Sennheiser PC 350 Special Edition 2015 headphones

Edit, I feel like an idiot...had them almost 2 months. Did some research after writing this to get another set of headphones... TIL There is a volume knob on the side of these... mine was at min volume this whole time. They actually sound like a real set of headphones now. Bass is 9/10, but otherwise quite amazing. In other news... the sound blaster E1 inline amp held up to max volume for almost 2 months.Mic is still kinda crap, so it gets a 4 star.Pros; More comfortable then the my 20$ monoprice headphones... I work from home, and wear them 10+ hours a day.Cons; Everything else. Friends gave me flack about mic quality instantly. Ear cup doesn't seal on the bottom, making the advertised closed design useless. When I first plugged them in, the volume was so low it was hard to hear anything from them, so I bought an inline amp(creative sound blaster E1), and its still literally 1/100th the volume of my 20$ monoprice headphones at the same volume. Its so quiet I feel like they are broken or something. If you listen to music, ASMR, or really anything... the ear buds at walmart sound better then these because of how quiet they are.I would not buy these for 20$, good thing I got them for only 77$. I don't understand why anyone would rave about these.

For a gaming headset they are pretty great... for a set of Sennheiser headphones... not so much.So I picked these up because I am working at a new job where I have to do a lot of video calls all day long. Needed something with a good quality microphone with noise rejection that could mask out the kids, with closed ear cans that help dampen environment so I can pay attention to the callers, and comfortable enough to wear all day long... plus be a decent headset for when I want to watch movies or play online games at night. Oh, and not break the bank.Comfort: GoodComing from the era of over-ear headphones of the '80s and '90s where it is like wearing a vice on your head, these are a dream when it comes to comfort. My last set of over-ear headphones were a cheap set of Siberia v2 which were pretty comfy, and these are even better than those. They are light weight, plenty of ear space, and compact enough where I can lounge on the couch without them getting in the way of leaning my head against the arm of the couch or a pillow.Mic Quality: Good, but with technical issues.On my PC I recorded the mic and it sounds pretty great. Noise cancellation works well too, and having an arm that automatically mutes when it is stowed instead of trying to find a silly button is great design. But on that system it is the only microphone; On my laptop (where I do my work) it does not work so well, but it may be an issue with the laptop. Using the combo jack adapter provided it completely ignores the headset mic and continues using the laptop mic array. This is not to say that I can't get them to work, because if I just plug in the mic line and not the headphone line (still using the same combo jack adapter) then it works how it should. Also, if I use the junk 'headset' that came with my phone it works as expected, so I don't know why the nice headset does not work. Suffice to say something is wrong.On the plus side, if I use the USB sound card that came with my old Siberia v2 it works beautifully on my laptop, so I may pick up a 2nd USB sound card and avoid the analog port all together. Really sad it does not work right out of the box; but again, it may be something with the adapter and my particular laptop.Build quality: GoodNothing about it seems flimsy or easily breakable. The folding mechanism for the headphones and the mic arm are all solid. The speaker line is both hefty and flexible (with nice fabric braided around it), and while there is little metal used in the design, the plastic seems to be of good quality and able to take a bit of abuse. I do wish that it had a detachable/replaceable cable line... but for the price I am not complaining.Sound quality: mehThis is not to say that the sound quality is bad, because it isn't. In fact, for the price I paid I would say it is pretty good, and certainly a step up from my old Siberia v2 headset. My complaint is in comparing it with other Sennheiser headphones which I have used for more audio production oriented tasks in the past. As a Sennheiser product it simply does not live up to it's namesake. These do not have a flat response curve; They are a little heavy in the lower midrange, and a little weak in the high end. This is unfortunate because it is really in the range that makes the human voice sound a little muddy and undefined. Voice chats and podcasts are just harder to listen to with this headset without some amount of EQ involved. But once you get a good EQ profile going they do sound quite excellent... just don't expect to use them with a cheap phone or other device that does not have an EQ built in.The other complaint has more to do with the fact that these are closed ear headphones. I am accustomed to the sound of open-ear or simi open-ear headphones. They let your ears breathe a bit, allow the drivers to move more freely, and overall sound more 'pleasant' to listen to. With closed ear headphones it is much easier to have sweaty ears with long time use (like an 8+ hour workday). Plus, when rocking out to music with some bass, the air pressure of the drivers actually vibrate the cans because the air has nowhere to go... which is an interesting sensation that I am not use to having. This could be overcome with a tighter clamp or heavier parts... but then you run into comfort issues, so I am pretty sure this is the best compromise they could come up with.That being said, I don't mean to be too down on these headphones. The imaging is good, even when using the 7.1 to stereo emulation on my sound card I can still tell where things are coming from. Because they are higher resistance headphones you do need a little more power to drive them (my phone can't really get these to be 'loud', but my laptop and USB sound card have no issues), but you also retain a lot of quality because the drivers move very accurately. This means that music retains a lot of texture that is typically lost, and it brings out smaller background sounds that are typically masked over or more easily ignored. In fact, these are almost good enough where you can start to hear things like mp3 compression, and distinguish between an mp3 rip and the original CD... so some of that sennheiser quality is retained... just not what I am use to in their other higher end products.tl:drso again, good headset with good quality, great mic, solid (but not bulky) construction, comfortable... overall good headset. Especially for the price. Especially compared with other headsets geared towards the gaming market. For the money and the application you would be hard pressed to find something better.But, if you are looking for truly fantastic Sennheiser audio quality then you are not going to find it here. Perhaps look into spending an extra $50-100 for some studio headphones and pick up a separate microphone if you are picky about your audio.

