[drez]

  I strangely understand what you're getting at, but I really don't have the same interpretation. the idea that nice sound is quality, and harsh sound has to be a problem isn't at all how I imagine audio.
 my obvious example for that is vinyl. what can you find with more noise, more jitter, and less overall fidelity nowadays? but people enjoy listening to vinyl and some even find it to sound more refined and natural. when "digital" is supposedly harsher sterile and cold. yeah digital doesn't roll off, doesn't add a ****load of distortions of all kinds, doesn't kill the crosstalk...
still listening to a vinyl is rarely a bad experience.
just like distortions in some tube amps, some can sound nice, and others can sound grainy or harsh, they're still just distortions, something that never was in the music. I believe that people tend to hear something a little harsh and cry "jitter" because harsh has to be something bad. but the harsh or sibilant one can be the less noisy, less jittery, simply be the more transparent source and be the only one that brings out all those problems from the recording itself.
 
at every step in audio, what made me get rid of some albums was getting a better more revealing system. I never stopped listening to any genre when I was with some lousy warmish sound system with crazy roll off. even the black eyed peas and imagine dragon will sound great on those systems. I sure did remove a lot of albums from my playlists when I started going toward more flat and clean sources. and from the specs and reputation of the DAC1, I would think that it is not the one with sibilant problems.
same with the hd800. this headphone was made to be one of the cleanest and most revealing dynamic headphone ever made. and that's what it does. truth hurts, and so does the hd800.
all the crap about synergy with the hd800 is from people who "need" to have the best because "I'm worth it", but can't really handle listening to it as it is, because in fact what they like is a more lush and relaxed consumer sound. and there is nothing wrong with this. not all pros will keep listening to dead clean flat systems when they're not at work.
the really dumb thing is that instead of admitting that most pro gears aren't made to sound nice but to be tools for pros that will make any problem obvious and help them in their job, people keep buying pro stuff thinking it has to be the best and then go spend even more trying to make it sound like they love because some elitist thinking forbid them to say that they don't like the sound of the best dynamic headphone. I was mighty impressed by the hd800 and do think it puts shame on most products when it comes to clarity and soundstage. but I hated that sound and would have EQed it down between 5 and 10db in the high-mids and trebles. from my view of neutral sounding, this headphone is a joke. how bad a source has to be to level down the signature to my taste? that's my own understanding of the hd800 scaling up. breaking down the signal, to the point where the hd800 will end up sounding close enough to another headphone. because on the electrical side, the hd800 is nothing special.
 
all I'm saying with all those bad examples is that nice doesn't always mean good. at least not at an objective high fidelity level(for personal use it would be silly to get the sound we don't appreciate, good or bad). that always going for "the best" is often the wrong road to nice sound, and that not pleasant doesn't mean technically bad.

I tend to agree, stock HD800 do not sound neutral to me, they seem to have an artificial sound which artificially enhances dynamics.  Some people swear they sound fine but not my pair with my ears.  I think this is to do with how they tuned the resonance on the headphones as simple damping mods seem to fix the problem.
 
It is hard to separate what is accurate and what is artificial.  Certain forms of distortion can sound harsh, while others sound pleasant - all seems to depend on the harmonics e.g. 1st, 2nd, 3rd order harmonics.  
 
Jitter and noise are generally used as blanked terms by us audiophiles, and given the different types of buffers and filters, it is not surprising that there isn't a clear correlation between these phenomenon and sound quality.  Of course some might come to different conclusion that jitter is inaudible and that is why the observations are inconsistent, but to each their own.
 
I think there is also the possibility that with some of these things we are measuring the wrong way, or are being presented with meaningless data.  The fact that two products which measure very well with typical spec type measurements can sound different probably means these are not the measurements we need to be looking at to understand how the equipment will sound.  We probably need to look at what the spectrum of that distortion is, similarly with jitter or digital noise, we need some understanding of how it will affect specific equipment.  
 
Also with "harsh" sounding gear - need to understand why it sounds harsh otherwise could just end up throwing away the baby with the bathwater.

 

[Dark_wizzie]

HD800 isn't accurate, you can tell just by looking at the FR graphs. The 'revealing' aspect is just extra treble.

 

[OkawaiiO]

umm idk man if u just eq down the treble on the hd800 it sounds pretty damn accurate. Its the only headphones that can fool me... like when they knock the door in songs, hd800 is the only one that will make me turn around and look....

 

[castleofargh]

  HD800 isn't accurate, you can tell just by looking at the FR graphs. The 'revealing' aspect is just extra treble.

I wouldn't say it is just extra treble, but they put the final nail with FR for sure.

 

[dclaz]

If the HD800 isn't accurate then what is? And what the hell is Sennheiser trying to do if it's not make a set of headphones that reproduces the input signal accurately as possible?

 

[stv014]

No headphone is perfectly accurate, all have audibly non-flat frequency response, including the HD800.

