Building high-end headphones with the clarity of a concert hall and creating acoustics that surpass anything that has been heard before has always been Sennheiser’s vision. And in 1990/1991, the German audio specialist achieved precisely that when it took the audio world by storm with Orpheus. This engineering masterpiece exceeded all previous ideas about the performance limitations of headphones. The product became recognised as the best headphones in the world – until now. Almost 25 years later, Sennheiser has launched the successor. The new Orpheus offers the ultimate in reproduction precision, exceptional spatiality and a frequency response that extends far beyond the range of human hearing ability.
To make this possible, a team of Sennheiser experts spent almost a decade continuously working against the limits of what is technically possible. The Orpheus uses an innovative amplifier concept that combines to perfection the advantages of a tube amplifier with those of a transistor amplifier. When the system is inactive, its components are all retracted and the Orpheus has the beauty of a sculpture. Gently pushing the on/off-volume control brings the sculpture to life: the control elements, each of which are crafted from a single piece of brass and then plated with chrome, slowly extend from the marble housing, before the vacuum tubes enclosed in quartz glass bulbs rise from the base and start to glow. Finally, a glass cover is raised, allowing the headphones with ear cups finished in genuine leather to be removed.
Approx £35,670 / €50,000 / $53,750
www.sennheiser-reshapingexcellence.com
