Senneiser CX-550 Headphone Review

Posted on 23/03/2010 by Craig

Cross-posted from various forum threads, but thought I might as well post this here in my blog

Background

So, my venerable Sennheiser CX-300s bit the dust a week ago (it’s actually just the 3.5mm jack, I’ll probably get it repaired at some point) and I was looking for some replacements.

After asking around for alternatives on some message forums (WCUK and AnythingButiPod), I decided to try the CX-550s, as I had seen them on PlayTrade on Play.com for around £24 – which seemed to be a bargain, seeing as they retail for around double that.

Purchase

I wouldn’t normally discuss the purchasing in a review, however when I had ordered from Play.com I discovered why I had paid £24. The CX-550s I received were fakes. After emailing backwards and forwards with the supplier, he reeled off a sob-story about a second supplier and offered to replace the fakes with genuine Sennheisers.

I accepted the offer, as I did actually want my headphones. I’ve just (as in 30 minutes ago – I’m using them right now) got the replacements, and they are genuine Sennheiser ‘phones. Result – albeit with more hassle than necessary.

The Headphones

Right, no onto the meat of the review. I’ve not written one of these before, so bear with me. I mainly bought the 550s as a replacement (and upgrade) for my 300s, and they are just that. I only have the 300s as a comparison point, so I can really only reference those.

After first listening with the standard silicone ear-pieces, I switched over to the double-flanged ear-pieces supplied with the 550s – and they make so much difference in the high- and mid-ranges.

The first thing I did when plugging the 550s into my Zen was turn off the bass boost I had enabled for the 300s, as they seemed to lack “punch” on the bass – no such lack here. The bass is definitely present, but with that lovely, crisp “punch” rather than a flabby “boom”.

My Zen ran out of juice at this point, so I switched over to my desktop PC sound rig.

The other thing is the relative clarity in comparison to the 300s. There is a lot more of the high-end; crash cymbals sound crisper and guitars have a lot more “mid” and “squeal”, but at the same time sound more concentrated.

In terms of EQ, I’m using about +2dB of 80Hz and +1dB of 2.5KHz on my Benhringer Xenyx 802 mini-mixer, and no software EQ. Sound source is 320kbps mp3 played through AmaroK on Fedora 12 Linux, with an ASUS Xonar Essence STX sound card.

Conclusion

It seems like the 550s have been discontinued by Sennheiser, which is a real shame. The best alternative I can see on their website are the CX-870/880 range, which are a good deal more expensive than the 550s, even at retail.

If you decide to buy them from a non-mainstream re-seller, be prepared for the worst. I found this forum post extremely useful, and there was also a comparison image (I can’t find the URL now ) detailing how to tell the difference between fakes and genuines. The differences as far as I can remember are:

Cone-shaped driver mesh (genuines should have straight)
1mm gap between driver head and main IEM body
No cable-clip in packaging
Relatively unprofessional packaging (cables just stuffed into the bottom pouch rather than being cable-tied)
No flanged ear-pieces

My advice – if you can get them, these are fantastic headphones and a worthy upgrade to CX-300s for a reasonable price.

A Very Belated Update

Posted on 28/09/2008 by Craig

So where has the last six months gone??

It seems like only yesterday I was packing my gear in Aberystwyth. Since then, I’ve moved back to Essex, packed in a fair few We Will Rock You shows, redesigned this website, played bass in a variety show concert started a new job and and built a brand new desktop PC – so it’s been “all go”!

The new desktop PC has been about a month in progress but it’s finally completed and I couldn’t be more pleased with how it’s turned out. More details are on the Computers section of this site, so I won’t bore people with techncial specifications here, but it’s safe to say that it was definitely worth the effort!

September 20th saw a parial change of cast for We Will Rock You at the Dominion. Among those to leave were Julian Littman, Lain Gray and Lucy Sinclar who play Pop, Vic and Meat respectively. I have yet to see the new cast, but I’m sure they will be brilliant.

I’m now working at Colchester Sixth Form College as an IT Technician as part of my degree course’s Year in Industry. It started pretty slowly, then sped up quite a bit as staff and students were off for the summer, freeing up the servers and network for maintenance. Hopefully it’s calming down slightly now!

