BHSE/O2 *vs* B52/HD800 (bal)

i don't think anyone owns both or has listened to them side by side. and the stat v. dynamic preference will largely dictate choice as well.

If you're going to go $7,000 or so in, just get speakers. Good speakers outperform the O2 or HD-800. You can get nice Quads and a tube speaker amp for half that or less.

I was very close to getting the quad 2905's and after weeks of home auditioning I decided that the Kharma's, although almost twice the price were superior in all aspects to the ES.

Dynamics can be amazing but only a handful of them (in the same price range) can approach the sq of quads (2805 or 2905) or the high tier martin logan's. The only dynamics ive heard at the price of the 2905 that competes side to side are the Reference 3A Grand Veena, possibly if I had to choose between the two Id go for the 3A's.

But to get to these conclusions you have to audition them extensively in your room, ES speakers can be a pain to setup well....

good luck,

I've listened to a Senn Orpheus and a set of A$30,000 speakers driven through Halcro DM58 monoblocks.
The speakers have the better soundstage, but I'll take the Orpheus anytime.
Better sound - more detail.
The source was a Krell SACD Master.
I've also heard the 02 with the 007tube amp, and prefer the Orpheus.

007 tube amp is not the best amp for the O2. Orpheus should win easily.

So you are one of the few that prefer unnatural soundstage, good for you! or it might have been because the speaker placement was horrid, this is a very common mistake. You could have a 200,000 speaker but if its not placed well then they will never give you the sense of realism a good speaker system should give. Assuming they are well placed, Speakers win on their capacity to realistically portrait space (depth, atmosphere, soundstage, scale), good speakers simply win overall over HP's.

Hmmm, I don't know about that as a blanket statement. If one has the funds to put some serious sources in font of the O2 rig, cable it to the hilt, and put a top rack and power conditioning on the system, the performance can be off the charts good.

I have about $45K invested in my headphone only rig (that crazy number only includes one pair of O2 and a tweaked SRM-717 counted in the total) so I have a small fortune in the ancillary gear, cables, etc. It is just stunning and I often find myself listening to this rig over my speaker rig which is FAR more expensive and truly state of the art by all standards. The speaker rig and headphone rig each offer a very different but equally unique experience and I don't know that I would want to give up either. I do however want to upgrade my headphone system even more to include a cost no object amp (BHSE, SRM-T2, or WES) but haven't decided which one is the best way to go yet. Unfortunately you can't just buy them all and try them as each one of those is very hard to come by and takes many months procure.

If it isn't already obvious from my rambling above...I would vote for the O2 rig with the BHSE as the more you spend on the rest of the system the better it gets. The HD800 with a flagship amp is a remarkable thing but if you go nuts like I did with the rest of the system, the HD800 hits its limit in terms of making use of the megabuck sources while I have yet to find that with the O2. The O2 seems to be capable of resolving anything you can throw at it...so who was it that said money can't buy happiness? There is no question that it can buy STAX utopia!

I can't stand electrostatic speakers. They sound great with vocals and awful with everything else. Not for me or my music of choice.

See my post above...I have a perfectly placed pair of high-end speakers on an equally perfect system that would buy a house pretty much anywhere in the country and while I do think it is better than any headphone rig, I still listen interchangeably with both and certainly favor the headphone rig at times. I can also see how some would simply prefer headphones.

I will comment that I am not a headphone guy and have been in high-end audio for 20 years as a speaker guy having only discovered high-end headphones a mere 6 months ago so I am far from biased by any involvement with headphones. But at this point based on my experiences, I would be quick to defend anyone who embraces reference headphone listening from being diverted back to a speaker rig. Now before my experiences over the last 6 moths and and before I really stepped up and spent serious money on my headphone rig and merely dabbled with the likes of PS1000's, Ed 8's, HD800's, etc with good amps (they were just portable audio toys), I would have laughed at anyone that claimed headphone listening could offer anything worthwhile as an alternative or complement to high-end speaker based audio but not now. I suspect that my comments will piss a lot of people of but these are my experiences.

I am also curious just how good the O2's can get and plan a little field trip to haul my headphones over to my high-end rig and plug nearly $200K worth of cables and source equipment into them. I expect to be nothing less than completely blown away.

I like this thread already!

While I am no big fan of electrostatic speakers and run massive dynamics, I have heard/owned many including big Martin Logans and Sound Labs that perform flawlessly with all types of music including loud rock and blues.

Generalizations in audio are bad as there are always the exceptions!

Speakers win on soundstage because, with very few exceptions, material is recorded and mastered for speakers. Not because speakers are inherently better at soundstaging. Headphones are capable of soundstaging that will curl your hair in a way no speaker ever can. Unfortunately material mastered for headphones is almost non-existent. The first signal processors capable of emulating that are coming on to the market, but that is (so far) a crutch to overcome the neglect.

The O2/BHSE is the best headphone rig I've ever heard. That being said, I'd take a Quad speaker rig over it in a millisecond.