Sennheiser HD800 Appreciation Thread - Page 413  

It doesn't imply anything.  It says I used to manufacture and sell silver speakers wires and I don't now.
 

I read the pre-registration blurb and I've been reading stuff on here for a couple of years.  I saw that it's a commercial site rather than a purely community forum and very keen to look after and protect the interests of it's advertisers.

It would be very nice if it had a much better search engine though.

Anyway, I seem to have got what I came for, found out there's very few people doing direct wiring and I have to make up my own means of affixing wire directly to these headphones rather than be able to purchase some ready made fixings.

Ian - don't the changes to the housing alter the sound?  As compared to the sealed sennheiser plug on the cups, your photos show gaps where the cable enters.  Even though these are open headphones, changing ports would presumably impact things.

Secondly, given your know how with cables, is there any chance that you could (or have already) rig(ged) up a test rig to show measured differences in the cables you've made as compared to stock.  I've been asking this question on head-fi for years now.  Given the availability of freeware like diffmaker, I don't understand why no one has made a diy'd reverse sennheiser adaptor that can be jacked into the input on a sound card.  Running computer -> amp -> cable 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. -> diy adaptor -> computer should show differences in FR if these cables really do sound "brighter" or "warmer". 

New proud owner of HD800(SN:195xx) checking in :)

Just got it in mail today. It is unfortunate that my WA6SE is not here yet and It won't be here for another week or so... :(

As of now it's either connected directly to my IPad or AV40 headphone out...

It already sounds amazing without proper amp, I can't wait till my amp gets here, Hurry Jack Hurry :D

Also I don't know if it's because mine has a recent SN, it has lot more bass than the one I heard last time at B&H.

Here's crappy picture of my lonely HD800.

Sorry if I've gone on a bit too much :)

1)

I think they probably won't change the sound as the hinge chamber and wiring chamber are sealed and not part of the acoustic area.  Maybe there's some reverberation in them?  They used some silicon sealer to seal around the sides of the block where the solder tags are.  I can only presume that pokes through from the speaker area and has the voice coil wires in it.

Those photos are from a French website who offer the mod as a service to their customers.

I was planning to block the hole by having a tube made that fits into the hole and has the wires going through it's middle.

Or that may be too difficult.  Just now I fitted the inner metal part from a screw down joiner (chock block) into the chamber and passed the wires through it.  Looks promising.  Will rattle so needs some padding.  I have some foam strip to try fitting in there somehow.  I might try shaping that so it wraps around the wires and protrudes through the hole.

I don't want to make it overly permanent as I would like to try different wires.

2)

I think it's very difficult to measure the changes within complex music signal.  A lot of what we hear might be difficult to capture and display in a graph.

Whilst it's no doubt useful in some ways, a sine wave at a frequency or a sweep frequency doesn't show all that much really.

I think there's energy storage in the sheath that is released and causes a smear that was can hear.

Ben Duncan ( http://www.benduncanresearch.com/ ) did some measurements of 5 metre speaker leads and was able to show a variance in time delay between a sine wave signal being sent and received.  He showed different delays for different cables.

Distortion makes a sound brighter or warmer.  It might still have the same sine wave but varying amounts of smear.  The lower the distortion, it seems to me, the quieter the bass and treble.

Having more strands blurs the sound.  Thicker sheathing.  Polarity of the wires has odd effects with the tonal balance of the mid changing compared to the top and bottom.

With a friend who owns a professional recording and mastering studio, we've done loop back tests of cables.  It's a pretty good way to hear even the smallest of changes because he's able to record the signal, as you suggest.  It does show the wave forms, though we've never looked at that for differences, maybe some software could compare the samples but we use our ears.

What we do is have a recording on the hard disc then play that through the test cable and record it again back to the hard disc.  Use the same XLR connectors, solder, different wires, polarities, thickness's of wire, number of strands, etc.

To compare, he can align the samples and original recording so they're all playing back at once, then toggle between them by clicking a software switch.  No remembering the sound whilst changing leads, etc, is required, large or subtle nuances are all instantly laid bare before one's ears.

