Thex don't sell the old ones. But I'm looking for the new ones. Maybe I'll have to spend 8k, but I'll see. There will be enought time to look both on quality and price tag. ;) But I'll get a heavy weight discount anyways. :)

I don't know. But I decided to go to the Violectric camp, beacause Sennheiser has to pay higher wages than Violectric. In my opinion the two Violectric units look more sturdy than the HDVD 800. The investnor/marketing director also claimed that Violectric units are the best to drive a Senn HD...

I cannot share headfonia experiences, too. Ok, I'm quite limited in experience, but those items I had and were reviewed by headfonia did't match my experience at all (HD 800, Yulong U100, V800, V200, Asus Essence One, Asus Essence ST). My advice is to listen by yourself.

This is my end game set-up.       Next step-up would be a new Sennheiser electrostatic headphone. Fortunately I'm able to get a 50%+ discount on Sennheiser items. So if its costs me me less than 5000 EUR I´m all-in. One condition ist, that the new Senn electrostatic headphone has at...

3rd party cables are that expensive just because of those quite little numbers they sell of them. The material costs are nothing to talk about really, whether if it consists out of copper, silver or whatever. You can buy an exclusive Mercedes Benz AMG and change the stock alloy wheels by ones...

Advertisement for madisound, I guess. Or just for those special capacitators.

It's just pure advertisement... I liked my HD 800s straight out of the box until now.

Quote: AFAIK the opamps in the Violectrics have just to manage quite simple tasks. Some guys tried some opamp rolling on a V200 and ended up in hearing no affect to sq. Later on some technical well-versed guys stated its because of the circuitry that there were no changes hearable.

This denial by Sennheiser doesn't mean there aren't any differences at all between one and another model. But they try to make them all sound as equal as possible. So if you really imagine to hear or at least measure -which seems to be quite more possible- differences between one and another...

Quote: AFAIK Sennheiser always denied any changes in HD 800 production since it started until now. You can count me as a German source, too. ;)

I got my 19k+ HD 800 even in 03-04/2012.

Quote: So do I. :)

I'm running my V200 at -6 db pre-gain setting. Based on what kind of music  is playing and my personal mood the volume knob is set between 10 and 15 o'clock position. I use XLR connectors.

Isn't the LCD3 technical quite similar to the LCD. 2.rev1/2/...? The HE 6 indeed seems to need a plenty of power. It seems to be the choice of the listener if a headphone amp is sufficient or not. Imo someone who doesn't like the HE 6 on the V200 wouldn't be satisfied with any headphone...