You're not alone. It's not for everyone. It's primarily for those who want to hear their music as it was recorded. With no coloring. They want to hear the entire spectrum of sound, every nuance. They want clear and clean imaging, separation, and dynamics. This type of analytical listening may be too intense for casual listening for relaxation and pure enjoyment.
The HD800 has a complex history around here. You've been here long enough to where you probably remember it.
Initial reports had most reviewers/users raving about a new paradigm in headphone performance - the resolution, as well as the price, was significantly above most headphones available in that era. Then more and more people got a chance to own them, and as expected they were not for everyone.
Eventually I recall something of a backlash against them, where people would tip their hat to the technical achievement while admitting they frankly did
not enjoy listening to HD800 at all. I feel like this helped with the success of the original LCD-2 for example - people wanted a very different sound, and felt they had found it with the LCD-2, or even the original beyerdynamic T1 for that matter.
After that, some folks (including Tyll Hertsens and various other very knowledgeable people) made the case for HD800 having actual flaws, not just in terms of providing listening pleasure from also from a technical perspective. Hence the numerous mods that turned up. Which eventually included Sennheiser who essentially modded their own design, resulting in the HD800S.
Not trying to pick on you in particular, but your quoted post is in keeping with the early opinions when most of us first experienced HD800... if people don't enjoy it, something must be wrong with them. They aren't advanced enough. I now find that to be somewhat condescending.
Remember that this is a headphone Tyll called "...as close to perfect as a headphone gets" during his initial review, but also later called them "quite problematic" (before
problematic was a cool thing to say) and opined "I'd much prefer to listen to the new HD 800 S over the stock HD 800. Much."
The first return (after listening) of the 8XX has already happened…
The owner said his 800 and 800S sound far better.
Is this really unexpected though? I have encountered pretty much every top-level headphone on the used market, from Abyss to HiFiMAN, Audeze, Raal, Stax, and on and on. You name it, and someone out there has been unhappy enough with it to either return it or sell it for a loss on the forums. I don't think we should read too much into that beyond "no headphone is perfect for everyone".
It seems like when the 8XX was announced, everyone was hoping it'd basically turn out to be an 800S with all of the big problems fixed. But in hindsight, why did we ever expect that in the first place? If Senn was able to make an 800S but better, they would just do that on their own and charge more for the improved version. And instead what we got is a less expensive version that isn't as good, and in hindsight, it's obvious that's all we should have expected.
I dunno, I might actually describe it like that, at least for the most part.
For me, the HD8XX is better than either other model. Purrin seems to feel that way too from what little I've seen of his opinion. Doesn't make it objectively so, but it's also not unreasonable that it will be better,
for some people at least.