He found that it takes 400 hours playing before a new varnished silver lead doesn't change any further.  He recorded a sample every 50 hours then compared them all.

We've been doing it for a few years and he's tested various makes both low cost and very expensive.  The winner at the moment is the 0.71mm diameter unsheathed varnished stuff.  The 0.5mm, whilst similar, had less bass and although that brighter balance often grabs the attention and one thinks initially it's better, it becomes fatiguing to listen to and a slightly warmer balance is always best to go with he says from a recording and mastering perspective.  We thought neutral might be about 0.6mm diameter which is not available in small quantities.

I'd say it's not exactly the same as the original but with that particular test configuration it's the nearest, which is testing about 0.5 metre balanced.

I expect there is an error from the recording stage not sounding identical to the output stage, but it is a new state of the art DSD DAC ADC that cost £12,000 so it's not going to be too terrible.  Monitoring has been through several loudspeakers but now it's mainly 'active' ATC SCM150's.

But....

Then it come to other peoples playback equipment.....

And I find sometimes there's too little bass with this wire and I don't like the balance at all, although I and they very much like the clarity and amount of information and the lack or blur.

Another factor, more with interconnects, is a bit of equipments ability to drive a capacitive load.

This can lead to changes in the 'sound' of a cable from one equipment to another so it may measure well on some graph or sound neutral on something but not be neutral on another.
 

One consistent I've noticed is that multi-stranded cables have a more blurred sound than solid core. 

Another is that shorter cables sound more 'alive'.  By shorter, I mean 1 metre compared to 5 metres.  I got down to 9 inch speakers cables and the bass slam was the best together with general transient response.

Longer speakers cables can greatly over emphasise the bass at a cost of detail and speed of cone control, that is to say, long cables can cause over shoot, the amp can't pull the cone back in time with the music.  It's a distortion but can be enjoyable.

I recently repeated this speaker lead experiment with Some Anthony Gallo Strada speakers.  They are small, just 4 inch bass mid drivers which have no cross over components.  The tweeter does have a series capacitor and a coils.  No bass really with these and probably not much back EMF for the amplifier to deal with, but the shorter the leads the clearer and better the sound.

I have wondered how to get the headphone amplifiers (and DAC(s) ) onto the headphones :)  Maybe the effect is different with 600 Ohm, or so, loudspeaker drive units.  But then I could get digital leads up to the headphones too and get rid of analogue leads and all the problems they have.

I think the leads industry would not be at all happy about that though!

So after long deliberation on HD800 vs LCD-2...

I've ordered both.

And a new amp/DAC.

I hate this site :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by woodie 

So after long deliberation on HD800 vs LCD-2...

 

I've ordered both.

 

And a new amp/DAC.

 

I hate this site :)

What's the new Amp and DAC?

Please sell your LCD2 once you get them.. i know you will. LOL

     Any Radiohead fans blown away by the HD 800 pairing?? Honestly I don't think I've ever heard a more synergistic combo. Rest of chain is Eximus DP1 and ZDSE. I know it's cliche to claim "I know it's cliche to claim I hear things for the first time...", but DAAAAAMN. It's not so much the stupid-crazy detail extraction of this combo-as much as the ethereal presentation. The holographic imaging (which all of my components are known for), seems absolutely made for this music. After listening with many other headphones, and even speaker systems-I truly am hearing Street Spirit, Lucky, Idioteque, Right Place and more for the first time. In fact, other headphones and speakers I've heard don't begin to reach this combo-to the degree that they just sound wrong. Like everything I've heard all of these years simply does the band no justice-in fact I wasn't a huge fan until I got the HD 800. It's seriously like sitting in the absolute middle of the psychadelic/electronic orgy of offbeat technical wizadry that Yorke and co. were experiencing all along. And if my TH900s can't capture this combo's magic-I will be re-purchasing the Senn-if only for Radiohead. It's that good.

Sorry for the slight off topic-but anyone with a (up to snuff) HD 800 rig needs to hear these guys, for well-the first time.

-Daniel

They're no Pumpkins though, huh? ;)

-Daniel