The Sennheiser HD 800: The First Listen, The First Review - Page 100

Aren't the upper end Grado's .5dBs difference betweeen L and R? What's so great about 1.5? I know I must be missing something. Can anyone help me out with this?

SAA's marketing fluff is now right up there with Machina Dynamica in my book. I eagerly await their white paper on proprietary silk.

Yes, a slam on Sennheiser. And there is even more where it is coming from. This one is pretty good:

"The fidelity absorbing material used in internal and external structure of the stock cable considerable raise the signal resistance."

Fidelity absorbing material? Sennheiser actually used a special material which sucks up the good sound!?

How embarrasing SAA...

LOL - they forgot to mention the fidelity absorbing material here:

Off Sennheissers Website:

Quite the contrary from this paragraph at SAA:

"The Sennheiser HD 800 is not capable of delivering world class sound with the accompanying stock headphone cable. The fidelity absorbing material used in internal and external structure of the stock cable considerable raise the signal resistance. This along with the use of untreated connectors (the molecular structure of the connector material still in a formation that restricts the flow of the electrical signal) and signal restricting material on key areas of the cable all result in degrading the performance of this state of the art headphone. Thus, the rich engaging characteristic of music which every true audiophile demands in the listening experience is lost."

While I love the SAA Equinox on the hd600 and hd650...I think I'm going to stick with the stock cable on the HD800s...I'm very surprised and disappointed in SAA. To earn a reasonable profit for hard work is expected but, sorry, how much R & D or precious materials or timely labor went into these cables to justify the price. It is simply impossible to justify....my SAA Equinox cables just depreciated drastically and he just lost a customer.

"conductive surface consists of a new proprietary copper material"
"surrounded by a proprietary silk based material"

Come on guys, it's expensive to molecularly reinvent copper and silk. Not to mention dangerous. I hear if you don't expose those silk worms to just the right amount of Gamma rays, they'll mutate, turn nasty and will tear your head right off.

BTW, Stefan, the word is "purest" not "purist"

"The soft outer cotton/silk/ultra fine nylon proprietary material hybrids provide comfort and noise free listening."

I really hope they are better than the Equinox cable, which is microphonic as a MF.

Maybe I'll just send my cable out to be cryo-treated.

I think that the grados are matched closer than that, but that is the dB level between the two drivers for the phones. The debate about the +/- 1.5 dB is about the frequency response of the phones. According to Sennheiser, the phones output of any tone from 20- ~40000 hz is within 1.5 dB of a given center point. This would mean (I think) that the phones would have no peaks, spikes, or dips on the Freq. Response, being 1.5 dB max from completely flat across the entire range.

I met Stephan at a local NY meet in which he pushed my camera bag off a table while setting up. I mentioned it to him and I didn't even get a "sorry". I lost my respect for SAA after this.

Thank you for the info Nor_Spoon. If I were Sennheiser I too would take that as an insult.

While I totally understand where you're coming from, $1400 won't buy you a lot of source if you already have a Meitner/dCS/Esoteric stack

Ouch!

That is just not right. I will certainly not be buying any SAA products in future after hearing this.

i have 2 idiotic questions

1. what is the driver made of?

2. if it's got a hole in the middle doesn't say that it can produce less sound than regular drivers?

It's great to hear you guys knockin' on SAA. I thought I was alone with my disappointment