Sound that has nothing to hide.
Original Price£279.90Sale Price£229.99Incl. VAT - Free shipping from £50Wait, did that sound come from my room…or was it the recording? Beyond a certain level of fidelity, it can be hard to tell. No, we’re not trying to mess with your head. But this is one way the HD 505 might surprise you, especially if you’re new to high-end sound. Everything feels more real, you’re right in the middle of the action — without investing in big, expensive gear.
Have you memorized your favorite songs note for note? Possibly in fear of being dragged to a karaoke bar? Even so, there could be details you haven’t yet heard.
An optimized 120-ohm transducer from our own facility in Ireland delivers clear mids and extended treble.
The sophisticated color accents of the HD 505 make a great first impression. But the HD 505 is more than just a glow-up.
Some people get a little weird about headphones. Like a kid with a favorite blanket. And we feel you! Which is why these are built to last.
Headphone frequency response graphs look very different from those for loudspeakers, which are ideally very flat. Here you can see a big rise on the right (treble) side and then it falls off a cliff. But this is in fact very close to what’s considered ideal for headphones. It’s called the Harman Curve. This industry benchmark is based on extensive psychoacoustic research into listener preferences.
For instance, it turns out that headphones negate the function of the outer ear, which otherwise amplifies sounds in the 3 kHz region. So the ideal response for headphones is much higher there. Resonances in the inner ear also make sounds between 7 and 10 kHz louder, which is why the graph dips abruptly around 8-9 kHz. We can see here that the HD 505 builds on the already excellent characteristics of the HD 599, extending even further into subbass territory while still offering strong, analytic mids and brilliant treble without sibilance or harshness.
