[marcoarment]

Gotta agree here.  HD 800 lacks some body (visceralness?) w/ Ragnarok that it has with a decent tube amp.  Distortion (euphonic) is your friend with these cans, and Ragnarok ain't got that.
 
Still, a good combo for well recorded classical.  But, it has me looking for something with a little more low end than HD 800 right now.

 
The HD 800 always sounds at least very good, but the endless hoops and voodoo people jump through — myself previously included — to try (and often fail) to make it sound great say more about the HD 800 than the gear. Given your stated opinions in this thread, I suggest you buy or rent (from The Cable Company) an HE-6. (Disclaimer: I love my HE-6 so much that I sold my previously purchased HD 800 and entire Stax SR-009 setup after renting and then buying one.)
 
The HE-6 is the most undeservedly overlooked high-end headphone on the market today due to its power needs. With most headphones, powerful amps really are optional and the gains are minor. With the HE-6, only a very small handful of amps on the market are even fair to evaluate it with, and the difference with lower-powered amps is huge — unlike so much in this business, it's clear as day in an A/B test. So an HE-6 requires an amp purchase for most people, with the cheapest suitable amp I've found being the Schiit Mjolnir at $750 (which I use, and bought used here for $550). Anyway, almost every HE-6 review with a suitable amp praises it in almost every regard, but puts "needs a very powerful amp" as the one major con (despite this also applying to every electrostatic and a couple other orthos).
 
Well, you already have a Ragnarok, which many would consider the best amp in the world for the HE-6. You could get what some — myself included — would say is the best overall headphone/amp combo in the world, even better than the SR-009, for $1300 more (and likely sell your HD 800 for most of that).
 
(Personally, I A/B-ed the Ragnarok with the Mjolnir on my HE-6 and couldn't reliably tell them apart — I really wanted the Rag to blow me away, but the simple fact is that the Mjolnir is already an insanely great amp, and most HE-6 amp snobs don't give it enough credit. The Rag's primary advantage over it — in my opinion, please don't set me on fire — is the many more input and output options, not a massive sound-quality increase.)
 
Where the properly amped HE-6 really shines over the HD 800 and SR-009 is in what you're saying you want:
 
1. It has much more full bass. Not like Beats or anything, just proper bass.
 
2. It achieves incredible midrange presence, treble detail, and speed, like the 009 (and unlike every Audeze I've heard, including the 3F), but without the harshness that usually comes with that. I don't know how, but it does.
 
3. It sounds better on more music, including on lower-quality recordings. Again, I don't know how. It just does.
 
You already have the Rag — give the HE-6 a shot.

 

[screwdriver]

   
The HD 800 always sounds at least very good, but the endless hoops and voodoo people jump through — myself previously included — to try (and often fail) to make it sound great say more about the HD 800 than the gear. Given your stated opinions in this thread, I suggest you buy or rent (from The Cable Company) an HE-6. (Disclaimer: I love my HE-6 so much that I sold my previously purchased HD 800 and entire Stax SR-009 setup after renting and then buying one.)
 
The HE-6 is the most undeservedly overlooked high-end headphone on the market today due to its power needs. With most headphones, powerful amps really are optional and the gains are minor. With the HE-6, only a very small handful of amps on the market are even fair to evaluate it with, and the difference with lower-powered amps is huge — unlike so much in this business, it's clear as day in an A/B test. So an HE-6 requires an amp purchase for most people, with the cheapest suitable amp I've found being the Schiit Mjolnir at $750 (which I use, and bought used here for $550). Anyway, almost every HE-6 review with a suitable amp praises it in almost every regard, but puts "needs a very powerful amp" as the one major con (despite this also applying to every electrostatic and a couple other orthos).
 
Well, you already have a Ragnarok, which many would consider the best amp in the world for the HE-6. You could get what some — myself included — would say is the best overall headphone/amp combo in the world, even better than the SR-009, for $1300 more (and likely sell your HD 800 for most of that).
 
(Personally, I A/B-ed the Ragnarok with the Mjolnir on my HE-6 and couldn't reliably tell them apart — I really wanted the Rag to blow me away, but the simple fact is that the Mjolnir is already an insanely great amp, and most HE-6 amp snobs don't give it enough credit. The Rag's primary advantage over it — in my opinion, please don't set me on fire — is the many more input and output options, not a massive sound-quality increase.)
 
