Sennheiser HD800 Appreciation Thread - Page 8

whats wrong with them? do they still have some veil? soft attack? muffled characteristic with some annoying upper mids occasionally????

Well this is all POSITIVE to me. I am not crazy about "euphonic" colored presentation. Neutrality is the top quality I look for audio gears.

I think I'm gonna like HD800 a lot. Will see tomorrow.

The most obvious problem I have is the lightweight bass. I have always preferred phones that some thought have too much bass such as flat pad grados, HD650, Denon 7000, etc. They are not veiled but have a softer attack and less presence than the Denons. There is nothing annoying, they are very smooth but maybe too smooth. I think the arguments may be a new version of the old HD650 vs RS-1 that went on for so long.

That's very possible and I hope you do. My point is that I don't think they are absolutely the best ever as the advanced billing has indicated. They are just one very good phone among others.

Personally,i believe,that if the hd 800 didn't impress their owners from the first listen,it's not a bad thing.

Good headphones should have a balanced and refined sound so they can scale well if you upgrade your equipment(source,cables,amps..)

My opinion is that we should not look for the "wow" factor every time we listen a new headphone.We must be patient and see through the time what the headphone is capable for,when paired with the right equipment.

So for me,if the hd 800's don't have this wow factor is a good sign.I think i'll probably like them a lot.

Totally agree, I’ve had WOW equipment in the past. After a week you just wanna throw that piece of gear against the wall.

I find my flat studio monitors to be extremly impressive. and these are flat compared to 90% of the markets studio monitors:



Flat isnt an excuse for non-impressive,non-wowing music experience.
Yeah most mid and lowerend studio nearfield monitors arent impressive, but they arent flat either. They are just that, active mid-fi speakers. Measurements of almost every monitor in production are out there from reviews in studio magazines so have a look.


Back to the HD800 i highly doubt it's the pads, this would show in the measurements on the Sennheiser website. Lots of pre-production HD800s got measured already so we can easily do the comparison.

This is making very interesting reading.

But you probably didn't find them impressive at first listening.

It's as you realised how good they really are that you got impressed.

I actually have the baby brothers to yours (the O110D) for location monitoring.

One set of loudspeakers that impressed me sounded horrible on first listening - until I realised what they were telling me about the recording. I had plugged them up with the sound source being the TV - it was horrible - then I said: "that announcer is in a very small room, the acoustics are not good, he is wearing a tie mic. and I can hear chest resonance" - *then* I realised how good they were.

One thing I want to know is how easily they are powered. What amps are you guys using, how loud do you have to make them to drive the HD800 to a strong volume level, and do you feel they are easy or difficult to drive?

Thanks!

Why so few impressions?

I want frequency-response graphs!
.

What's the build quality like ?

Have a look at the new issue of "Professional Audio", they got measurements for the HD800 and lots of other headphones.

Just wanted to mention, my HD580 Jubilees came with a sheet that had the frequency response graph. I always thought it was kind of cool but no skin off of their teeth, they do the measurements anyway, not much more work to print them out or save them to disk.