Ultrasone (HFI-780) Headphones

Most nights I watch a movie or a recording of a TV sci-fi or action show. I'm fortunate to have assembled an impressive 5.1 surround sound system which completely dominates our living space but unfortunate to have a partner who is early to bed, early to rise and (not unreasonably) can't stand loud noises at night.

Yes we let the system flex its muscles a couple of times each weekend but for the rest of the time my listening is done with headphones.

Until recently I've been using a set of Listen-To-Believe real 5.1 headphones. These have a small powered decoder which you feed with a coaxial or optical Dolby Digital signal which the box then splits up and sends to different drivers in the headset. It works really well and I've been happy using this set-up most nights for the last four or five years.

Sadly I recently stepped on the cable while I was wearing the cans and broke one of the driver connections. I did manage to fix the damage with solder and patience (on more than one occasion) but the repair is quite fragile and will no doubt eventually break beyond repair.

My first thought was just to buy a replacement headset which used to be available without buying the whole system, decoder and all. Unfortunately LTB no longer sell these. The only 5.1 wired sets they now sell are fitted with USB connectors and aimed at the gaming rather than home theater market.

I hunted around for something to replace the LTBs. There were wireless options from Sony and Pioneer but on careful reading I discovered that mostly they offered synthesized rather than real 5.1 decoding and they all seemed to have issues with build quality and things breaking.

The best offerings seemed to come from the Beyer Dynamic company however I was not prepared to pay upwards of $1400.00 for a new headphone system. The top-of-the-line Beyer system costs nearly $3000.00 and has a kind of propeller jig mounted on top of the headband to keep the surround field static as you move your head around. I can't understand why the German manufacturer does not get that this looks too ridiculous to use despite what is no doubt a stellar sound performance!

Then I chanced across the Ultrasone HFI-780 "Surround" headphones with S-Logic Plus technology and began to get intrigued. It's not often a product with 13 Internet reviews on a website gets a five star rating from all the writers. I tend to trust consumer reviews more than professional ones because after all it's our own money we're spending here.

Closer inspection showed that these aren't really surround sound cans at all just a plain vanilla stereo but of a type which because of a unique driver placement, is delivered with great "air" and a huge and spacious sound stage voiced with TV and DVD/Blu-Ray viewing in mind.

Against all my instinct and better judgement (or so I thought), I went ahead and ordered the Ultrasones figuring I could always send them back if they didn't meet my needs.

This was a risk I'm glad I took because the HFI-780's are stunningly, breathtakingly, constant smile-inducingly good headphones.

You feel a sense of anticipation as you remove the headphones from their packaging and admire the quality of construction, the beautiful brushed aluminium casings of the ear pads, the thicker than usual headphone cord and the heftily constructed headband. For someone like me replacing an item because it essentially broke too easily this is a reassuring sensation.

You also notice the lavish velour carrying pouch and the accompanying booklet and bin-aurally recorded demonstration CD. On that, the demo CD is a blast. The recordings seem to emanate from a variety of spaces and distances far away from your head but it is a bit gimmicky and misleading as you would get a similar effect with any pair of stereo headphones but maybe not as huge and beautiful a sound as these Ultrasones put out.

On movies these sound brilliant. Take an action movie where there can be numerous sonic "events" all happening at the same time: a deep explosion, rainfall, shattering glass, dialog and gunfire for instance? They are all rendered with fantastic separation, clarity and force presenting a sound-stage so immense as to shatter any reservations about these not being true surround sound cans.

Pounding bass is delivered with full and glorious weight rather than limited and digitized as it was, all too frequently, with the LTBs. Midrange is smooth yet open and precise making dialog perfectly intelligible. Highs are crisp and sparkling yet never harsh or fatiguing.

The headphones utilize a proprietary "safe" listening technology which allegedly fools your ears into perceiving sound at a louder level than you are actually hearing. At first I was skeptical but as the HFI-780's have gone beyond delivering on their other promises I'm going to accept that statement for what it is. Good job too as with this level of sound reproduction there is a huge temptation to keep pushing that volume up and up! 

Music reproduction also sounds great to my ears but to be honest there are hordes of "high-end" headphone buffs out there who would be able to give you a better comparison between these and other similarly priced headsets. From a brief skim over what they are saying though it seems the HFI-780s have lots of fans in that market too.

I was lucky as there seemed to be a brief dip in prices when I got these for $170.00 including shipping. The list price is $279.00 and a day after I placed my order the Amazon price was back up to $249.00

Would I have made such an impulsive purchase at that higher amount. Probably not as I have a psychological barrier at around $200.00 for what I consider to be accessories. Silly really as I spared no expense on my speaker system which in practice I use one tenth as much!

As for possible improvements. Well the headband is a bit tight at first but I'm guessing it will feel more comfortable as the plastic beds-in and matches the head shape of a regular wearer. Also I'd love to see a removable 3.5m jack connector at the earpiece end so that in the event of an accident the cord would detach rather than rip and break (I think this is a feature on some more expensive Ultrasones).

So in conclusion, even though these aren't true 5.1 surround headphones the overall sonic stage they present is vast and easily outpaces the, admittedly far less costly, LTB discreet system. As for other areas such as general tonality, detail retrieval & imaging precision? Well it's not really a fair fight!

There aren't that many fish left in the pool of surround sound, theater leaning, headsets. If I could have one wish, it would be that a company like Ultrasone produced a real discrete 5.1 headset system. One which went beyond the "old school" Dolby Digital and plain DTS formats and utilised an HDMI connection to extract the new Dolby True HD and DTS Master Audio soundtracks on many of the recent Blu-Ray releases. My guess is that if such a system were produced by a company like Ultrasone it would, for movie listening, leave their stereo based offerings as far behind in the sonic dust as these HFI-780s have left my LTBs.

If they could offer such a system at an earthly price of between $400.00 and $600.00, I would be first in the queue waving my checkbook.

If you're listening Ultrasone and you need a product evaluator there's a space permanently reserved for you right next to me here on the couch.