Sennheiser HD 497 Dynamic Hi-Fi Headphones (Silver)

 (142 customer reviews)

I've been shopping for a medium to high quality pair of headphones for a while now. There are many high-end audiophile grade headphones that sound better than most $5000 speakers, but most of these headphones are too expensive for my budget (most cost $200 or more). I was looking for something around $50. After doing lots of research on the internet, I've narrowed my choices down to 4 pairs of headphones: Sennheiser HD497, Koss Pro 4AA, Grado SR60 and Sony MDR-V300. All of these headphones are within the $$$ range.The first pair I auditioned, Koss Pro 4AA produced excellent sound all around (they have an unbelievable frequency response of 10-25,000). However, their weight was as formidable as their sound - I couldn't wear them for more than 20 minutes at a time, my ears would begin sweating from the rubber ear pads and my neck would begin hurting from the weight.The Sony MDR-V300 is a much more comfortable pair of headphones; they also look much cooler than the 70's-style Koss...Read more

As I'd been using my Koss Pro4A's for almost thirty years, and the poor things were literally falling apart, I figured it was time to get a new set of decent headphones. I looked over the reviews of various ones here, tried out some down at the local electronics store, and finally found these. The first item that distinguishes these headphones from the run-of-the-mill sets is their ability to block external noise, without being super-heavy, super-sized, or squashing my oversized dumbo-like ears flatter than pancakes. These work so well at this job that I found they work well as studio earphones, allowing me to really hear what I truly sound like. It's almost impossible to do this without first recording yourself and then playing it back, as your ears are normally subjected to multiple feedback paths, both external and internal. With these phones, the external influence is almost totally blocked, allowing me to perceive very close to the reality of my own voice in real time. The...Read more

I was looking for a good set of headphones for my portable MiniDisc player. After doing some research, I decided to try the HD 497's. Overall, I found them to be a very good headphone for the money. They are very efficient and even with the low output from my Sony MiniDisc player, I found that turning the volume up half way was enough to produce sound at moderate levels. I listen to mostly jazz and vocals, so bass is not as critical for me- but I did try out some dance music with lots of bass, and found that these phone have quite a bit of bass. Overall, when compared to my HD600's (Sennheiser's most highly praised headphones), I'd say these give you about 75% of the performance at 30% of the price! Bass could be a little better controlled and a little deeper, and vocals don't have the pinpoint imaging of higher cost headphones, but the sound is still very enjoyable.In terms of ergonomics, these headphones do hurt my ears a bit. Although the padded ears make it...Read more