The aforementioned variety show was the brainchild of Hans Montanana, the former head of music at Rickstones School who I’ve kept in contact with over the years. I actually came out of semi-retirement as a bassist to play the concert, not having played seriously for over three or four years! It was definitely a challenge going back to basics and reading from chord charts again but hopefully I’m now back into the swing of it and the next one (if there actually is a “next” one) will be a bit easier!

Last of all, I’ve given this website a bit of a revamp and redesign, and added a new section dedicated to the building of my new desktop PC. The theme of the redesign was partially inspired by the recent events at CERN and the Large Hadron Collider, I’m still not 100% happy with the design so there may be a few further tweaks in the next few weeks!

Anyway, that’s your lot, apologies for not updating over the last 5 months but it has been pretty action-packed!

Up the ‘kin Irons!
Craig

Decem-whatnow?

Posted on 03/12/2007 by Craig

So….where the hell have the last two months gone? Well, university work has really picked up,but I’m now just two weeks away from being back at home for Christmas and some well-deserved (or at least I think so) rest, so I’m really looking forward to getting back. I’ve also got my first We Will Rock You show (and 50th overall – I miscounted by one in September) booked, so I’m also looking forward to that – it should be interesting to see a refreshing take on the show from the new cast – from what I’ve been told, they really do the show justice.

Backtracking slightly to university work, I’ve just finished a programming assignment which involved coding a program in Java to decrypt a variety of ciphers – namely the Caesar, substitution and Vigenère ciphers. Not really being much of a programmer, I only managed to implement the Caesar cipher decryption, but I’m still pretty proud to get it working that much.

The other assignment that was handed in a week ago (26th November) was Formula 1 results analysis using the C programming language. I’m quite a keen follower of F1 – and have been since the Michael Schumacher/Damon Hill battles of the 1995 and 1996 seasons – so even though the assignment itself was a hell of a lot of work, I half-enjoyed it because it was on a subject I actually knew something about! In the end, I over-engineered the assignment slightly, getting a bit carried away and going above and beyond the original specification! I’ll probably end up putting my source code for both assignments on my University Webspace at some point.

As well as all of these assignments, I’ve also had to start actively job-seeking for my Industrial Year placement, which runs from July 2008 through to September 2009. I’ve got a pretty solid idea of what type of job I would like to do and where I’d like to be – network/systems administration in the Essex/London area. Ever since leaving my job at Rickstones in August 2006, I’ve wanted to go into the network/technical support area because it’s something I’m interested in and also something I enjoy. So – if there are any prospective employers out there, check out my CV and drop me an e-mail!

Away from university work, Liverpool are now almost through to the knock-out stages of the Champions League after thrashing Besiktas and Porto 8 – 0 and 4 – 1 respectively at Anfield. I watched the 8 – 0 drubbing live on ITV and it was one of the most beautiful games of football I have ever seen. Also, staying on the note of football, England are now out of Euro 2008. The night of the fateful match against Croatia it was a flatmate’s birthday so we held a surprise party for her, so it took quite a lot of the disappointment out of the defeat!

In music news, Iron Maiden have announced that they will play Twickenham Rugby Stadium on 5th July 2008 – just four days before my 21st birthday. As a Maiden fan club member, I got exclusive pre-order for one day, so I booked up along with a friend and his brother. I’m really, really looking forward to the gig – it’s Maiden’s only date announced in the UK on their entire Somewhere Back In Time tour, which reprises tracks from the band’s biggest albums – Somewhere In Time, Powerslave and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son as well as all of the classics and also includes their legendary “pyramid” stage-set. It should be an awesome show!

So I guess that’s your lot, cheers for reading and up the ‘kin Irons!

Craig

New University Term

Posted on 09/10/2007 by Craig

Evening all,

Well, having been offline for the best part of a month, I figured I’d better fill you lovely people in on what’s been happening in an insanely busy month and a half. The reason for being offline is a combination of BT screwing up royally with getting our phone line up and running (due to a “system glitch” our original order was lost, so we had to do it all again) and Orange springing the surprise that the “upto 8meg for £5 a month” offer was only available to customers starting a new contract. The upshot is that I had to upgrade my phone with an upgrade fee of £100 or keep my current handset for another 15 months. While I do like the Samsung D900 (my current phone) I wasn’t too keen on being tied to it for 15 more months, so I upgraded through gritted teeth, but at least I now have Internet!

