[Shahrose]

Quote:

i currently use my hd650 which is powered by a fiio e9(high gain) through the speaker output of essence st... i wanted to ask that if i upgraded to the hd800 then would i notice a clear cut difference... ofcourse i will shift to higher end amp/dac combo later down the road when i can save enough money.... or would it be too bad with my setup and i should upgrade the dac/amp combo first before going to higher end headphones as i, sometimes, get the impression, from posts on the forums, that my audio setup is sub-par for even the hd650s(or is it?)... as i live in pakistan, it is exceedingly hard to import stuff and, amazingly, high end sennheisers like hd800/hd700 are available here but no matching quality amps or dacs(any amps or dacs for that matter)... had to import everything other than the hd650s which are available here...

 
Yes.
 
Quote:

I compared copper and silver cables of comparable construction from DHC, and the silver was much more transparent IMO. It needed >400 hrs to lose that sheen, but after that it became balanced, very natural in tone and timbre on several headphones (I use DHC mini-XLR adaptors so that I can swap cables easily.).
 
For me, the greatest difference came from finding the right amp / tube setup. I had always felt my HD800 was either too bright or too dark, and somehow artificial - reproduced music, not live music. When I put the Sophia Princess 2A3s in my DNA Stratus, my HD800 became an amazing headphone -- I had never heard it perform so beautifully! A gorgeous, wide and deep, seamless soundworld at a comfortable perspective, perfectly natural tonality, and so liquid smooth and detailed, I felt it had suddenly surpassed the HE-6 and SR-009, both of which have been here a significant length of time. And now I use my HD800 almost all of the time.
 
So, count me as another HD800-fanboy!

 
^ Spot on. 80% of the time I have silver on mine. Though there are times when a copper cable comes in handy.
 
Quote:

I have question to HD800 owners, could you hear a differences between good quality mp3 320kps & other lossless format? If yes, how big is the differences?
 
Thank you.

 
Depends on the recording quality (I don't mean bitrate). I've heard crappy recordings sound indistinguishable in FLAC vs MP3, but good quality ones easily discernable in various bitrates. It goes without saying that ancillary equipment and sensory acuity + training play a big role.
 
Quote:

 
This is interesting. I'm in the market to upgrade the stock cables for the HD800 and am contemplating getting silver or copper cables. As I would like the most resolving, detailed and transparent cable for the HD800, silver seems to be the obvious choice. However, I'm afraid that a silver cable would enhance the sibilance of the HD800, making it sound overly bright.Would this be the case or are my fears unfounded? Welcome anyone to chime in based on your experience and what would be the ideal cable upgrade for the HD800?

 
Depends on the rest of your chain. If the signal's sibilant, it will sound sibilant. With copper, you'll get a more forgiving sound that masks flaws, but the headphones will still remain HD800s (ie. fairly revealing).
Silver = worse than copper with subpar gear and better than copper on good gear.

 

[verber]

Quote:

i currently use my hd650 which is powered by a fiio e9(high gain) through the speaker output of essence st... i wanted to ask that if i upgraded to the hd800 then would i notice a clear cut difference... ofcourse i will shift to higher end amp/dac combo later down the road when i can save enough money.... or would it be too bad with my setup and i should upgrade the dac/amp combo first before going to higher end headphones as i, sometimes, get the impression, from posts on the forums, that my audio setup is sub-par for even the hd650s(or is it?)... as i live in pakistan, it is exceedingly hard to import stuff and, amazingly, high end sennheisers like hd800/hd700 are available here but no matching quality amps or dacs(any amps or dacs for that matter)... had to import everything other than the hd650s which are available here...

 
The HD800 sounds completely different from the HD650, so yes you will hear a difference.  How would the HD800 be with the e9?  I can't tell you since I don't have one. As others have stated, the HD800 is brutally revealing and has a hot treble. It seems they magnify . throw a spotlight on anything that is off. With the beautifully masters tracks I have been able to really enjoy the HD800 fed directly by a Dragonfly DAC/amp or through the Fostex HP-1P. The majority of my tracks are enjoyable through the Dragonfly or the HP-1P (I would rather be using the HD800 than any other dynamic headphone), but don't really shine until the HD800 is fed in a better stack (right now this would be the Dragonfly into a Headamp Gilmore Lite or a Lavry DA11).  There are some tracks which are still painful to listen to. I am hoping that a Headamp GS-X through balanced cables will smooth this out... I hopefully will know if this is the case in a month or two.
 
