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They might destroy your HD 800 in terms of neutrality... but that does not mean all headphones
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Not at all in my experience...For me, the 7 added much needed body and bass to the HD800...bringing the HD800 closer to the colorless ideal. How can this be, when the 7 brings top-end, ambience and air to the LCD2s, very contradictory, I know. The reason being....who's kidding who, I have no idea why that is?
It brings all my cans closer to the neutral ideal. I theorise that because the LCD2s have so much body, that extra body is not as recognised as the extra top end. The HD800s have so much ambience that any extra in the top end is just not registering as greater than the extra added to the bottom end...maybe a psychoacoustic phenomena?
No I'd buy it... my D7000 sound better too. I do notice more body on my LCD-2 though, but at this point I have been really only listening to them as my home headphone, with little bouts of the D7000 and my TF10 on the go (every day). So I know my LCD-2 quite intimately. The body, and low low end have increased, but yeah the highs stick out more in comparison. So I could definitely see how it would give the HD 800 "what they needed" at the same time doing for the LCD-2.
I can't wait till you get your phoenix... XD
TBH I wish I had a lighter pair of headphones that are more neutral than the D7000. I have been listening to the LCD-2 a lot this weekend basking in the glory of the Ref - 7 and ... well... my neck and back are hurting a bit haha.So I was just teasing more than anything.
Seriously though, active monitors would have a hard time beating vlrn's set up + the LCD-2.
Actually I didn´t mean the rig isn´t neutral - neutral is one of the words in audiophile linguistics that has so many meanings anyway... The ACSS line is, at least the ones with the PCM1704UK chip, very smooth, actually quite relaxed even. It has very high fidelity, but it isn´t harsh in any way like the Delta-Sigma DAC´s I´ve previously used. This is why I think it´s not really all that punishing to bad recordings. Just found the comments about the musical line odd, since it would be reasonable to expect the musical line to be even more forgiving to bad recordings, but looking at the comments it seems it might even be the other way around.
The HD 800 is a fantastic pairing with the REF7+Phoenix... Out of the headphones I´ve heard (quite a lot, but no orthos so no LCD-2) it has the best bass quality. Not impact, but it´s by far the most controlled and defined. I thought they sounded very neutral with the Icon HDP Delta-Sigma I used to use, but when I got my REF7 I noticed there is a whole new world of deep controlled musical bass in all of my music. The REF7 brings this lower bass to life, making the HD 800 even more neutral as in balanced across the frequency spectrum.
Active studio monitors are quite an interesting topic. They come in many variants, the most usual ones being nearfield and midfield. The difference is the optimal listening distance. The whole point with nearfield monitors is that you place them on your desk quite close to your head so that your head and the two speakers form a triangle/diamond shape. In other words the monitors are pointing at your head in a 45" degree turn. The optimal distance is something around 0.7-1.5 meters or so for small monitors. Why this distance? Because this is the optimum area for the sonics so that the room accoustics don´t have much of an effect on the sound. This is the entire point of studio monitors compared to hifi speakers - they try to present the sound as flat and neutral as possible for mixing/mastering purposes. They have very strong stereo imaging and clarity. Some absolutely love the neutral sound signature and feel they destroy almost anything in the hifi speaker market, while others feel they sound lifeless and clinical without any weight to the sound. But all the music we listen to are originally made to sound good with nearfield monitors - the premise being that if they sound good on almost perfectly neutral gear, then they sound good on anything else too.
I have two Genelec 8020B monitors as my PC speakers, and I´ve been using my Audio-gd rig with them. Actually I´ve been listening to them more than any headphones
When it comes to measurable neutrality, frequency response, they destroy any headphones out there (including the LCD-2, but yes the LCD-2 are by far the most neutral headphones on the market). But headphones vs speakers is a very different experience, hard to compare. Getting HD 800/LCD-2 quality bass on any speakers, including nearfield monitors will be expensive to say the least. I would call nearfield monitor sound a midway between traditional hifi speakers and intimate headphones - sound is a 3d image floating in the air around less than a meter in front of you, and you can hear the right/left channels stereo imaging almost as well as with headphones. They represent excellent value for money too as studio gear doesn´t do snake oil, and due to the nearfield monitoring idea room accoustics don´t play much of a role. I can highly recommend trying out a pair of quality studio monitors like Genelec and seeing if you like what they do
Oh and with Audio-gd amps you already have a quality preamplfier so running active monitors in addition to headphones is extremely easy. I feel the two compliment eachother perfectly. Both are able to offer something the other cannot, while still being good value for money (no accoustic room treatment etc required).