[nephilim32]

Not all EQ's are created equal, whether hardware or software implemented. Some can cause phase errors which is considered distortion.

I think that my 7$ app equalizer is probably not the highest quality. Lol. It's not bad though, especially when using it with lower end head phones.

 

[nephilim32]

Yeah

I agree.  The "nonuberbuck" Soloist actually sounds great with the HD-800 (not half bad with the TH-900 also)

Dare I say that IMO even the HA-160D is a nice match as an all in one solution. 

Yeah. The soloist is 2W per channel. It's more than enough and with 2 gain settings? Beautiful. Some of my albums because of the way they are recorded really benefit from the highest gain setting on the soloist.
I'm finding no error with the soloist. It's amazing for the money. I had one issue with it though and it's mainly to do with how my power is grounded in my home. I had to rip out the middle prong on the AC power cord that goes into my socket. I was getting a nasty electrical hummmmmm because if the interference created by the middle safety prong. Can you believe that? My power is so dirty in my house, therefore I bought a powerline conditioner for safe and good long lasting performance of my gear.

Anyway. Love to hear more about the 160? What are your findings. ?

 

[castleofargh]

 I had one issue with it though and it's mainly to do with how my power is grounded in my home. I had to rip out the middle prong on the AC power cord that goes into my socket. I was getting a nasty electrical hummmmmm because if the interference created by the middle safety prong. Can you believe that? My power is so dirty in my house, therefore I bought a powerline conditioner for safe and good long lasting performance of my gear.

 

you just convinced me to never look at that amp again.

 

[Claritas]

HD800's impedance ranges from 350 to 650. A resistor is an uncontrolled way way of trying to equalize. There can be some benefits if the impedance curve is flat and you need higher impedance to match your amp.

 

[nephilim32]

you just convinced me to never look at that amp again.

No no! It's all on my end. The power in my house is crap and that was the root of the problem. Once that prong was removed (socket connection end) everything is absolutely perfect. The amp sings but if you look at all your gears interconnects for power how many of them have 3 prongs on your AC cord? I bet not many.

 

[SilverEars]

HD800's impedance ranges from 350 to 650. A resistor is an uncontrolled way way of trying to equalize. There can be some benefits if the impedance curve is flat and you need higher impedance to match your amp.

One thing I'm not sure about is if damping actually even apply to planars.  The frequency-impedance graph is flat, which means it's resistive because only reactive components would shoot up the impedance(correct me if I'm wrong).  Since there is no peaks and etc, that means there should be no resonance, and therefore, the driver should be controlled without damping factor to be considered like the BA or dynamic drivers that have the resonance peaks(correct me if I'm wrong).
 
Is the width of the impedance hump q factor?  Isn't there something about how controlled it can get depending on this factor?  Here is from wiki:
 
In physics and engineering the quality factor or Q factor is a dimensionless parameter that describes how under-damped an oscillator or resonator is,^[1] or equivalently, characterizes a resonator'sbandwidth relative to its center frequency.^[2] Higher Q indicates a lower rate of energy loss relative to the stored energy of the resonator; the oscillations die out more slowly. A pendulum suspended from a high-quality bearing, oscillating in air, has a high Q, while a pendulum immersed in oil has a low one. Resonators with high quality factors have low damping so that they ring longer.
 

 

[SilverEars]

So, I was willing to try out the $2k Sennheiser amp for myself to give the headphone a fair chance.  And guess what the response was?  

  Once again, the thread's title.  I don't understand what I have to get to be up to snuff. 

 

  I'm am looking to verify what's been posted here.  HDVD 800, the best choice here?  I will try it for the sake of finding out.  
 

No. Far from it.

 

 

[OkawaiiO]

just get an O2 and keep your money in your pocket for maybe ur next pair of headphone. Headphones(transducers) by far makes more difference than amp and dacs and tubes and anything combined.  
 
quite from schiit " you should be spending most of your budget on transducers (that is, headphones), then looking at amps and DACs if necessary. The transducer will have the biggest effect on your system’s sound. Our amps won’t turn an $80 Sennheiser into a $1000 Audeze. Nobody’s amps will. Our DACs won’t convert 128kbps MP3s to 24/96 lossless, either. Yes, I know, big shocker." 
 
compare the best HD800 setup(something from cavali) and the minimum(o2 or magni) maybe you are getting 10% difference.... and that depends on who u ask
 
For example i can't tell the difference between my 800$ schiit stack and 120$ Aunt T1 (stock tubes) npnp. 

 

[ab initio]

  One thing I'm not sure about is if damping actually even apply to planars.  The frequency-impedance graph is flat, which means it's resistive because only reactive components would shoot up the impedance(correct me if I'm wrong).  Since there is no peaks and etc, that means there should be no resonance, and therefore, the driver should be controlled without damping factor to be considered like the BA or dynamic drivers that have the resonance peaks(correct me if I'm wrong).
 
Is the width of the impedance hump q factor?  Isn't there something about how controlled it can get depending on this factor?  Here is from wiki:
 
In physics and engineering the quality factor or Q factor is a dimensionless parameter that describes how under-damped an oscillator or resonator is,^[1] or equivalently, characterizes a resonator'sbandwidth relative to its center frequency.^[2] Higher Q indicates a lower rate of energy loss relative to the stored energy of the resonator; the oscillations die out more slowly. A pendulum suspended from a high-quality bearing, oscillating in air, has a high Q, while a pendulum immersed in oil has a low one. Resonators with high quality factors have low damping so that they ring longer.
 

 
I don't think this is quite right. First of all, electrical damping occurs within transducers whether they have a wonky impedance curve or not.
 
