My First Look at the Sennheiser HD800 - Page 3

This is such great news IMHO. I think most of us have been hoping for a real top drawer headphone in current production.
Sennheisser has been taking some pretty serious whacks at the state of the art lately (rather than relying on past achievements). They released a pretty high end line of microphones a little over a year ago and it's been getting raves all over the pro audio grapevines. The price for a pair of those is pretty close to $4k but I think that they have some even higher end offerings up their sleeves.
These kinds of products take a big commitment even from a big company and I think we're lucky that they're willing to stick their necks out this way. They're going to have to sell an awful lot of these to break even if the tales of all the R&D it took are even close to true. So if you're looking for a headphone that can really compete with an R10 or HE90, I think that $1400 is less than I might have thought a real world beater would cost.

Best headphones ever heard, while driven by a Benchmark DAC1's headphone out?

That's quite an amazing assessment.

Does this mean we can all get rid of our balanced amps, Beta 22's, Singlepowers, Ray Samuels, HeadAmp and HeadRoom amps, etc.?

I think he was using a hotrodded HR portable with DAC, and an iRiver H140 with wav files, and the comparison is "HD800 sounds better with this rig than any other headphones I've tried on it." kinda statement.

That would even be more insane if even on that little amp hes driving them with they sound better than an r10 on an apache or b52 or something of that sort... Thats nuts! But I'm ready to believe it and I want to believe it so much

WALLET: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!

I see, thanks, that makes sense.

I think my eyes glazed over and I went into shock after reading "Stax Omega poor bass and dynamics."

I wonder how much HD650 prices will drop once the HD800 starts shipping.

Great write-up! I love the way the HD800 looks.

that's cool!!!



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Ordered!

I can't belive on Judes thread how many people are complaining! Too ugly, cost too much,etc. They should be so happy that the very manufacturer that gave us the HE 90, (one of the top two headphones ever made, R 10 is the other in my opinion) which was many times the $1500.00 that the HD 800 cost. Plus they just may be the best sounding headphone yet.

Probably not much, if at all, is my guess.

Agree, with expectations that high, and people nitpicking on them already, chances are that they will get slaughtered for every little flaw people find about them. Nothing is perfect.

People are complaining because it's genuinely ugly.

It's not high-end clean, but, rather, prole "visual interest" glop. (They've also copied the by-now old-looking Sony SA5000.) I think that this may be at odds with their intended market. Or not.

But, geez, who cares, I'd wear a K701 if it sounded just a little bit better.

An exciting review there Tyll.

Your preference of headphone sound seems to be similar to mine since I really love the laid back sound of the HD 650. But after adding the Cardas cable I'm beginning to feel that though the there's better detail and finesse, the veil is somewhat increased.

I'm wondering what to do about this.

I could either switch from the HR MicroAmp (with Astrodyne PS Upgrade) and Firestone SpitFire DAC, to the HR Desktop UltraAmp ($1599), or go for a change of cans, i.e., these new HD 800's.

Which would you recommend? Changing both would be fabulous, but I'd do only one to cover the next 1-2 yrs.

You'd see more benefit to the cans, I'd guess. Transducer changes are always the most obvious . Then start saving for the super duper max that's gonna be out by the time you're done saving.

Great photos!

I really like the cups, not too fund of the headband though - it look kind a cheap. But I quess you'll have to see them live to really know.

It may be a little early for this question but wasthe configuration listened to yesterday was for a normal headphone jack? Or was it balanced? If it was not balanced are there any opinions on:

1. Whether there will be significant further SQ improvements (the ultimate set-up?)

2. Whether cabling for balanced will be an issue - I saw references to Mini XLR connectors but was not sure if these are widely used currently