I heard the D8000 for the first time as a prototype at Axpona 2017 and it sounded promising. This year I had the chance to listen to the final product. Micheal from Final asked me to take a listen and give him my honest opinion and he said "specially in the bass area".
In the Final booth they were using a Cayin HA-1A Mk2. The midrange and high frequency sounded good but not as good as I was expecting but the bass was just plain awful (don't stop reading just yet.. wink wink). It was center in the upper range of the bass and when it tried to go lower it was just out of control. The amplifier has a know to adjust impedance so I played with it and got it to sound marginally better. As he asked I gave him my honest opinion but I also told him that I thought the amp was struggling to drive them correctly.
I asked him if he would be willing to take the D8000 across the isle to the Wells Audio booth to try them with a Milo Reference amp. We went there and asked Jeff Wells if we can give them a listen in his amp. As soon I put the D8000 in my head they just blew me away. They sounded totally different. Everything was there! The bass was deep, tight and controlled, the midrange was sweet and the highs were so crustal clear. I took them off and let Micheal take a listen and he was amazed of how good they sounded then the true test Jeff listened to them and his reaction was this telling Michael "Do you guys want to make a tread for an amp?".
I had mixed emotions about the D8000 reading some of the posts here but after listening to them with a nice amp behind them I can say that IMO they sound great, they are on the lighter side of Planar headphones and they are comfortable. Are they cheap? No, but they are at the level of comparable high end headphones.
In the Final booth they were using a Cayin HA-1A Mk2. The midrange and high frequency sounded good but not as good as I was expecting but the bass was just plain awful (don't stop reading just yet.. wink wink). It was center in the upper range of the bass and when it tried to go lower it was just out of control. The amplifier has a know to adjust impedance so I played with it and got it to sound marginally better. As he asked I gave him my honest opinion but I also told him that I thought the amp was struggling to drive them correctly.
I asked him if he would be willing to take the D8000 across the isle to the Wells Audio booth to try them with a Milo Reference amp. We went there and asked Jeff Wells if we can give them a listen in his amp. As soon I put the D8000 in my head they just blew me away. They sounded totally different. Everything was there! The bass was deep, tight and controlled, the midrange was sweet and the highs were so crustal clear. I took them off and let Micheal take a listen and he was amazed of how good they sounded then the true test Jeff listened to them and his reaction was this telling Michael "Do you guys want to make a tread for an amp?".
I had mixed emotions about the D8000 reading some of the posts here but after listening to them with a nice amp behind them I can say that IMO they sound great, they are on the lighter side of Planar headphones and they are comfortable. Are they cheap? No, but they are at the level of comparable high end headphones.
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