 

[James-uk]

So which headphone is the most accurate?

 

[preproman]

 

[Maxx134]

Not to fan any flames but I got rid of my first pair of hd800 because I was just not happy with the sound.
then after a few amp/dac upgrades I ended up getting a second hd800 which now is very good and I know it is because my present system (oppo ha-1) has a sweet signature I know from comparison with other units on an he6.
So now my HD800 is very nice and I am also able to detect cable differences that I can verify with friends using the hd800 so yes..
As good as you hear the hd800,
It can always easily change for the better or worse depending what you change in your system. .
yet it will always have the sonic trait of clarity.

 

[castleofargh]

Not to fan any flames but I got rid of my first pair of hd800 because I was just not happy with the sound.
then after a few amp/dac upgrades I ended up getting a second hd800 which now is very good and I know it is because my present system (oppo ha-1) has a sweet signature I know from comparison with other units on an he6.
So now my HD800 is very nice and I am also able to detect cable differences that I can verify with friends using the hd800 so yes..
As good as you hear the hd800,
It can always easily change for the better or worse depending what you change in your system. .
yet it will always have the sonic trait of clarity.

 a cable would need to be close to 10ohm to make about 0.1db variation in the signature of a hd800. crosstalk would need to be massive to change the headstage, so it's a little scary to imagine how messed up those cables must be(on purpose) to sound different from one another.
with a TOTL headphone and apparently a real nice amp below 1ohm, I wouldn't start using weird cables that do everything worst than a monoprice. but that's me.
 
also I dig your signature, the "hydrogen atom" part probably shows best how expert the guy who said that could have been.

 

[Dark_wizzie]

  If the HD800 isn't accurate then what is? And what the hell is Sennheiser trying to do if it's not make a set of headphones that reproduces the input signal accurately as possible?

Sennheiser is trying to make money. And a headphone that sounds ultra-clear is one way of doing that.

 

[Rajikaru]

 The human ear can detect details as small as an hydrogen atom hitting the eardrum,
yet your brain filters it.
So when they tell you, they can't hear,
tell them, Its all in their minds..(!)

 
LOL.
 
and expensive DACs are  like...Stonehenge. 
 
They seem impressive from a technological or architectural perspective, but no one, not even the 'experts', can seem to explain with any scientific certainty what they are for. 
 

 

[Dark_wizzie]

   
LOL.
 
and expensive DACs are  like...Stonehenge. 
 
They seem impressive from a technological or architectural perspective, but no one, not even the 'experts', can seem to explain with any scientific certainty what they are for. 

Just for fun.

 If I had money I'd like one of those Benchmark Dacs or something, just as a cool toy to have. I find a Schiit Yggdrasil vs Benchmark Dac vs Chord Hugo measurement showdown to be fun. But that's probably just me, lol.

 

[drez]

Point I was making before is that typical measurements are good but they can only tell you so much about a product.  The more comprehensive measurements they do in Stereophile seem more useful, as quite often they can correlate subjective qualities of the DAC with the measurements, but my bet is they still need to both measure AND listen.
 
With HD800 neutrality, recent research by Harman to establish a new benchmark for "neutral" came up with a frequency response very similar to the HD800.  This frequency response curve was based on the response of flat measuring speakers in a treated listening room.
 
Wether you can live with this response is another thing, as personally I can't bear the stock HD800 with neutral and detailed gear.

 

[johnjen]

  Point I was making before is that typical measurements are good but they can only tell you so much about a product.  The more comprehensive measurements they do in Stereophile seem more useful, as quite often they can correlate subjective qualities of the DAC with the measurements, but my bet is they still need to both measure AND listen.
 
With HD800 neutrality, recent research by Harman to establish a new benchmark for "neutral" came up with a frequency response very similar to the HD800.  This frequency response curve was based on the response of flat measuring speakers in a treated listening room.
 
Wether you can live with this response is another thing, as personally I can't bear the stock HD800 with neutral and detailed gear.

I agree with most of this.
And that there are many commonly used descriptive terms, that defy scientific definition, creates a 'gap'.  This 'gap' between terms that are well defined and those which defy such tightly defined characteristics is inevitable as we continue to discover new aspects of sonic nuance as the equipment improves and better designs prevail.
 
And conversely that 'solutions' exist to tame what I call LFF (Listener Fatigue Factor) in the 800's, which was my first step at discovering just how scaleable these cans can be, lead me to explore just how far I could push this portion of the envelope.  
 
This is one of the most enjoyable aspects of this hobby for me.  Discovering workable and useful mods to ameliorate behaviors that when 'fixed' yield whole new avenues of scaleability.
 
I suppose you could say I'm more of a DIY'r vs. a plug and play kinda hobbyist.
Put another way the purchase of a piece of gear is just the first step of the process of integrating it into the system, or determining if it's gunna meld well with the rest of the system.  
 
JJ