--Mark

 

[Shahrose]

Quote:

 
The HD800 sounds completely different from the HD650, so yes you will hear a difference.  How would the HD800 be with the e9?  I can't tell you since I don't have one. As others have stated, the HD800 is brutally revealing and has a hot treble. It seems they magnify . throw a spotlight on anything that is off. With the beautifully masters tracks I have been able to really enjoy the HD800 fed directly by a Dragonfly DAC/amp or through the Fostex HP-1P. The majority of my tracks are enjoyable through the Dragonfly or the HP-1P (I would rather be using the HD800 than any other dynamic headphone), but don't really shine until the HD800 is fed in a better stack (right now this would be the Dragonfly into a Headamp Gilmore Lite or a Lavry DA11).  There are some tracks which are still painful to listen to. I am hoping that a Headamp GS-X through balanced cables will smooth this out... I hopefully will know if this is the case in a month or two.
 
--Mark

 
You know the GS-X is even more revealing than the Glite right?

 

[IEMCrazy]

Quote:

 
We didn't.  It was informal (i.e. we possibly screwed it up?)  =]
 
A friend &  I decided to test on a whim.  A track was selected, we used Max to down convert, cut 20 second samples and took a bunch of tries each at guessing which was which...my overall was something like 75% accuracy.  
 
The Zodiac > KGSSHV > SR009 we had helped.  I'm 100% sure I wouldn't have been able to tell on an 800.

  Don't be so sure....unless Max has some form of dithering and noise shaping by default when it downsamples you could probably hear the difference between the formats on HD429s

   Otherwise shortening the world length from 24 bit to 16 bit would have simply truncated and left some pretty nasty quantization artifacts from the downsampling  and would have been a moderately invalid test

 
Don't worry, that's the same mistake 70% of the studios make which is why the 24/96 version of almost any recording tends to sound better

 
It's still irksome that 24/96 is sold as "it's higher res and therefore better" instead of the more usual culprit: "It's higher res and therefore didn't give us a chance to ruin it."

 

[sphinxvc]

Quote:

  Don't be so sure....unless Max has some form of dithering and noise shaping by default when it downsamples you could probably hear the difference between the formats on HD429s

   Otherwise shortening the world length from 24 bit to 16 bit would have simply truncated and left some pretty nasty quantization artifacts from the downsampling  and would have been a moderately invalid test

 
Don't worry, that's the same mistake 70% of the studios make which is why the 24/96 version of almost any recording tends to sound better

 
It's still irksome that 24/96 is sold as "it's higher res and therefore better" instead of the more usual culprit: "It's higher res and therefore didn't give us a chance to ruin it."

 
Lol, I'll have to ask my friend to make sure.  Did a quick search on Max but didn't see anything compelling to indicate it compensates with dithering / noise shaping.  =/

 

[Maxvla]

I am thinking about getting a balanced amp, however I'm not sure if I should just re-terminate the stock cable or try and buy a "cheap" balanced cable. While I have not had the opportunity to audition any cables, I have read they only make subtle changes so I view them as pretty much the last part of a setup to buy. I have not reached that point so do not really want to spend hundreds of dollars on a cable, yet I do not want a downgrade from stock either and would also prefer not to butcher the stock cable. Looking around head-fi I did not see any cables under 350 USD so I'm not sure if you can get a decent cable (equal to or superior than stock) for less than 200 USD (lower is better ). Any advice/suggestions are welcome, and if you feel a certain cable is worth the price (or difference from another another cable) please say so.

Thanks,

redmaw

Send a pm to Chris_himself. His group does quality work for low prices. My 4pin XLR minimalist cable even with special order XLR plugs was about $90. I had two other cables made including a pair of XLR interconnects and all three cables were something like $230.

 

[paradoxper]

 Brian @ BTG Audio is also another good option.

