HD-800 - Page 3

Nice! Congrats. :) Those things are amazing.

Just to report, I finally gave up on my HD800s I bought 2 years ago ( sold them a while back because I thought the highs were too aggressive and fatiguing about two thirds of the time, serial #11XXX I think) and got a new pair serial # 153XX and on initial testing sounds definitely less stinging/piercing/tipped up in the highs, and as a bonus the bass seems more transparent and there is more of it.

 

Now they sound crisp and extended, but not painful, and just barely annoying on a few tracks, say 15% of the time. These are not 650s or 600s, but they are now fine I'd say right out of the box.

 

I actually think the highs are about the same as my LCD3s, which were recently RMA'd to Audeze for new transducers. Now it is a close contest between the Senns and the Audezes.

So something has really changed for the better. Just using the stock cord on the Senns, which seems fine. (Using a Q-cable on the LCD3s, much more coherent and focused w/o changing the frequency response than the Audeze stock cord, which I don't like.)

Edited by rgs9200m - 3/22/12 at 9:50am

I let them burn in all day and now they are even warmer, and to me that's a good thing, so these 800s now have very fine tonality, with no fatigue (at least on the couple of CDs I have tried).

These 800s are just plain better, a lot better, than my former pair.

I'm glad you're liking your current pair, but just to clarify, if you bought your former 800s over two years ago, I highly doubt they were in the 11,000 range. Did you mean 1000? That would jive a lot better with your story (and sound descriptions).

 

Yeah, that was probably a typo by rgs9200m as I used a HD-800 that was bought near launch here in Singapore and the serial number was only 2xxx

 

You are right, I did forget my older 2 year old serial # and and it was just a 4-digit #; I actually posted it in an old thread I started about a year ago about differences in HD800 samples. I could dig it up if I had to.

Senn rep here says there's never been any changes to the production of the HD800, fyi.

However I think though that we have enough reports of this on the forum to suspect otherwise!

Sennheiser's own graphs show otherwise (refer to the freq certificate thread). Disappointing that this rep isn't aware of his own company's measurements.

That's what I thought too, which is why I asked. Post 12,xxx seems to be safely the version with slightly lower treble.

Also not true. Past SN2000, they've all been pretty much the same, save for normal production variances.

Oh, I guess it wasn't as recent as I thought. Have to admit I haven't followed the HD800 much at all, but have recently become interested in a pair since my SR007s are not doing it for me.

Curious...what don't you like about the 007? To keep this on topic, maybe you can include the 800s as a reference point.

 

It's unfortunate I've never had a chance to own the mk1. I loved them when I heard them at a meet, but I give very little credence to meet/store impressions. They have a rabid following, and I can see why.

They are quite good, but there is a treble peak of 12dB up and back down from 7KHz to 9KHz to 10.5KHz that is giving me a sharp sound. Over the course of several hours it's just tiring, but even when not being physically affected the sound is just slightly off. The rest of the spectrum is quite nice, but I can't get past the 9K spike. The feeling I get from it is similar to metal utensils being klinked together, a less alarming version of nails on a chalk board. To be clear this is overstating it for informative purposes, but the hints of that sound are present.

The peak on the HD800s seems to be around 6KHz, but is much smaller and broader. When added to the fact that the mod by Anaxilus can drop overall treble response, it should sound quite tame, yet still very detailed. After seeing the waterfalls and Anaxilus' mod of the HD800 I'm much more interested to give them a try. I heard stock HD800s at RMAF that were very good. Actually none of the rigs I heard them on would I say were bad or even average. My favorites were Ray Samuels B-52 and Apex Peak. While the Woo 234 monoblocks sounded good with the HD800, they are ugly as sin, super expensive, and really not any better than the Peak. I liked the Invicta DAC/amp with the HD800 also, a killer bedside rig.
Edited by Maxvla - 3/23/12 at 3:59pm