Member Reviews: Sennheiser HD 800 Headphones

I have listened to the HD800 twice, and I never really warmed up to it. Its clarity and resolution sounds artificial to me instead of natural, and it has no authority in the sub-bass region. I'm one of those people who simply cannot consider a pair of headphones to be "amazing" or "the best of" if it's lacking neutrality in a chunk of the frequency range. A amazing pair of headphones should sound like a full-range speaker system that reaches down to 30Hz and remains substantial and authoritative--anything less than that is not "amazing" to me. It's sort of like if a girl is really hot with an awesome body, but her ass is flat, barely able to fill any pair of jeans--would that still be...

An expensive, technically proficient headphone that has no soul.  Does mate well with the Luxman P-1 or P1-u, but at that point, why not go electrostatic, which is what these are trying to be in the first place.  Kudos to Senn for innovation, but these are just too steely for my tastes.

  I purchased this headphone for full retail price a couple of years ago, and in the beginning, I felt very positive about it. But things change, and as I got to try many other high end offering by other manufacturers, as I got to try this headphone with different amps, sources, cables and so forth, I have come to the conclusion that this headphone is perhaps the most overhyped piece of audio gear in the head-fi industry. The truth hurts, but you learn from your mistakes.    As controversial as it may be, I felt the need to change my positive review and write what I feel about the HD 800s.   To start with the positive, build quality and ergonomics here...

I totally agree with the review of Skylab; what a great and honest review! The reason I'm not really happy with the HD 800 is because I bought it as a reference headphone. After listening to the recording of my choir (professionally recorded) I noticed that all of the consonants 'S' sung by the female voices didn't sound natural at all; they sound like they were 'lispering'. I really thought there was something wrong with my headphone; but after googling for a solution for this, I found this review by Skylab that explained the problem. I listened to another choir recording (the third part from the Gloria from John Rutter sung by the Cambridge singers) with this lyrics:  ...