Hmm my ears must be really sensitive then with this small 1.8dB bass boost. Other than the boosted bass with blue (with my music, my ears) I have been finding cross-feed on red and even green almost useless compared to blue, i.e. I find blue to be where it's at.
But the bass is unfortunately too much for me to enjoy for longer listening periods.
Cross-feed OFF is still very fun to listen to with the HD800-S cans. Not as much of a speaker listening experience with cross-feed OFF but that's very much ok with headphones.
Hello,
you are aware that HD800S already has an intentional bass bost compared to the original HD800 aren't you?
Imo both HD800 and HD800S are very good headphones. But each with its own drawbacks/compromises. HD800 has got a sometimes too bright treble which has been quite succsessfully tamed in the newer HD800S. But HD800 has more natural bass.
Unfortunately they introduced the bass lift in the S to please the pop crowd I think?
BOOM BOOM BOOM lot of bass =equals good sound to many.
Now with both the bass lift in the HD800S and the 1-1,8 dB basslift with maximum crossfeed engaged, I am sure the bass will sound very boomy indeed.
I A/B-d the two with some of my reference tracks where I have personal reference to the live sound as well,and even without any crossfeed at all engaged I found bass too boomy with the HD800S.
The boomy bass was the reason I never upgraded to S from HD800
As far as crossfeed is concerned the only advantage imo with the HD800 and my HUGO is that full crossfeed makes the otherwise too thin and lean HUGO sound a bit fuller. I find the crossfeed effect artificial and adding masking effects and rarely use it .
Moreover, to me nearly 2 dB bass lift is NOT small.
A 2dB difference in bass level can change the sound of a recording VERY MUCH imho.
I know this both from personal listening and demonstrations of + 1-2 dB lifts at recording sessions.
I wish Chord DACs had volume steps working at 0,5 dB steps instead of as now only 1 dB steps.
With really hi res material one is not quite able to do real low level fine tuning with the too big 1dB step I think.
As Romaz said in a post somewhere dynamic range is NOT really about loudness. On the contrary it is IMO about the ability too hear deep into the really low level information captured in the very best recordings.
And in order to be able to hear the very low level ppp-pppp sections in for example Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony clearly you need both high resolution and very low noise from your system.
And even there a difference in noise levels of 1-2 dB actually matter a lot.
