Note: the custom cables depicted here were not used for the review.
The Sennheiser “IE” series began with the IE6. Thick, round and bassy, it was well received for its staggering bass frequency but lacked embarrassingly in the mids and highs. Next, was the IE7. Sennheiser trimmed up the fat and cleared the mids and highs, but the fans felt that they had gone too far. In their pursuit for clarity, Sennheiser had cut the claws off their beast. Gone was the thundering subbass that made it clear to the world that the engineering department at Sennheiser understood that sound begins and ends with bass. In 2008, the Germans had finally struck a balance between vibrant mids and deep bass authority. The IE8 carried the Sennheiser flagship iem moniker for three years until it was given a slight tweak and a brushed aluminium facelift in 2011 and renamed the IE80. Continue reading “Sennheiser IE80 – A Single Driver Classic”