As you may have guessed by now, I’m now safely back in Aberystwyth and into the third week of the new university term, the term itself is going pretty well, but I’m sure that will change when the assignments start rolling in. I’ve also started developing my own Content Management System, called (aptly) Sonica CMS in PHP, to try and forward my knowldge of the PHP lanaguage. More on the CMS is at www.sonicadesign.com/scms. I’m hoping to have beta (test) versions of the software available in the next month or two, depending on university workload.

Away from such geekery, my vinyl collection is slowly growing (click on the link for a phot of the collection), just bought Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell as well as Iron Maiden’s eponymous album, both are in the post, so they should arrive in the next few days – strikes permitting of course. I’ve just finished a couple of freelance web projects for Colin Charles, who has just left the cast of We Will Rock You after playing the role of Britney for the last few years – AD Agency and Impact International Management (a link to Impact will be coming very soon, the site should be live in the next few days).

We Will Rock You itself has had a few major changes in the past month as well, with five new principal actors and a host of scene and script changes. I haven’t had a chance to see the new cast myself due to the fairly obvious fact that I’m at university in the depths of Wales, but I have it on very good authority that they’re awesome, which is just what the show deserves and needs. These changes are also wrapped in an amount of sadness, because I really do respect the outgoing cast – they’re an amazing bunch of people (and extremely talented vocalists and actors).

Anyway, that’s your lot, cheers for reading.

Up the ‘kin Irons!
Craig

Summer 2007

Posted on 26/08/2007 by Craig

Well well well boys and girls. After quite a nice slow, relaxing start to the summer, things have gone slightly crazy. For the past month, I’ve been working as a call centre operator for O2 Insure, taking calls from people who have misplaced, dropped or otherwise broken their mobile phones. While I’m bound by the company’s confidentiality agreement and can’t discuss specific claims I’ve taken, I can say that certain people have provided me with quite an entertaining day.

Apart from that, I’ve managed to squeeze a few more We Will Rock You shows in, bringing my running total up to 49 by the time I leave Essex again for Aberystwyth on Saturday 8th September. I can honestly say that my last show before I go will be quite an emotional one – as I’ll be seeing the present cast for the last time. While this may seem quite sad and geeky, I’d like to take this opportunity to say what this show (and more specifically, this cast) has done for me in the past. They’ve given me an outlet for so much enjoyment, brought me closer to some very good friends who I wouldn’t have met otherwise. I have never in my 49 shows left the theatre not wanting to go back, and that’s certainly a great testament to the effort and energy that the cast (and also the band – these guys are often forgotten up in the wings) put in, night after night and week after week. So, if you’re in the London area before 29th September (or indeed at any point in the future), get down to the Dominion Theatre and see this completely mind-blowing show.

It’s also brought me (indirectly) a bit of web design work. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Tony Bourke, the show’s drummer, to set up his personal website and I’m currently in the process of completing work for another of the show’s cast – further details will be on the way soon!

Away from web design and more We Will Rock You shows, I’ve also taken my first step into the retro world of vinyl (as in the black stuff that was the predecessor of the CD) – snapping up a Dual 505 turntable and Cambridge Audio A1 amp on eBay. While a lot of people will disagree with me, I think that vinyl has a certain resonance and “personality” that a CD just doesn’t have – by definition a CD is digital and will therefore produce the same results every single time. At the moment, I just have a slightly crackly copy of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and The Goons’ The Last Goon Show Of All to my name, so if anybody has some vinyl that they would like to get rid of- please drop me an email – you can find out a bit more about my music tastes on the about me page of this website.

So, with all that said, I’m now looking forward to getting back to Aberystwyth, seeing people who I haven’t seen in 4 months and actually having to work for a change. It’s hard life…..

Up the ‘kin Irons!
Craig

Site Design Update and Belated Blog Update

Posted on 04/07/2007 by Craig

I’ve just finished a minor site layout change, hopefully you approve

In other news, apologies for not updating this for another three months – things have changed quite a bit. I’m now back in Essex after finishing my first year at Aberystwyth. It feels strange being back – although I am actually broke. So if anybody out there is looking for a freelance web designer, take a look at www.sonicadesign.com and get in touch!

I’m currently doing a bit of recording for a friend’s various metal projects as well as being a general unemployed student. Probably unsurprisingly, I’ve already crammed one We Will Rock You show into the month I’ve been back and I’ve got a couple more booked for the coming months.

