability

 The pictures can help me do the talking.

***RESERVED FOR IMAGE***

When I first took these headphones out of the box, I was a tad disappointed. Being a street line headphone, I was expecting some type of storage to come with it, even if it was a little pouch. But after using them for a month or so I want to totally disregard this point as there is just no need for any accessories of the sort.As long as you don't run these headphones over with your car or put them through a 20 foot drop the only damage you will ever do to these headphones are minor scratches. In order to test the durability I put the headphones in my bag in front of my textbooks and laptop when I need to carry it to school. Something I usually wouldn't do if I wasn't fairly sure they would survive.

The headband also can also bend like crazy, (see the picture above) so pretty much unless you deliberately try to twist and break the headband there is no way it will break.

As I have already mentioned the cable was a point of interest for me because it was so thin, but it seems to be able to take a fair amount of abuse (much more then the standard iBud).

Final Notes

When I first listened to these headphones I already knew that I had to take a different approach to review these headphones because these headphones were not designed for audiophiles so I can't say that these headphones are going to revolutionize the audiophile world because they won't, heck they will be trampled in it. But bring it into the world of iBuds and Skullcandy, you bring in a powerhouse to play with the minors. I would really consider this headphone to be more of a stepping stone to better  audio as it provides iBud users with the speaker-like sound that they are accustom to while adding detail and soundstage.On top of that, the HD 419 perform better than many other street line products in its products (to my ears anyways) as it provides a more dynamic and balanced sound.

Things to Take Note of:

Frequency response (headphones)	20 - 20000 Hz
Cable length	1.4 m single-sided OFC (Oxygen Free Cable) cable
Impedance	32 Ohm
Sound pressure level (SPL)	108 dB (1kHz/1Vrms)
THD, total harmonic distortion	<0.1% (1kHz/100dB)
Ear coupling
Transducer principle	Dynamic, closed
Jack plug	3.5 mm gold straight

Package of the HD419