Sennheiser HD 600

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400

Why it’s here

The HD 600 has been in continuous production since 1997, and the audio world has spent those decades failing to agree on anything except this: it is the reference. Studios calibrate against it, reviewers benchmark against it, and Sennheiser — through every corporate reshuffle since — has kept making it, because it keeps selling to people who already owned one for twenty years.

The story

The HD 600 is the 1997 refinement of 1993’s HD 580 — same chassis, improved drivers — released when Sennheiser was still a family company in Wedemark, Germany. It became the rare product that outlived its own successor cycle: the HD 650 (2003) and HD 660 variants joined the line rather than replacing it, and the audio press still stages the family rematch every few years to check whether the original has been dethroned. It hasn’t.

Sony MDR-7506

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400

Why it’s here

Walk into any recording studio, broadcast van, or newsroom on earth and count the MDR-7506es. In production since 1991 — with a lineage running back to the 1985 MDR-V6 — it is the closest thing pro audio has to the F-91W: cheap, unglamorous, everywhere, and quietly unkillable. Products stay “the standard” for thirty-four years for exactly one reason: the people who depend on them daily keep choosing them.

Headphones on A1Make

Sennheiser HD 600

Why it’s here

The story

Sony MDR-7506

Why it’s here