[Brandon7s]

My current daily driver is a Hifiman Ananda, which I enjoy overall, but I recently bought a pair of Etymotic ER4SR IEMs and their detail retrieval is a significant step up. I can hear things with them that I just can't hear on the Anandas, even esoteric stuff like minor changes in crossfeed settings (I use Goodhertz CanOpener). Changing those same settings while wearing the Ananda's sounds like nothing is happening at all but with the Etymotics small changes in settings are readily apparent. It actually sounds like I'm changing the angles of speakers in real time. And of course music sounds more detailed as well with them, too, of course.

I much prefer the format of full-sized, open-back over ear headphones though. I like the lack of isolation and the comfort most of all. So I'm now on the search for a pair of full-sized headphones that can compete with the ER4SR's detail. Budget is about $1,000 USD but I'm willing to stretch that to $1,500

So this has lead me to two paths:

1. Find the most detailed full-size headphones I can afford and hope they can offer similar levels of detail as the Etymotics.
2. Buy a a TOTL custom IEM; this will give me the comfort and detail that I want but not the lack of isolation. If there's no full-size headphones that can compete with the detail and speed of Etymotics BA drivers though, that's the route I'll take.

My initial thought is that the HD800 or HD8XX would be the best option, but there's no way I can get my hands on a pair to listen to before purchase and while I could buy and return, I hate to do that with something so pricey. I know, I know.. I shouldn't feel bad about doing so to our corporate overlords and all that, but I'd still rather avoid buying one just to test how much detail it can retrieve compared to the Ety's.

Do you think that the detail retrieval between the HD800 and HD8XX are comparable to the ER4SRs? If not, what would you recommend instead?

Oh, and keep in mind that I don't care about frequency response at all. I use Impulcifer for speaker virtualization for all of my headphone/IEM usage and that radically alters the FR, so that's not a something I worry about, which is why I was thinking the HD8XX might be a good choice. I'm just looking for the most detail that I can possibly get within my budget.