Introduction

Sennheiser have been manufacturing audio products since 1946, only a year after they were formed as a company producing tube voltmeters. Since then they have built themselves a fantastic reputation in the consumer and professional audio market.

Regardless of the budget available or purpose for the earphones Sennheiser have a model available and in our experience even the reasonably priced models offer a fantastic sound when compared to their competitors. Today though, we are right up at the high end of their product catalogue with the IE8. This is the top model in their Professional Portable range and is surprisingly configurable so today we find out if these are useless gimmicks which detract from the sound quality or if the whole package combines to create some of the best headphones ever.