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Sendy Audio Egret headphones are serious planars that happen to look the part
£799 / $799 / €879, sendyaudio.com
If you already own a pair of trusted monitors and a closed-back tracking headphone, the ‘third pair’ open-backs are the interesting ones.
It’s the headphone you reach for at hour seven of a mixing session, when the monitors have stopped telling you anything new and the room has crept into your decisions. For some, that role has gone to a Sennheiser or Hifiman for the better part of two decades. Sendy Audio’s Egret, at £799, is gunning for the same shelf.
Chinese firm Sivga’s ambitious sub-brand has been edging into this conversation for a while via the Aiva and the Peacock. Egret, named after a type of heron, is the technical leap.
Look past the solid natural wood cups finished in fingerprint-friendly satin, and the grille pattern inspired by an egret in flight, and focus on the newly developed 98 x 84 mm planar magnetic driver — Sendy’s largest yet — paired with a nano-scale composite diaphragm that’s just under 800nm thick.
The diaphragm is finished using Sendy’s in-house Electron Beam Evaporation Deposition (EBED) process, which vapour-deposits ultra-fine aluminium directly onto the membrane at the atomic level rather than bonding a separate conductive layer on top.
In studio terms, that translates to cleaner transients and lower distortion. It’s also a line of conversation reserved for serious music friends only, especially if you’ve already lost most of the room discussing waterbirds.
A real-world reference-class driver
Sendy’s headline driver doesn’t come with the caveats that planar headphones usually attract.
The Egret is quoted at 38 Ohms and 103dB ± 3dB sensitivity, with an 8Hz to 40kHz frequency response. In practice, it reaches comfortable levels from a USB dongle DAC, sings on a balanced output from a respectable DAC, and doesn’t demand a desktop chain to come alive.
For producers running an audio interface with a modest headphone amp, that source friendliness could be the difference between a working studio tool and a £799 bridge to a much bigger outlay. Plug in through the supplied 1.8-metre balanced cable, and the Egret’s technical signature soon emerges. Sound staging is wide enough to throw elements clean of the headphone shell rather than crowding the centre.
Front-to-back depth holds up too, which makes the Egret particularly useful for assessing reverb and the positioning of layered samples and backing vocals. Without wishing to single out a genre, it makes the ‘golden era’ hip-hop really fun. Honestly, where did those little pop noises on 2Pac’s California Love come from, because I swear they weren’t there before?
Built like studio furniture
As already alluded to, the Egret looks the part on a studio shelf. Natural wood, CNC-machined aluminium, gunmetal anodised finish, suspension-style leather headband — all the good stuff. At a quoted 420 grams, it isn’t the lightest planar pair around, but the load is well distributed, and the angled hybrid earpads sit deep enough that larger ears stay clear of the internals. Multi-hour sessions come and go without fatigue.
The supplied cable is the kind engineers usually buy after-market: a triple-composite design combining oxygen-free copper, silver-plated copper, and enamelled gold-plated copper. Everything sits in graphene-reinforced PVC and is tied off at a wooden splitter. A 3.5 mm single-ended adapter, a 6.35 mm adaptor, a linen cable pouch, and a tan eco-leather hard case round out the unboxing.
What you’ll hear in the mix
Sonically, the Egret reads as a more open, less polite pair of Sennheisers with the technical headroom of Hifiman, and a cabinetmaker’s sense of timbre. The midrange brings vocals forward without being shouty, and flatters detail. Mix decisions — the right amount of presence on a lead vocal, the seat of a snare — translate cleanly back to monitors.
Low frequencies prioritise definition over brute force as the planar driver’s inherent speed keeps everything in check and tightly defined. Treble is refined and non-fatiguing. That makes the Egret usable across long sessions, while still highlighting anything biting too hard. It’s polite, but honest feedback that feels about right for the price.
Should I buy Sendy Audio Egret?
If you’re shopping for a reference-grade open-back you can drive from real-world studio gear and trust across long sessions, the Sendy Audio Egret is one of the most rounded options on the market right now.
Build quality and technical headroom are impressive, while the triple-composite cable, hard case and adapters are usually paid-for extras.
The deal breaker here is that the Egret won’t suit you if you need big bass for contemporary hip-hop or electronic music production, or if your workspace is shared and an open-back is a non-starter. For most other producers and engineers in the £800 bracket, this is a serious headphone that happens to be beautiful.
Key features
- Open-back design with handcrafted natural-wood earcups
- Newly developed 98 x 84 mm planar magnetic drivers — Sendy’s largest yet
- Nano-scale composite diaphragm under 800nm thick, finished via Sendy’s Electron Beam
- Frequency response of 8 Hz to 40 kHz
- 38 Ohms impedance
- 1.8m detachable triple-composite balanced cable
- 4.4mm balanced termination with 3.5mm single-ended adapter
- Soft hybrid leather and fabric earpads, contoured leather suspension headband
- Tan eco-leather hard case, linen cable pouch and documentation included
- Weight: 420 grams
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