Sennheiser IE 6 - DigitalVersus

Sennheiser IE 6


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Réponse en fréquence	10 Hz – 18 kHz
Haut parleur	Transducteur
Impédance	16 Ohms
Sensibilité	115 dB SPL
Longueur cordon	1,2 m
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Type de casque	mono-driver
Poids	5g
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Tristan François
Test date: February 25, 2009

IE Series Case

Sennheiser's engineers have clearly spent more time trimming down this case than they have on improving the sound quality of the headphones it's designed to contain. It's very small, and none of the space inside its plastic and aluminium frame is wasted.

Everything has its own place, including the adaptors, the cleaning tool and the headphones themselves. There's even a slot for an anti-humidity pads, even though these are only supplied with the IE8s. A hidden magnet at the very bottom of the lid keeps it closed without any obvious fastenings.

Storage perfection comes at price, though, and here it's the time it'll take you to get all of the different components out and slot them back in again. It takes much longer than with regular cases.

Without doubt, Sennheiser is one of the world's leading headphone brands, so it's hardly any surprise to see them launching this range of quality in-ear headphones, made up of three different models, starting with this pair, the IE6.

What’s in the box?
Sennheiser really knows how to present its wares, and the beautiful packaging on these IE6s aren't disappointing. As soon as you open it up, you're immediately struck by the sense of quality. Inside are the headphones themselves, an aluminium case, adaptors in three different sizes, a cleaning tool and a cable clip.

The case, which is the same across the three IE models (see inset), is perfectly organised, but after a while you realise that folding the headphones up and stowing them takes a lot longer than with the simpler cases offered by Klipsch, Jays and Earsonics.

The box also includes a cable clip to secure the cable as it passes over your ears (which in-ear headphones always do) ... except that it doesn't really work. The cable keeps slipping out so we soon got rid of it. The IE series headphones don't sit very deep in your ear: good news in terms of comfort but but less good for isolation.

Sound Quality

In theory at least, Sennheiser knows a thing or two about sound, to say the very least. Having said that, we'd struggle to describe the sound on the IE6s as exceptional.

So, while the bass is very much there, as is the treble, but in between the two there's a large, gaping hole. The problem isn't so much this disappointing V-shaped response curve--this certainly isn't the first, and probably won't be the last pair of headphones guilty of that fault--but rather that it's so bad that the sound quality is remarkably bad.

What's worse is that, moving across the spectrum, we got the impression that the IE6s were almost trying to bring out unnecessary hissing, the sound of clicking plectrums and all sorts of other upleasant interference. Listening to acoustic performances, especially singers armed with a guiter, is almost nothing short of unbearable.

It's so bar that we were left wondering if these really were Sennheisers ...