Budget headphones sound hollow and break constantly. These reveal music you've never heard before.
Why Not Just Buy the Cheap One?
The HD 660S2 uses open-back design with Sennheiser's hand-tuned drivers to reveal midrange detail that budget headphones compress into mush—cheap closed-back cups artificially boost bass and treble to mask hollow mids. The neodymium magnets and 300-ohm impedance create accurate frequency response across 10 Hz to 40 kHz; budget phones plateau at 100 Hz.
The Buy-Once Math
Budget studio headphones fail after 1,200 hours of use ($150 every 2 years = $450 over six years). The 660S2 costs $500 and still sounds identical after 10,000 hours. You're not re-buying headphones, you're not missing production issues hidden by cheap frequency response, and you're actually hearing what artists intended.