Sennheiser HD 560S Review: Accuracy Is Not Enjoyment

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The Short Version

Buy it if you make things with sound — recording, mixing, editing video, or learning to hear what is actually in a track. Neutral tuning is a working tool.

Do not buy it to use around other people. Open-back means everyone near you hears your music, and you hear them. This is not a commuting headphone, an office headphone, or a headphone for a shared room.

Buy the HD 599 SE instead if you just want to enjoy music. It costs less and is more pleasant, and our comparison of the two says so plainly.

What Open-Back Actually Means

There is no sealed cup behind the driver. The rear of the earcup is a grille, and sound passes through it in both directions.

Outward: anyone in the room hears what you are listening to, at conversational volume, clearly enough to identify the track. On a train this is antisocial to the point of unusable. In a shared office it will be noticed within minutes.

Inward: you hear the room. Traffic, a fan, a conversation two desks away — all of it arrives more or less unattenuated. There is no cancellation here and no isolation to cancel with.

What you get in exchange is the reason the design exists. Removing the sealed chamber removes the resonances a sealed chamber creates. The result is a more open, less congested presentation with a sense of space that closed headphones work hard to imitate and never quite reach.

Neutral Means Unflattering

Sennheiser tunes this to be accurate rather than exciting, and it is worth being clear about what that costs.

Consumer headphones lift the bass and the upper treble, because that combination sounds impressive immediately. The HD 560S does not. On a first listen against something like the Momentum 4 — Sennheiser's own consumer flagship — it can sound thin or plain.

That impression usually reverses over a few weeks, which is the pattern with reference tuning. What was thin becomes clear. What was exciting starts to sound like a preset.

But not always, and there is no shame in it. If you listen to music to enjoy it rather than to inspect it, a flattering tuning is the correct choice and accuracy is a cost with no benefit. Our best over-ear headphones for audiophiles page covers the enjoyable end of the same money.

What Wired Removes, and What It Gives Back

No battery, no pairing, no app, no firmware. It works when you plug it in and it will work identically in ten years.

No cancellation and no wireless convenience, which is the trade. This is not a headphone you take anywhere.

A cable is also the only way to get uncompressed audio to your ears. Bluetooth codecs are good now and still lossy. For work where the source matters, wired is not nostalgia.

Who It Is Genuinely For

People editing audio or video at a desk. Hearing a problem is the entire job, and a headphone that hides problems is worse than useless. Our studio headphones for home recording page puts it against the alternatives.

People learning to listen critically. A neutral reference is the only sensible starting point, because you cannot calibrate against a moving target.

Desk listeners in a private room who want the openness and do not need to block anything out.

Who Should Buy Something Else

Anyone who commutes. The leakage rules it out completely.

Anyone who wants one pair for everything. This does one thing.

Anyone who wants to be impressed on first listen. That is a legitimate thing to want and this is the wrong purchase for it. Our best wired headphones page has friendlier options.

The Verdict

A working tool that happens to be sold to consumers, and it is honest about being one.

The openness is genuine and the tuning does what Sennheiser claims. Nothing here is a compromise disguised as a feature — the leakage, the cable and the flat response are all consequences of a design aimed at accuracy, and Sennheiser has not pretended otherwise.

The question is not whether it is good. It is whether accuracy is what you want. If you are going to change what you hear — mix it, cut it, master it — this is the cheaper end of serious and the money is well spent. If you are going to enjoy what you hear, buy the cheaper HD 599 SE and enjoy it more.