Savor every note

Close your eyes and imagine you're in a front-row seat at your own private concert. That's what it feels like when you slip on a pair of Sennheiser HD 700s. Their amazing transparency, speed, and clarity will reveal the subtleties and emotions of your favorite recordings — from the deep, woody overtones and slapping strings of an upright acoustic bass to the quick intake of breath just before the singer belts out her next verse. You'll hear it all just like it went down. That's because the HD 700s use advanced Sennheiser technology and premium materials to reproduce sound as faithfully and accurately as possible.

Expert Sennheiser engineering for high-definition sound

The HD 700s feature drivers that are uniquely positioned to send sound waves to your ears at an angle — simulating the way you would normally listen to a pair of stereo speakers in a room. This slight angle helps create a wide soundstage for a more natural listening experience. So, unlike ordinary headphones that box the music inside your head, the HD 700s present every instrument as if you're sitting in the audience at a live concert. The earcups are designed with steel mesh open backs and a patent-pending ventilated magnet structure to help control airflow into and out of the headphones, reducing turbulence for ultra-low distortion levels.

Sennheiser's patent-pending ventilated magnet system controls airflow in and out of the ear cups for reduced turbulence and lower distortion.

Quality materials and construction

Borrowing design features from Sennheiser's top-of-the-line HD 800, the HD 700s use a vibration-damping frame and headband layered with special materials to help eliminate unwanted resonances. This optimized setup delivers warm, detailed and balanced sound for the audiophile purist. Plus, a detachable silver-plated oxygen-free copper cable provides superior conductivity at higher frequencies for a smooth, extended treble response that shimmers. And the soft, comfy velour ear cushions will have you listening happily for hours.

These high-performance headphones can be driven using the headphone outputs on most home audio systems, but to really hear them in all their glory a headphone amplifier is strongly recommended.

From the review Sennheiser HD 700 headphones: High-performance sound from a top contender

If you are a card-carrying basshead, these headphones are probably not going to give you the performance you are looking for. So you have to ask yourself, what's more important: feeling the bass rattle your skull, or clearly hearing every note the bass player plucks, slaps or picks? If you're willing to give up a little rumble for incredible clarity, the Sennheiser HD 700 headphones will open your ears to a new level of listening.

— David Brown, Crutchfield A/V Writer