Sennheiser HD 490 PRO Open-Back Professional Headphone

If you're a gamer, you've heard of these by now. Let me tell you the hype is real! I honestly just wanted to demo & return them, confident my long time favorite gaming headphones, the R70x would not be surpassed. But wow! The 490 is the closest thing to a cheat code in Call of Duty that's not actually cheating.The R70x is certainly more immersive with a larger soundstage & better sense of distance, almost a holographic sense of space. For example, in the loading stage when 44 combatants are parachuting into a relatively small area, the sense of precisely where various parachuters are as they approach from above is simply astonishing with the R70x, rather like listening to a great Atmos speaker system. However, in a competitive shooter there's a downside to the accurate sense of space because distant sound cues are faint. Another downside with R70x is a warm sound signature that rolls off both sub-bass and treble, which is where many FPS sound cues, such as slides, reloads, hit markers, power-ups, etc. are presented. While the R70x is fantastically immersive, you will miss some "tinglers" the game designers add to their audio mix.This is exactly where the HD 490 Pro shines. Designed to be mixing headphones, the 490 has a neutral sound signature that is extraordinarily revealing for sub-$400, let alone sub-$1000 headphones. Every sound cue, every tingler is revealed and imaged crystal clear. While it has a much more intimate (i.e. smaller) soundstage than the R70x, instead placing all sound inside your head, the 490's imaging is wonderful! No one, and I mean NO ONE is sneaking up on you when wearing 490s!While you won't have the same sense of distance, you will know PRECISELY what DIRECTION every sound is coming from when wearing the 490... Though this can be overwhelming at times, such as that matchmaking with as dozens of parachutes dropping in all around you or even when you're in a building with multiple players moving about on different floors, because it all sounds so close with that intimate soundstage & extraordinary detail retrieval making every sound cue loud & clear. But if you have good situational and environmental awareness, no enemy will get close to you without ample warning.The 490s are a true wall-hacking dream! You won't find any headphones better at revealing sound cues and providing you with a precise auditory "image" of the direction of the source! And by the way, they sound fantastic too. Not only are the detail and imaging superb, but the resolution is phenomenal, especially for the price. The 490 doesn't color the sound at all. There's no bass bloat, muddiness, sibilance, etc. The 490 presents voices, instruments, explosions, etc. oh so accurately and cleanly; better than my Sundara and approaching the clarity of my Focal Clear, which is saying something for these sub-$400 headphones!The proof is always in the pudding... I played COD Warzone Resurgence (on Xbox) several times in a row, alternating headphones in a 1 game-2-1-2 pattern (R70, 490, R70, R70, 490, 490, R70...) I played a total of 14 games, 7 each, in two extended sessions during the same day, taking a long break after the 8th game. I tried to play each game similarly, typically dropping at Respawn Island's Chemical Engineering, where there was always a quick fight for the loot there. Whenever I'd win that initial fight, I would generally hold the building, listening for approaching enemies to test the headphones’ capabilities. I would engage them aggressively at short to mid-range with ARs & SMGs as soon as I felt I had a bead on their location. I avoided Loadout Drops & Buy Stations due to all the camping snipers, plus wanting the headphones to do the heavy lifting of each run without UAVs & other aids. Dropping my worst & best finishes over the 7 games to mitigate the outliers, I averaged nearly 15th place with the R70x; and with the 490, I averaged 9th place (even after dropping my only W!) In fact, I got that win plus 2nd place THREE times using the 490 in just 7 games! Note that my losing 3 of 4 final circles is proof that I am NOT a great 1v1 gunslinger! So, my getting to the top 10 consistently is a strong testament to how much the 490 was keeping me alive!It pains me to say that because I have long praised my R70x as the ultimate gaming headphone... And I was really hoping I could return the 490 to put the $350 back into my account! But after such a significant improvement to my survivability in COD, there's no way I can bring myself to return them! The 490 is simply too good to give up.

Sound reproduction can either aim to replicate realism, meaning the world outside of those 4 walls, or a "Tasteful" approach.If you want the real world approach, then Sennheiser (Pro division) is just second to none. Every other brand simply struggles to nail time and space in a realism manner. I've gone through so many headphones, auditioned every brand I can think of, and somehow every brand colors sound in an artificial type of way.I'm a firm believer in brand philosophy, if a company nails it, then they are Holy Grail status to me; For Audio interfaces - Motu, Microphones - Earthworks, Monitors - Kali Audio, Cables - Mogami with Amphenol Connectors and for Headphones is Sennheiser Pro.Is it perfect? I mean no product is perfect, no matter how you look at it, but it's close to that realism benchmark soundwise.Main Con for certain people would be the "scratchy" texture from inside the cup, they could have removed the lettering and used a softer material for it. The cup changing system could be magnetic, even though the current system isn't the worst either.The whole Pro moniker is usually overused everywhere and it tends to signal higher prices without true benefits, but in this case the Pro division is true Sennheiser realism spirit, while the Sonnova branding is just "Tasteful" approach.All in all, it is a bit pricey, but when you take sound into account, this product surpasses everything else effortlessly.After this, the search is over until the next Sennhseir Pro iteration!My personal setup is:-Motu M2 (3ft TB5 cable)-Mogani 2549 (Amphenol Connectors)-Earthworks SR 117-Kali Audio LP UNF-HD 490 ProAnd last but not least, for music streaming, QOBUZ is just holy grail! (Audio Purity perspective), every other service is way behind.