Noted audio expert Sennheiser has made the most expensive headphones in the world, the Sennheiser HE1, which are priced S$85,870 before taxes.
Yes, you read that right, and no, we did not put an extra zero by mistake at the end of that figure.
And, that sum, by the way, is before taxes.
But here’s some good news for Singaporeans: Sennheiser launched its first Experience Centre on November 28 at ConnectIT, an shop or audio products at 313@Somerset. Sennheiser’s Experience Center is enclosed to give the feel of a living room for users to get a better experience of the headphones.
And people can actually try the headphones for free.
First, they must make an appointment with ConnectIT, whereupon they are allowed a half-hour session guided by someone from the Sennheiser staff.
But wait, the HE1 is not just a set of headphones, according to Sennheiser, it’s more accurately known as a headphone system. And since it’s attached to a base of Carrara marble from the Garda Lake region of Italy, along with eight glass tubes that act as amplifiers, these are not your ordinary headphones that you’ll be listening with on the plane.
The HE1 headphones, sorry, we mean the headphone system, weighs 25 kilos in all. We don’t know if they are heavy-duty, but they certainly are heavy.
Now, we also need to mention that the glass tubes should be replaced as the quality of the sound diminishes, and that the marble slab serves to decrease other noises, and that the HE1 also comes with quartz bulbs for the overall purpose of reducing sound distortion.
The verdict: well, a writer for Business Insider said that while the headphones themselves were quite heavy, he was quite bowled over by the excellence of the sound quality, writing that the sound from the HE1 may be even better than if he were listening to a singer in person.
His one caveat though is that the headphones did not cut out the other sounds at the center, and so he said that it would be good to try the headphone system by yourself, since the headphones are not noise-cancelling.