Select a region
The Lotto jackpot may have rolled over but if you’ve got £35,000 to spare anyway CES 2016 has shown you what you can get for your cash.
A pair of headphones.
Yes, forget the Porsche Cayenne, a BMW X5 or an Audi Q7 (all of which are available for the same price according to a quick search for used cars online), you can have the Sennheiser Orpheus.
Due to go on sale later this year, the Sennheiser Orpheus will cost you in the region of $55,000 – that’s about £37,700.
The reason is not down to one thing but several. First of all, Orpheus is something of a hallowed name in headphones – this is only the second incarnation of them, and the first were revered when launched in the early 1990s.
In order to justify using the name again, Sennheiser has gone big – the amplifier that comes as part of this headphone system is encased in a block of solid marble.
Each of the amplifier tubes is a glass vacuum designed to minimise distortion, and each contains a bulb that glows when the system is turned on.
The dials too have been meticulously pieced together – each made from brass and then finished in chrome.
They also sound pretty good, with crisp, clear audio where drum beats are razor sharp. Interestingly there is some noise leakage, and they don’t entirely cancel out background noise either. Perhaps the price tag makes us hyper-critical, but when you could buy a car for the same amount it’s probably only fair.