One of two highlights of the last month though is seeing Iron Maiden live at Brixton Academy on 24th June with a good friend – courtesy of some quick bidding on eBay. We managed to get a pair of tickets for £60 – which is £20 below the combined face value . The setlist was the same as they played at the Download Festival, with a mix of tracks from A Matter of Life and Death and The Number of The Beast complete with Eddie and tank during the encore. Some photos will find their way onto the Gallery pages quite soon.

Needless to say the gig was a complete stormer, and standing back next to the sound desk gave us a brilliant view of the whole stage. The support acts deserve a mention too, Indian metal outfit Parikrama were surprisingly good – their Indian influences were pretty well integrated into traditional metal, the violin was a brilliant addition in my opinion. Lauren Harris was also very good – I recognised a couple of the songs from seeing them at Earl’s Court last year.

The other highlight of the last month is about my new laptop that I covered in the last update in April. I have now configured it to quad-boot. Yes, you read right. Four operating systems – Windows Vista, Windows XP Media Center 2005, Apple OS X and Fedora Core 7 Linux all on a 120Gb hard drive with some room left for my music and documents. I’m not going to bore you listing all the details, but needless to say that I am thouroughly pleased with my efforts . It was a bitch to get Grub (the Linux bootloader) to work properly, but nothing ever goes smoothly with technology.

I’m hoping to expand the site with a few computer tutorials and how-to’s in the near future, so watch this space

Up the ‘kin Irons!
Craig

The 2006 Music Marathon

Posted on 24/12/2006 by Craig

Well well well, boys and girls. Time for me to reflect on what has been a mind-blowing few days of awesome live music. This will more than likely turn into a long entry, so grab yourself a coffee, sit back and read on.

The start of the Marathon was We Will Rock You on Thursday evening. It was my 36th show overall, and my second that week (I had already done one show on Monday on my way home from Aberystwyth). What a show. The entire cast and band were on top form and the sound was amazing. I managed to give Jenna a few bits and pieces which I’d done for the cast for Christmas (a WWRY image edit I had printed, a tin of Quality Street and a card), I don’t actually know if the rest of the cast actually saw any of the Quality Street or not! It was a full principal cast, and everything was nigh-on perfect for the whole show. I’m not going to go into great depth with the review but I think I’ve already said most of it. Jenna and Peter were brilliant, you could see the great chemistry between them in Hammer To Fall and Who Wants To Live Forever. Mazz and Alex had a storming show, as did Rachael and Colin. All-in-all: one of the best performances I think I have ever seen.

My first of two Iron Maiden gigs in two days comes next. Got to the Earl’s Court Arena at about 7:30, just missing Lauren Harris’ set (Maiden bassist Steve Harris’ daughter). I went into the Arena with an open mind towards Trivium (the main support act on the tour), as I hadn’t really heard anything from them before. It was mediocre at best. The vocals were a bad Metallica-copy and the drummer was just playing the same pattern over and over again. I was glad to hear the end of their set, as it was only just bearable. They were annoyingly American and commercial, and it I think that it was Trivium who caused the majority of the crowd trouble later on, with massive surges and stupid, pointless pushing.

Iron Maiden was – predictably – awe-inspiring. They played the full A Matter of Life and Death album from start to finish, and although it did start to drag towards the end of the set, the classics at the end more than made up for it. One slight hiccup was the fact that the main power cable into the building caught fire and melted halfway through and rendered the band instrument-less and reduced Bruce Dickinson to a mega-phone and the crowd singing Christmas carols for a full 20 minutes. Two Minutes to Midnight, Fear of The Dark, Iron Maiden, The Evil That Men Do and Hallowed Be Thy Name was a class end to a class set.

The Maiden madness continued into yesterday (Saturday 23rd) when I went into Earl’s Court again for another round of ear-bashing from Trivium and comparative harmonic bliss from Maiden. This time I went into the venue about 10 minutes before the doors officially opened at 6pm, thanks to the First To The Barrier wristbands I won in a raffle from the Iron Maiden Fan Club. Lauren Harris’ set was solid and definitely deserved to be higher up on the bill than Trivium, who were just as bland and unimanginative as before. Again, I endured their set and Maiden were brilliant. The highlight of the Album set was Benjamin Breeg. Atmospheric and downright headbanging. Again, the classics during the encore were just draw-dropping. I actually got a nod of the head from Steve Harris at one point during the set, that was enough to make my night.

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled on for long enough, so merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all