The IE800 is now on my radar. How did I miss this one?
Probably you had overlooked it, for me it was the only one that i could listen to before buying... Was very happy with how it sounds...
But like the HD800, the treble is kind of coming from outside of the head. Sometimes it sounds unnatural, like with piano when HF comes from another place. My theory is that DAC filter has to be Minimum Phase for it to sound natural.
... I never felt like that... I could say that they are sibilant if worn over the ear, but Sennheiser are very nice people who wanted us to not ear ie800 over the ear.
I had tried with minimum phase filters, and it was the same in my experience.
The entire sound is extremely good, having a very good soundstage, this is why it seems kind of different from what people expect. The soundstage is not bigger than natural, but it is recorded at the microphone level. This translates to some sounds coming from front, other from a different position than when being in a live experience, Binarual recordings all sound exactly as they should, if you feel good with binaural in general..
I think that you are reffering to the harmonics of a higher order that are created by a musical note, which come from a different point, but this happens to all instruments in real life. It is a normal and very nice effect, just like, for a bell sound the harmonics are sometimes louder than the note itself... Piano has this ability to create high order harmonics that are pretty loud compared to the pure note, so the effect you are experiencing is normal, in fact i really like this effect!
I work with harmonic distortions, harmonics displacement and phase shifting when i do my project, and from my share of knowledge, phase should never displace a sound from the spatial hearing. Though, it could by displacing the exact timing of it, create a sensation of being off, but this is DAC and Software dependent...
