HD800 - Is sibilance an issue with your set-up? - Page 7

If you dislike the hd800, just sell it and focus on your Omegas- maybe get a better amp for it. Why bother things like wrong source, amp or subpar recording ? Just keep, enjoy and improve on things you like and sell off the things that you don't.

The HD650 with the right amp is neither veiled nor bloated.
Most of the complaints of people about (the veil of) the HD650 are related to insufficient amping IMO.

Well, perhaps it is, at least partially. But I am far more inclined personally to believe it's just normal disagreement on musical presentation, an honest difference in what we like to hear and how we evaluate what we are listening to. It's good that varying opinions are heard, I don't think the HD-800 presentation of treble is "wrong", but on the other hand I don't think the HD-650 or Grado's treble are "wrong" either. They all lie in a range of treble balances that could be called natural in that they occur in the concert hall depending on where you sit. It's good that people who prefer more distant perspectives are warned that HD-800 may not be their cup of tea.

No, it's a perverse trait of human beings. It applies to some of every headphone's admirers and detractors to either insist that a given headphone is either a)perfect or b)a total piece of crap. But read carefully and there are also folks who are just trying to get to the bottom of things in a more calm and objective fashion without all the ego and bluster. Personally, they are the ones I take seriously. BTW, this definately applies to Skylab who I think has done an excellent job expressing his honest point of view.

Awww... don't feel so downcast, don't take it so personal. Grado's are fine headphones too! I owned a pair of HP-1000 for many years and enjoyed them for their excellences. I kind of wish I hadn't sold them, but so it goes. I ordered a pair of HF-2's, so we shall see about newer Grado's. I am now enjoying the HD-800's for their excellences and am under no illusion that they are perfect or will appeal to everyone.

Actually, the complaints are made by people with more revealing headphones. If you take the foam off the sound becomes clearer, but that comes at the cost of introduced harshness.

Biggie.

Uncle Erik: I have a WA5LE with a two jacks: low and high impedance. Are you saying that one should use the low impedance jack with the HD800 instead of the high impedance jack?

Also, could this in any way harm the amp? I am guessing no but you never know.

Perhaps I am just completely confused by your posting.

The impedance stamped on the output of a tube amps transformer is NOT the output impedance, it is the recommended load for that tap. it is totally possible (and generally the case) to get a 1-ohm output impedance on an 8-ohm tap without feedback.

By number crunching, a 300b amp with a 150ohm secondary & 3200ohm primary should get you an output impedance of around 70 or 80 ohms. This is a little high for a realllly good damping factor on an HD-800, but certainly good enough for any other high-z can. the 800's are weird with their impedance VS frequency curves, and require better damping than other high z cans.

Anyways, the 800's benefit from a low output impedance by all accounts. the best thing to do is take a low impedance winding and bypass it with a dummy resistor.

On the woo-5, "underloading" the output (plugging 300 ohms into the low-impedance output) wont hurt anything, but it wont run optimally. the transformer uses the load to dampen its ringing so the highs may break up a tiny bit. It wont hurt the amp.

This morning I tried the HD800 with the Darkvoice 337 ( Tung-Sol mesh-plate 6SJ7GT + GEC 6AS7G) and the 336SE (Shuguang Treasure CV181 + Sylvania 6AS7G). In both cases the treble emphasis was very obvious, and more pronounced than with the SS Audio-GD C2C or the Graham Slee SRG+PSU. So I have satisfied myself that the rest of my reviewing of the HD800 will need to take place using the latter SS amps, which seem to fare better with it, IMO.

Just wonder if SET based could be the answer, any Yoshino EAR HP4 users up there?

Wow, I gotta dig that cd up now, and do some listening! That's just bizarre!

No John, you have not summed this up correcty. you just sound like someone who is related to Sennheiser. I remember you gave a similar answer to people who had comments about HD650- the senn are neutual and other phones are adding things to the music.

You said:"I wasn't praising them at all - I was just stating facts."

Now when some people felt that the HD800 emphasized the highs, you answer was that they are again neutral and other phones are not revealing enough-

You said:"the conclusion is that the HD800 does not have sibilance in itself, but does show it up if it's in the original recording."

I like to hear what HD800 owners have to say about these headphones, good or bad.I understand that you cannot say anything bad about Sennheiser so don't tell us that you are stating facts or summed up something correctly. Especially when you said that you hadn't received you 800 yet.

Nikongod: This is helpful, thanks.

None here with the current setup. With my old 840C + RSA HR-2 it was pretty painful at times. I do agree with the statement that the HD800 has more treble energy than the HD650's and DX1000's, both of which roll-off the upper treble.

However, ECD-1 + M^3 =



Tha Shiznit

I just got a little time with my HD-800 last night (and now I'm back at work ) but didn't find any immediate problems running it on the higher impedance setting on the Moth. I'll change the jumpers tonight or tomorrow to see if the low setting offers any advantage. I didn't get a chance to try it with the Zana yet. Hopefully tonight.

I guess I didn't make clear that I'm not sure yet what output impedance the HD-800 is happy with. What I was trying to say was that output impedance is the important point, not the type of circuit an amp uses.

It's a finer point, but I didn't want people to do something like pass over a perfectly good OTL with low output impedance in favor of a transformer couple amp with higher output impedance. In that case, the OTL with low impedance would be a better choice.

Nikongod is right about the effects, too.

As for the HD-800, I got a touch of sibilance here and there, but am reasonably sure it's on the recording. In a few quick listens, I found it there on the DT48 and Quads ESL-63s. I don't think the HD-800 overemphasizes it, though, and am very happy with them.

I'll take exceotion to the "muddiness," etc. of the HD-650. On a good amp, it all goes away. Some people like to whine about an amp that costs more than the headphones, but that's a non sequitur. There is no relationship between prices for the two. It just so happens that a good pair of headphones costs less to manufacture than a good amp. Once amped properly, the HD-650 shines. The difference is that the HD-800 gives you a load more detail than the HD-650. I wish I had the time to compare them, but just shipped my HD-650 off this morning. (Enjoy them, Dan!)

Lastly, it's possible to have a foot in both the Sennheiser and Grado camps. I love my Senns and I love my Grados. I love my Beyerdynamics and AKGs, too. Enjoying a pair of headphones is not exclusive - unless you hogtie yourself to a particular "sound," you can be polyamorous.

Correct.

To achieve this you need an extraordinarily high step-down ratio. From my experience a SET amp without feedback measures around 2.5-3 ohms output impedance on the 8 ohm tap.

For the HD800 I see some discrepancy in its measured impedance. Stereophile found its impedance varied between 220 - 310 ohms, whereas Headroom's published graph shows a min around 325 and max around 650 ohms.

Regarding the sibilance problem, I doubt that many recordings have it. It's more likely the HD800 are emphasizing some of the hot frequencies.

This is like the issue I had with the HEAudio Jade. I heard some hot high frequencies that only a few noticed. It's possible that the ones who didn't hear it were older?