 

[BournePerfect]

I didn't think to highly of the Dynalo/HD800 combo I owned my self. Never thought I'd say it-but tubes seem to be the way to go with the Senn. I do think that the C-2.2 I used to own would have paired pretty well though with it's extremely smooth, but very detailed character.
 
-Daniel

 

[Windsor]

Listening to the stock-cabled HD 800 for the first time after being at a conference for a few days and it's revealing some lossless Donald Fagen recordings fed through my Lavry DA10 with commendable, spot-on aplomb. What a win for Sennheiser! 

 

[Y2HBK]

Quote:

I am thinking about getting a balanced amp, however I'm not sure if I should just re-terminate the stock cable or try and buy a "cheap" balanced cable. While I have not had the opportunity to audition any cables, I have read they only make subtle changes so I view them as pretty much the last part of a setup to buy. I have not reached that point so do not really want to spend hundreds of dollars on a cable, yet I do not want a downgrade from stock either and would also prefer not to butcher the stock cable. Looking around head-fi I did not see any cables under 350 USD so I'm not sure if you can get a decent cable (equal to or superior than stock) for less than 200 USD (lower is better ). Any advice/suggestions are welcome, and if you feel a certain cable is worth the price (or difference from another another cable) please say so.
 
Thanks,
 
redmaw

Contact Brian at BTG Audio. His prices are very reasonable.

 

[redmaw]

Quote:

I compared copper and silver cables of comparable construction from DHC, and the silver was much more transparent IMO. It needed >400 hrs to lose that sheen, but after that it became balanced, very natural in tone and timbre on several headphones (I use DHC mini-XLR adaptors so that I can swap cables easily.).
 
For me, the greatest difference came from finding the right amp / tube setup. I had always felt my HD800 was either too bright or too dark, and somehow artificial - reproduced music, not live music. When I put the Sophia Princess 2A3s in my DNA Stratus, my HD800 became an amazing headphone -- I had never heard it perform so beautifully! A gorgeous, wide and deep, seamless soundworld at a comfortable perspective, perfectly natural tonality, and so liquid smooth and detailed, I felt it had suddenly surpassed the HE-6 and SR-009, both of which have been here a significant length of time. And now I use my HD800 almost all of the time.
 
So, count me as another HD800-fanboy!

I have heard the same thing about silver vs. copper and will probably try a silver cable some day, just not yet because as you said at this point I'll see much more change/improvement with a new amp.
 
 
Quote:

 
I got my HD800 stock cable re-terminated with a 4-pin XLR back in 2009 when it came out.  I had the 12" section with the plug converted into an adapter by adding a 4-pin XLR jack to the cut-end.  It was nice for a few months, but a new single ended upgraded cable was better.  I didn't want to cut the single ended Locus-Design Hyperion cable, so I bought a new balanced cable.
 
I am currently using a Moon Audio Black Dragon and I'm very pleased.  I bet you can get one made with balanced connector for under $350 if you don't need a very long one.

The Black Dragon is one of the cables I am considering because of the cost and how most say it mellows/warms/takes the edge off (what ever you want to call it) the HD 800s.
Quote:

Send a pm to Chris_himself. His group does quality work for low prices. My 4pin XLR minimalist cable even with special order XLR plugs was about $90. I had two other cables made including a pair of XLR interconnects and all three cables were something like $230.

 
Quote:

Contact Brian at BTG Audio. His prices are very reasonable.

I will definitely contact Chris and Brian and see what they have to offer. Affordable cables that sound decent/good almost sounds too good to be true (no pun intended).
 
Thanks for all the advice/suggestions, seems I have some more digging to do
 
Thanks,
 
redmaw

 

[dleblanc343]

Quote:

 
That's a much better test then!

   Did you apply appropriate dithering and noise shaping in your downsampling process? And what tools were used?
 
 
You would of course notice a "difference" since the HD800 and HD650 are not voiced very similarly at all.  More stark than any quality difference is simply the signature difference. 
 
