The Sennheiser HD 800: The First Listen, The First Review - Page 70

Commenting only about the listening environment:

I spent my entire Wednesday afternoon (and touching into early evening) at the Sennheiser exhibit before CES started. The relatively low activity around me--coupled with the closed-door environment of the "greenhouse"--resulted in a nice listening environment. I also came back on Friday for more listening under typical CES conditions. Though it obviously wasn't as nice or as extended as the Wednesday session, the additional sound isolation provided by the greenhouse helped keep the outside at bay to a degree enough to be workable--and enough to still easily recognize that the HD800 is truly something special.

As for equipment used, and a bit about me:

• Sennheiser's rig: Meitner CD/SACD player as transport, with its digital out to a Benchmark DAC1 (as DAC and headphone amp). While obviously not an ideal use of the Meitner, it was still a good rig. No, the Benchmark is certainly not my first choice as headphone amp, but it's still a good amp.
• My portable rigs: My iPod Classic 160 with lossless tracks, LODs by ALO Audio (SXC Cryo), Qables (Silvercab), Moon Audio (Blue Dragon), and Cable Pro (Reverie); the amps used included the iQube by Qables, the Double Mini3 by ALO Audio, and the Ray Samuels Audio Predator.
  • To use the portable rigs, I had to borrow a 1/4" to miniplug adapter from Sennheiser (the type that comes with the Sennheiser HD650), as I had forgotten mine.
  • I did not have an RCA-RCA-miniplug cable handy, otherwise I'd have tapped that Meitner to feed the portable amps directly.
• Headphones present for comparison included: Ultimate Ears UE-10 Pro and Sennheiser HD650.
• For what it's worth (or not worth, depending on your opinion of me), I have a lot of experience with a lot of different gear, both in the headphone and speaker worlds. I have been an audio enthusiast for more than half my life, and a music nut for even longer. I have served as a beta evaluator of many different pieces of audio gear by now (something I continue to do, uncompensated, for several companies), and, in addition to being fun, this has (over the years) exposed me to even more audio gear than I might otherwise have been directly exposed to.
  • As for Voltron, jp11801 and Edwood (not to mention drubrew and Tyll Hertsens): These guys are among the most experienced Head-Fi'ers, in terms of experience with high-end gear, and a great variety of it, at that. Again, that's for what it's worth (or not worth) to you or anyone else. I, for one, very much respect what these guys have to say about gear.

Yes, as with anything else, it will ultimately come down to your own opinions on your own gear. That said, given the current availability of the HD800, the impressions you've read are all that's available so far (as of today). So, JazzJackRabbit, while I appreciate and respect your skepticism, I can tell you that the people who've listened to it so far (myself included) haven't been a part of some Sennheiser-orchestrated hype machine. As I told some of my Sennheiser contacts prior to CES, the HD800 was either going to be huge news to this community in a very good way (if the headphone exceeded their previous efforts), or the biggest letdown ever (if the headphone was simply a different flavor of the HD600/650, or less). If you're feeling hype, it's simply the unbridled excitement for what initially sounds to those who've heard it to be the headphone the veteran members of this community have been waiting for for years.

Again, not everyone is going to agree. I'll say the following very confidently, though: I think most who hear the Sennheiser HD 800 will like it--a lot.

NOTE: I'm going to be updating my original post with more content. Sorry it has taken longer to do that than originally anticipated, but I had a lot of catching up to do (with non-Head-Fi things) upon my return home.