In 1991, Sennheiser released the Orpheus HE90 headphones.
They cost around £10,000, came with a table-filling amplifier and were heralded by sound geeks far and wide as the best headphones ever made.
Skip forward 24 years and the HE90 has a successor.
Simply titled Orpheous, this monster set up includes electrostatic headphones kitted out with ceramic electrodes and transducers. They can produce bass lows and treble highs beyond the spectrum of human hearing. Why? We've no idea but it sure sounds cool.
These plug in to a series of decoupled tube amplifiers, rooted in a a solid block of Carrara marble - a material that apparently "lends beauty but also prevents structure-borne noise". So you'll not be using them on the bus then.
Set to be hand-made in Germany next year, you'll have to wait to get your ears on a pair - only 250 will be made per year.
But will they be worth €50,000, which is £35,420 in our money.
More to the point - what music recording is possibly worth spending more than the average annual salary on?
We'll wait for someone rich to tell us when they get a pair.
