Almost everyone who makes music would agree: a good pair of headphones can be a secret weapon.
In the case of Sennheiser's 490 Pro Plus headphones, they come with a healthy $450 price tag and a tidal wave of potential. Whether mixing entire albums or experimenting with sounds in the formative stages of a new track, the price is easily justified when considering what the 490 Pro Plus headphones are capable of.
This sounds like high praise, but keep in mind that they are currently getting praise from other sectors outside of the music industry, where audio quality is also valued. On Reddit, for example, everything threads They are dedicated to how the Sennheiser product changes the game for the gaming community.
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“If you compare music productions today with those of 10 or 20 years ago, you will notice how the enormous increase in computing power and complex automation of parameters have changed the way music is made,” said Sennheiser Category Market Manager , Jimmy Landry, in a recent press release. “Across all genres, music engineers and creators are continually pushing boundaries, creating extremely complex mixes that can be prone to so-called 'audio blind spots.'”
“Mixes can be cluttered and confusing, with too many instruments in the same position and their frequencies competing. For the engineer or musician, it is difficult to hear each individual instrument or voice clearly. This shows the importance of a good pair of studio headphones “
When we wanted to know how the 490 Pro Plus would fit into the process of creating dance music in a home studio, EDM.com decided to put the product to the test. We spent over 1000 hours using these and other headphones over the last month.
In the process, we managed to identify three distinctions that markedly separated the 490 Pro Plus from its peers.
Prepared for the long term
The biggest superpower we found in Sennheiser's 490 Pro Plus was its ability to stay light and velvety in the ears even after hours and hours of turning knobs and pressing buttons. Headphones typically become increasingly uncomfortable the more you wear them, but the 490s grip and breathe with balanced homeostasis, allowing the user to push forward in the studio when the creative juices start flowing.
Sleeves that make a difference
One of the first things that showed a lot of thought went into the 490 Pro Plus was the two types of ear cups that come with the unit. At first it seemed superfluous, but upon closer inspection there was much more to think about.
One was velvet and the other was cloth. Velvet offers a softer, matte sound, ideal for holistic trials and live instruments, a big advantage in conservative home studios that produce and master a lot. The cloth earmuff set, on the other hand, produces a crisper, flatter sound, which is advantageous for mixing. To produce any type of electronic dance music, these were indispensable, especially for the producer on the go. Luckily, everything fit nicely into the same case.
Ready for space
Perhaps further proof that Sennheiser's audio professionals are reaching the zenith of the industry, the 490 Pro Plus is calibrated for 3D sound modeling and audio production for augmented reality. Each set comes with a free license for Dear Reality's DearVR MIX-SE plugin.
Basically, it transmutes a DAW into a virtual mixing format by moving the acoustics of sounds to match the calibrations of multi-million dollar mixing studios. While it's easy to overlook or say “although I'd never use that…”, the product's spatial availability and software like this emphasize Sennheiser's superiority, especially compared to other high-end headphones on the market today.
For more information on Sennheiser's 490 Pro Plus and any of the company's other products, visit their website.
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