My first contact with a closed ear-phones was then the Sennheiser CX280, I had bought especially because it is advertised by Sennheiser himself explicitly with a richly detailed music playback. This model must serve therefore to compare.
The processing of the Philips SHE9000 is for the price in my opinion, really good. Both the cable and the metal capsules feel at Philips at much valent as the Sennheiser where cheap plastic dominates. The Philips SHE9000 provides a larger number of earplugs to adapt to the ears. It is therefore more comfortable to wear than the Sennheiser, which produces a much stronger foreign body sensation in the ear.
However, the most important criterion is the sound.
The Sennheiser held nothing of what was promised in the advertising. The sound was just mushy, vague and mushy. Not the slightest stage, and no exemption of individual instruments could be observed here. A cheaper earphones of an old Aiwa walkman from the late 80's played the Sennheiser CX 280 in terms of richness of detail with no problems against the wall. After today's point of view one would the Aiwa but certainly describe as weak bass. But a much more serious drawback for the Sennheiser is the high-borne sound sensitivity. Every, really every slightest movement or touch of the cable is transferred in the part as cracking or rumble on the speaker capsules. This makes the Sennheiser CX280 for me completely useless.
Here the Philips can score again. It is true that these headphones have the typical bass exaggeration today, and slight weakness in the central region, but supplies nonetheless a homogeneous detailed sound experience with a defined mapping of individual instruments and voices. A bass drum sounds like a bass drum, a snare drum as a snare, a Hi-Hat as a hi-hat. And all sounds absolutely musical. However, voices, especially male voices is missing a little bit the brilliance that bothers me a bit, because I quite like time use English audio books as "English listening training". Mostly I have therefore the EQ a little withdrawn in the bass so that the centers come a little more to bear, and that works pretty well. Against intrinsic noise of SHE 9000 is well insulated, unlike the CX280 and the isolation of noise and ambient noise is sufficient for my purposes so far also.
In effect, the Philips has largely fulfilled my expectations. I am happy with the product and would buy it again.