I believe you are confusing electrical damping and mechanical resonances.  The amp and speaker coil form an electrical circuit which may behave as an electrical oscillator with reactive components. The transducer is a mechanical system with stiffness and mass that behaves as a mechanical oscillator. These are two different oscillators... they just happen to be coupled by having the voice coil of the electrical circuit attached to the speaker cone of the mechanical system.
 
Electrical damping of the physical system occurs because the mechanical system has inertia. An electrical impulse may be applied to the speaker, inducing the speaker to move with some velocity; however, after the electrical signal has ceased, the inertia of the speaker proceeds to move the attached voice coil through the magnetic field of the speaker magnet. Moving the coil through the magnetic field induces back EMF (and if there is finite impedance in the circuit---e.g., low output impedance---an electrical current which opposes the motion) that will dampen the speaker motion.
 
What does result from wonky frequency-dependent impedance curves is that  the damping ratio will vary with frequency; hence, some frequencies may be well controlled (damped) while other frequencies may be under-damped. This is a "higher-order effect" if you will.
 
Wikipedia on damping factor
 
Cheers

 

[davidsh]

Regardless, planars are barely affected by damping factor. To my knowledge almost no current is induced from the movement of the diaphragm. Besides, a system that induces current will not have a flat impedance to my knowledge.

 

[SilverEars]

  just get an O2 and keep your money in your pocket for maybe ur next pair of headphone. Headphones(transducers) by far makes more difference than amp and dacs and tubes and anything combined.  
 
quite from schiit " you should be spending most of your budget on transducers (that is, headphones), then looking at amps and DACs if necessary. The transducer will have the biggest effect on your system’s sound. Our amps won’t turn an $80 Sennheiser into a $1000 Audeze. Nobody’s amps will. Our DACs won’t convert 128kbps MP3s to 24/96 lossless, either. Yes, I know, big shocker." 
 
compare the best HD800 setup(something from cavali) and the minimum(o2 or magni) maybe you are getting 10% difference.... and that depends on who u ask
 
For example i can't tell the difference between my 800$ schiit stack and 120$ Aunt T1 (stock tubes) npnp. 

This is why I got the HD800 as I can get a good idea of it's sonic characteristic with a good setup.  I think some people in the thread is referring to that small minor percentage of improvement. I don't think I need anything extraordinary to get an idea of the 800's characteristics.  I personally think that some of the people in the 800 thread is mixing coloring with better performance(this is why there are so much swapping of gear going on is my guess).  And if the quest of finding the setup results in sonic characteristic just trial and error blindly with boxes with a price tag possibly biasing pleasure center of the brain, I don't know if I can really take those type of advices.  One bad thing about expensive equipment is that, your brain will want to rationalize that it cannot possibly sound so bad since you invested so much into it.  I was willing to try the Sennheiser DAC/Amp as a test to see if the sonic characteristics depend so significantly with the setup.

 

[ferday]

One thing I'm not sure about is if damping actually even apply to planars.  The frequency-impedance graph is flat, which means it's resistive because only reactive components would shoot up the impedance(correct me if I'm wrong).  Since there is no peaks and etc, that means there should be no resonance, and therefore, the driver should be controlled without damping factor to be considered like the BA or dynamic drivers that have the resonance peaks(correct me if I'm wrong).

A problem with planars is they are so loosely coupled to the amp they can be hard to damp at all (driver flapping). Not to mention the resonances that arise from trapped air between the magnet structures. Planars have to be very, very well mechanically/acoustically damped. Read any thread about older planars and you'll always come across a variety of damping mods people have tried to reduce this

In an effort to remain on topic, there isn't anything special about the hd800's relative to any other high(er) impedance dynamic cans. Running a z=0 amp is going to be the best way to get a predictable, consistent sound and running anything else is going to be a game of dice (or tube) rolling...some will prefer the sound and call it synergy...but it is a preference nothing more

 

[cjl]

Honestly, there's no reason to get anything beyond an O2, sonically (unless you need a lot of power, which the HD800 does not). If you place a lot of value in aesthetics, need extra connectivity options, want a remote, or that sort of thing, there are better options (the stuff from Benchmark, for example), but as far as sound alone is concerned, there's a lot of nonsense out there (and the truth is, you hit the point where all distortion is completely inaudible with any competently designed ~$100-200 amp).

 

[nephilim32]

[COLOR=000000]just get an O2 and keep your money in your pocket for maybe ur next pair of headphone. Headphones(transducers) by far makes more difference than amp and dacs and tubes and anything combined.  [/COLOR]

[COLOR=000000]quite from schiit " you should be spending most of your budget on transducers (that is, headphones), then looking at amps and DACs if necessary. The transducer will have the biggest effect on your system’s sound. Our amps won’t turn an $80 Sennheiser into a $1000 Audeze. Nobody’s amps will. Our DACs won’t convert 128kbps MP3s to 24/96 lossless, either. Yes, I know, big shocker." [/COLOR]

compare the best HD800 setup(something from cavali) and the minimum(o2 or magni) maybe you are getting 10% difference.... and that depends on who u ask

For example i can't tell the difference between my 800$ schiit stack and 120$ Aunt T1 (stock tubes) npnp. 

Well said. Welcome to the world of high end audio where subjectivity and placebo effects are in full affect. Lol!
I think we all have to be careful and do extensive product testing before we spend our hard earned $$ on these things.

 

[Claritas]

Honestly, there's no reason to get anything beyond an O2, sonically (unless you need a lot of power, which the HD800 does not). If you place a lot of value in aesthetics, need extra connectivity options, want a remote, or that sort of thing, there are better options (the stuff from Benchmark, for example), but as far as sound alone is concerned, there's a lot of nonsense out there (and the truth is, you hit the point where all distortion is completely inaudible with any competently designed ~$100-200 amp).

What are you comparing it to based on your own experience and what were the results?