However, HD800 is famous for being remarkably picky and revealing of the rest of the chain.  E9 is "more than minimally adequate" for HD650, however the HD650 can do much better than that, so if you're going to be upgrading to something like HD800, it may pay to get more out of your HD650 first.  Beyond that, HD800 has something of a notoriety for harshness on gear it doesn't like, and some people who have upgraded to HD800 find they actually found it less enjoyable than HD650 and switched back.  I love the HD650, it's still among my all-time favorites, and what it does it does very well, though from a technical standpoint, if EQ'd to taste (a.k.a. get rid of the horrid treble shelf) it is definitely more capable.  But the result of HD650's tendency to make even harsh sources/recordings sound pleasant is a strength if you're not pairing it with the best of gear.  HD650 can do better than E9, but it can certainly sound good on E9.  While I no longer have E9 to test, I highly suspect HD800 may not sound quite as pleasant on it.   It sounds like you're using a PC as a source though, and with appropriate EQ, it's still possible you may like it more...  That's a tough call since while E9 isn't really up to HD800 caliber, it's not an entirely terrible amp, either...  If you get a chance to audition the HD800 with your E9 somewhere, that may be more helpful in deciding what route to go!

Back when I owned the HD650, I had compared it extensively with the HD800 off the E9. The HD800 is a much more resolving headphone and sounds much larger; it's definitely a step over the HD650.
 
Another thing, I don't know if it's because the E9 is dark, or it just can't resolve that much detail; but the HD800's actually matched that amp better than the HD650 to my ears. They're both equally as hard to drive with this amp, but you can still get decent sound. If you like what you hear right now with the 650's, I think you'll be greatly impressed with the HD800's.
 
But I do recommend you upgrade amp/dac sooner than later.

 

[h4mm3r 0f th0r]

Quote:

Back when I owned the HD650, I had compared it extensively with the HD800 off the E9. The HD800 is a much more resolving headphone and sounds much larger; it's definitely a step over the HD650.
 
Another thing, I don't know if it's because the E9 is dark, or it just can't resolve that much detail; but the HD800's actually matched that amp better than the HD650 to my ears. They're both equally as hard to drive with this amp, but you can still get decent sound. If you like what you hear right now with the 650's, I think you'll be greatly impressed with the HD800's.
 
But I do recommend you upgrade amp/dac sooner than later.

 
well according to experience i have seen that an amp creates more of a difference than the dac... so i am gonna do the amp first.... i am set to upgrade to hi-fi like hd800 or the audeze lcd2(maybe he-6).... i am thinking of getting the schiit lyr+bifrost which i think would give me great power+performance for most things.... after those upgrades i will check the sound difference with the he400 and the hd650.... maybe i would be satisfied right there... if not then i would be upgrading to hd800 and lcd2(plan to buy both) but it looks like it would take me a whole year to get that far... but only 3 months for the amp-dac upgrade(i hate to wait)... is the lyr+bifrost a mid grade upgrade or a high grade upgrade?? i won't ask if would get the best out of the hd800 and lcd2 but would it be good enough?? or mjolnir would be more suited as my avatar suggests?? i am sure no one in my whole country would be spending so much on headphone gear

 

[avrosse]

I'm thinking about purchasing the HD 800s and pairing them with a Violectric V200 amp. Many of my recordings are older ones, mainly operas from the 50s, 60s and 70s by artists like Callas, Bjorling, Pavarotti, etc. Do you think this combo can bring out the beauty of these recordings without always reminding me that I'm listening to an inferior recording? Source would be a Densen B-410 cd player.

Best,
Joel

 

 

[TwoEars]

Quote:

I'm thinking about purchasing the HD 800s and pairing them with a Violectric V200 amp. Many of my recordings are older ones, mainly operas from the 50s, 60s and 70s by artists like Callas, Bjorling, Pavarotti, etc. Do you think this combo can bring out the beauty of these recordings without always reminding me that I'm listening to an inferior recording? Source would be a Densen B-410 cd player.

Best,
Joel

 

Maybe not the best idea in the world.
 
I would look for a more forgiving headphone - the HD600 is pretty damn good for that kind of music and it's a lot more forgiving than the HD800. Not to mention about 1/3 the price.
 
A HD600 and a midrange tube amp would give you bucket loads of "beauty" for about the same price as a HD800.