Sony MDR-7506

The MDR-7506 is a pair of closed-back headphones in matt black plastic and steel. Two round earcups, each padded with a soft ring of black leatherette, hang from a headband that adjusts in steps on either side and folds the cups inwards for carrying. On the outer face of each cup the Sony name sits beside a small blue panel lettered "Professional". A single coiled cord leaves the left cup and ends in a gold-plated 3.5mm plug with a screw-on quarter-inch adaptor for mixing desks and other studio equipment.

Sony introduced it in 1991, as the professional version of the MDR-V6, the folding studio monitor it had launched in 1985. A trade magazine of May 1991, quoted by Wikipedia, announced a new line of headphones, the MDR-7506, 7504 and 7502, describing the 7506 as a folding, closed design with a 40mm driver, a frequency response of 10Hz to 20kHz, gold connectors and an oxygen-free copper cord. Every one of those details is still in the specification today.

It became a fixture of sound work. By 1993 the V6 family was called almost an industry standard for location recording for film and television, and in 1997 EQ magazine named the MDR-7506 as the professional version of the headphones most engineers used. Its sound is bright and forward in the treble, leaner in the bass than the V6, which suits listening for faults rather than for pleasure. CNET's editors, comparing the two in 2014, split over which they preferred.

The V6 was discontinued in 2020; the MDR-7506 was not. Its drivers have moved from samarium-cobalt to neodymium magnets, and RTINGS observes that the headphones have hardly changed in over thirty years. Sony's open-backed MDR-MV1 of 2023 borrows its outline but is a different instrument. The MDR-7506 is still sold, with its carrying pouch, for around eighty-five pounds.