HD800 balanced cable recommendation - Page 4

My decision

I started this thread on jan 31 and have not let folks what decision I finally made on a balanced HD800 replacement cable. At the time I was trying to decide between the Lawton Audio and Double Helix cables. I was attracted to the Lawton Audio cabling because it uses Jenia Labs cabling, which has a great reputation as a great sounding cable. I was attracted to the Double Helix cable because of the design. It was the only cable that I could find that was a true balanced design-that is one cable for each of the two headphone cups to the balanced inputs of the amplifier-this design just makes a lot of sense to me. If I am going to be spending a lot of dollars on a replacement cable I wanted to get a true balanced design, therefore I purchased the Complement cable from Double Helix.

My headphone amplifier is a Donald North Sonett. Since you can only listen to the Sonett in balanced mode I was not able to compare the stock HD800 cable with the Complement. My impressions therefore are of the entire system of HD800, the Complement cable, and DNA Sonett.

I must say that this system has met my expectations. Prior to setting this system up my concerns about the HD800 was the treble which some reviewers thought has some peakiness in the 6-8 hz range. I have not heard any of this in my system-I chose the copper over the silver Complement cable and I am glad I did-I assume I lose some details with copper as opposed to the silver, but the sound is so smooth. The entire sonic spectrum just sounds so right with this system. It is also dead quiet.
I still listen some to my single ended amplifier/speaker system, but I prefer on most days to listen to my music through my headphone system. I can certainly recommend the Complement replacement cable as well as the DNA Sonett headphone amplifier-both are good values and give much performance and pleasure for your dollar.