Overall I am happy with these headphones. The microphone quality is good and they are well made. The only negative is between the fit and the foam on the headphones they don't produce an around the ear feel. The fit is more in line with cheaper headphones, it makes everything sound like treble. If I press the headphones against my head I can hear the full range of audio.Overall this works fine for shooters when you're listening for mid to high noises, but if you are listening to music or watching movies regularly I would recommend looking for different headphones.

I bought this particular version of the Sennheiser headphones after researching them extensively online. Even though they are not the most current model marketed by Sennheiser, they seemed to be the ones best suited to my needs. A bonus related to their being an older model is that the price had dropped and it was a bit of "deal" to buy them at this stage. The downside, however, is that they came with ZERO documentation and there seems to be no online user manual available. I almost sent them back because they weren't recording properly and I was getting a great deal of feedback. After hours of combing through consumer help blogs, reading about problems similar to mine and a bewildering array of potential solutions, and doing a lot of "trial and error" on my own, I finally got them to a point where they are working adequately for my needs. I feel like this is a good headset, but wish the process of dealing with them had been a bit more user-friendly.

The sound quality is pretty good compared to my Astro A40's but the comfort isn't very good and neither is the build quality. It feels like a headset you'd get at school.

Godd product not suitable for hearing aids

I bought these to replace my original Sennheiser PC 350 set that I had bought 5 or 6 years ago (and always considered both the feel and the sound to be "high end") and I more or less expected these to be *very* similar to those since they both the same make and model aside from these being the "SE" version. This headset ended up being fairly different than the set they are replacing. The sound is definitely not at all the same, and comes off as weak and tiny. The lining on the ear pieces was super soft on the old set, but on the new set is much less soft and feels distinctly "cheap". The old set had volume/mute controls on the cord itself but this set has the mute built into the boom and the volume built into the ear cup itself, both of those I suppose I would consider to be improvements. The headset itself feels lighter (not really in a good way... feels cheap). Even the box these things come in is about as cheap a box as one could imagine. Corners were cut at pretty much every conceivable angle to produce this product. It's a cheap product that was made in Chine that literally feels like a cheap Chinese knock-off of the original high quality headset that this version is emulating. No idea why there are so many high ratings for this product, perhaps the reviewers never owned a decent headset before (they certainly couldn't have owned the much higher quality original PC 350's)... I would have much preferred it if the price was higher but the quality was more in line with the old version.

Not a bad item but in the end not for me. I didn't like the fit (specifically the way the oval earcups limited the angles it could be comfortably work at. It also felt very cheap for an expensive product, arriving in a tiny cardboard box and without a case and not having a detachable cord. I also disliked the padding being fixed (and feeling like it would be the first thing to go). I didn't feel like this could possibly have a long service life.I replaced this with a Beyerdynamic MMX 300 and am EXTREMELY happy with the upgrade. That being said, that headset costs more than twice as much, so I guess you get what you pay for.Giving this 4 stars because the things that are 'wrong' with it are really just lacking features. It's not a bad product; it's actually probably the second-best headset around.*Note: I work in a call center. I purchased this to connect to an Avaya phone to perform tech support for 8 hours a day, not gaming.

I have been rocking Sennheiser 350s for a long time. This is my 3rd pair. I have tried others but everything else at or below this price point which I have tried is a downgrade.That said I did not realize that the volume and mute on this iteration had been taken off the cord and put on the ears. Whoever thought this was a good idea should be reprimanded strongly and denied promotion in the company (A fate worse than death!). Otherwise they sound great, I sound great, but yeah putting up the boom until it clicks, stuffing a chocolate chip cookie in my face, and putting the boom down again has a significant impact on my DPS, APM, etc.. also the headphones shift on my head when I try to do it too quickly, or it needs two hands; one to hold the headphones on and one to raise the boom. Where the one on the cable would sit next to my keyboard, and was a flick of the thumb for that mechanical mute (never trust software mutes) and I can om nom cookies with maximal efficiency while maintaining gameplay integrity and comms.Not all change is improvement. Special edition is not as good as the straight up PC 350 in terms of user experience for games.