Just had a really fun visit to Selfridges, played with many cool headphones!!

[quadpatch]

I just had a trip to Selfridges to see what laptops they had in thier techy section, but was overwhelmed by how many headphones they had too. Apart from the entire Monster range (yawn) they also had several of the good Grados (SR125, PS500, PS1000), a load of Sony models, the entire Denon range (the AH-D600 sounded nice, but bassy), lots of Sennheisers models including the HD700 & HD800 (although no sign of the HD600/650). A bunch of Logic 3 Ferrari tat (which is being sold off super cheap at Advanced MP3 Players btw) and my favourite bit - the Bang & Olufson stand.

I so enjoyed trying out the B&O H6 and I can now see why Dale was so impressed by these babies! I'm going to try and get some in for review so I can compare it right next to the HD600. I think it's going to fair pretty well.

To anyone looking to try lots of really cool mid to high-end headphones I recommend going to either Selfridges or Harrods if you live close. I nearly went in the John Lewis (Oxofrd Street) as well, but I was too tired by that point, I will try to do that one soon. If you want a more personal touch and you live in or near London I can highly recommend Custom Cable (which I want to do an article on). If you're near Brighton Hifi-Headphones have a great looking showroom (although you need to book an appointment for that one), I must try that one out soon!!

 

[Andy Clough]

Yes, Harrods and Selfridges have very impressive audio departments, don't they! Could spend a good hour or two in them, no problem.

 

[quadpatch]

Yeah I was really pleasantly surprised. I know that a lot of people are looking for places to try out nice headphones, so I wanted to mention it. Places like Tottenham Court Rd. pale by comparison. Not to take away the thunder of dedicated headphone shops however, department stores are not up to that level of course. I just wanted to give a shout out to them for recognising the growing demand. Apple stores have a few decent headphones as well, but this Selfridges had about ten times as many as the biggest Apple store that I've seen (Regent St?)!

I feel that I should also point out that my excitement for Bang & Olufson was mostly surprise for just how good they are. I'm not saying that they are far better than Sennheiser or Denon, it's just that it's easy to see them as jumping on the Beats bandwaggon at face value. I had read Dale's review, but it was still a really nice surprise to hear the H6 in person. Selfridges' setup was not as faithful as the Apple store's (in that you can just plug headphones directly into your phone), but you could play music off of your phone. So like HMV, they are re-amping and thus could be modifying the sound a bit.

 

[dalethorn]

I confess to being overly optimistic about certain headphones - perhaps slightly so with the B&O Form2 (but just slightly), grossly so with the Marshall Monitor (as thick as thick pea soup), and somewhat with the M100 (which struggles to be a musical headphone). I still have no reservations about the Beyer COP, as one of only two headphones I've purchased of 50 or so in the past year that needed *no* EQ to sound its best for hi-fi playback. The other headphone was the B&O H6. As these sound quite different, the notion that a sensitive and picky individual like me would be inclined to EQ neither one in spite of their very significant freq. response differences - reminds me that their musicality overrides other issues, to some extent at least.

Recently I was inclined to answer a question on the H6 sound, and I posted a quick "Pure objective" analysis of the sound. I don't remember where that was posted, but as best I recall it said the sound did have a non-neutral bias somewhere, yet getting past that was effortless and evaluating the sound from the inside of the experience (no longer purely objective), each aspect that I evaluated seemed to be high quality and highly musical.

 

[Clare Newsome]

Glad someone's appreciating the work we and others are doing along with the great guys at Selfridges

 

[quadpatch]

Glad someone's appreciating the work we and others are doing along with the great guys at Selfridges

Yep, thanks Clare and others! You've done fine work!!

 

[quadpatch]

I confess to being overly optimistic about certain headphones - perhaps slightly so with the B&O Form2 (but just slightly), grossly so with the Marshall Monitor (as thick as thick pea soup), and somewhat with the M100 (which struggles to be a musical headphone). I still have no reservations about the Beyer COP, as one of only two headphones I've purchased of 50 or so in the past year that needed *no* EQ to sound its best for hi-fi playback. The other headphone was the B&O H6. As these sound quite different, the notion that a sensitive and picky individual like me would be inclined to EQ neither one in spite of their very significant freq. response differences - reminds me that their musicality overrides other issues, to some extent at least.

Recently I was inclined to answer a question on the H6 sound, and I posted a quick "Pure objective" analysis of the sound. I don't remember where that was posted, but as best I recall it said the sound did have a non-neutral bias somewhere, yet getting past that was effortless and evaluating the sound from the inside of the experience (no longer purely objective), each aspect that I evaluated seemed to be high quality and highly musical.

Thanks Dale, I really appreciate the way you convey your thought process about listening to audio. I hope that I can get to the Beyer COP soon too as I love the design, the idea of bass control and the prospect of a sound similar to the DT770 LE without the hollow mids. I really, really want to get my grubby mits on the H6 for a review. When I tested it in the shop direct from an iPhone 4 it sounded fantatsic!

 

[pcookie]

Okay
Visited the headphone department. Tried my old HTC desire HD with a few different phones. The ones that stood out for me were the AKG 550s.
Not everybody's cup of tea I know, but to me they were the least shut in, most neutral sounding of the lot, and the comfiest to wear. However, I'm guessing the set up at Selfridges is running through some sort of headphone amp and I wonder how these would sound plugged directly into a phone/iPod?
Nice way to spend some listening time though!

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