With the YH-5000SE, our sound engineer, mechanical engineer, and product designer at Yamaha worked together as planners, exchanging opinions that extended beyond their respective fields to create a completely new brand of headphones with an uncompromising level of fine quality... starting with how the headphones were made.
Honest
These headphones feature an open-type housing that makes prime use of Orthodynamic™ characteristics. The units that produce sound and the frames that hold them envelope the wearer’s ears, while the mesh and perforated areas create a non-airtight structure.
Harmony
The YH-5000SE headphones feature beautiful, organic curves, all smoothly connected together in an impressive design that ensures the components fit precisely on the listener’s ears and head at the optimum angle.
Intuitive
The balance we achieved in terms of lightweight and low-fatigue feel, comfortable fit and an astounding audio immersion for the YH-5000SE was made possible by countless calculations and adjustments of the headband curvature and side pressure.
Takenori Ohmachi
Designer
Yamaha Design Laboratory
Toshihide Suzuki
Designer
Yamaha Design Laboratory
A design that tells a story, with the stature that speaks of legends.
Our project to create a pair of headphones that feature only the finest sound quality joined forces with our project to revive Orthodynamic™, Yamaha’s proprietary technology, resulting in the YH-5000SE, a product developed with an intense focus on sonic immersion and a comfortable fit.
The YH-5000SE could be said to represent Yamaha’s pursuit of manufacturing the ideal product. Rather than having our product development division pass their work on to the designers once the parts and product layout were established, the sound engineer, mechanical engineer and product designer collaborated as a team in planning from the early stages of development, with the goal of creating the product that they really wanted. This project was special in that it began as a “bottom-up” endeavor with the younger staff as the core members of the project team. The team shared their thoughts on what the ideal pair of headphones would be like, and eventually concluded that a product designed for the enjoyment of music should also express this sense of fun in how it looks. This led to the concepts of vitality and dynamism, which inspired the team to create a dynamic product shape with a flowing sense of curvature—a streamlined design that focuses on functionality. The resulting design of the YH-5000SE thus piques the user’s curiosity as to why we chose this kind of shape.
How well a pair of headphones fits depends on the side pressure and the curvature of the headband. When each component is positioned optimally, the weight of the headphones is dispersed when they come into contact with the user’s head, and the product feels even lighter than when it is held in the hand. At a time when it is not uncommon for a pair of high-end headphones to weigh 400 or 500 grams, the YH-5000SE only weighs 320 grams. As a result of our efforts to find the “golden ratio” of weight vs. size, we were able to further enhance the wearability and lightweight feel of this product. Even the designers were surprised to see how much this overall balance influenced their experience of wearing the product.
Above all, we focused on all the different components. The product’s specs were solidified through multiple discussions between our staff members across different disciplines who are professionals in their own domain, about the kind of materials that should be used and what the product shape should look like down to the finest detail. The designers’ role in this product was, metaphorically speaking, much like the conductor of an orchestra that brings an assembly of unique parts together. We designed the components to connect to one another in a smooth and beautiful way, all coming to life as a unified product.
The YH-5000SE was developed with the strong intention of establishing a unique foothold in waters previously uncharted by Yamaha—neither a casual audio product like those we have made before nor a hi-fi audio product. We hope that this product serves as a catalyst that further fosters the culture of high-quality portable audio (“Head-Fi”) in earphones/headphones and their amplifiers.