Where the properly amped HE-6 really shines over the HD 800 and SR-009 is in what you're saying you want:
 
1. It has much more full bass. Not like Beats or anything, just proper bass.
 
2. It achieves incredible midrange presence, treble detail, and speed, like the 009 (and unlike every Audeze I've heard, including the 3F), but without the harshness that usually comes with that. I don't know how, but it does.
 
3. It sounds better on more music, including on lower-quality recordings. Again, I don't know how. It just does.
 
You already have the Rag — give the HE-6 a shot.

I came from the camp of people using the lcdx and hd800 on an alo studio six  with decware preamp - it sounds really good . but the he-6 is the sound im looking for - it has all the qualities of the headphone that wowed me . im using it with a odyssey stratos amp  which worked well for me because the odyssey amp is my main speaker amp and I don't have to buy a headphone amp and it saved me some money .
BUt of course I am intrigued by the first watt F1J to see how it does with the he-8 so I went ahead and located one .

 

[JoelT]

Interesting to see the HE-6 pop up. I have one showing up Monday for evaluation with the Ragnarok - definitely looking forward to comparing it to the HD800 & the LCD-3. It seems that most folks are using speakers amps to power it, but the Rag certainly should have synergy with the HE-6 given it's power output. Should be fun to hear...I'm hoping for good things, as it's relatively cheap in terms of a current flagship (can be found open box or lightly used for 3 figures).

 

[cizx]

Yeah, I think HE-6 is going to be my next trial phone.  After Yggdrasil, I think.  Hopefully hifiman will have a successor out by then. 

 

[kothganesh]

Marco pretty much summed it up for the HE-6 so my additional penny's worth....I just removed the grills (called it the subtraction mod 

) and hooked it to my receiver's speaker taps. I have the Mojo but it did not give me the visceral effect that a 30 year old receiver gives me (but that's my own view).
 
Cizx, since your average holding period of a HP is like 1.33 months 

, give the 6 a shot. FWIW, I got one of these from an open box sale from Razordog Audio for about $900 so keep your eye peeled...

 

[cizx]

  Cizx, since your average holding period of a HP is like 1.33 months 

nowhere near that long.

 

[aive]

Originally Posted by marcoarment /img/forum/go_quote.gif
...
 
You already have the Rag — give the HE-6 a shot.

 
Great impressions - I think you might have saved me from getting the HD800 by going straight to the HE6.
 
Are you able to better define how the HE6's midrange performance is better than the LCD3F? Just curious as I own the LCD3F and haven't particularly noticed any deficiencies in that area (but you don't know what you don't know is the saying)...

 

[FredrikT92]

HE-560 and HE-6 comparison would be awesome to hear. 

 

[nigeljames]

Most people seem to think that the Mjolnir + HE6 is a bad combination. Most common complaints seem to be lacking body and dynamics and some harshness.
 
If the Rag is no better, hard to believe given it seems to be a significantly superior amp with almost twice the power, then I will be very happy to stick with my Master-6.

 

[marcoarment]

   
Great impressions - I think you might have saved me from getting the HD800 by going straight to the HE6.
 
Are you able to better define how the HE6's midrange performance is better than the LCD3F? Just curious as I own the LCD3F and haven't particularly noticed any deficiencies in that area (but you don't know what you don't know is the saying)...

 
Sure. A friend and I went back and forth with his LCD3F and my HE-6 one night and we both agreed that the differences were pretty obvious and unambiguous, and actually are exactly what you'd expect from their frequency-response differences, which we looked up after forming our opinions: (note that the graph is for a 3, but we tested the 3F — I don't expect a noticeable difference in FR between the two)
 

In short, the LCD3/3F bass reaches a bit lower (barely noticeable, but noticeable), the little crossover at 1 kHz is apparent in the HE-6 having a bit stronger midrange presence relative to the bass volume, and the treble is noticeably rolled off in the LCD compared to the HE-6's more even and crystal-clear treble. Both are great headphones; which one you prefer will depend on whether you like a "warm" rolled-off or "crisp" upper end, and less significantly, whether you like a pronounced midrange. I didn't think I cared about midrange until I heard the HE-6 — now I love it, when done well (which is rare).
 
Whether you like rolled-off or crisp highs (with both being valid preferences that should lead to very different recommendations) is a distinction that too many reviews fail to make.
 

  Most people seem to think that the Mjolnir + HE6 is a bad combination. Most common complaints seem to be lacking body and dynamics and some harshness.
 
If the Rag is no better, hard to believe given it seems to be a significantly superior amp with almost twice the power, then I will be very happy to stick with my Master-6.

 
Again, this is all my opinion based on having the Rag here for a few days and directly A/Bing it (unblinded, given) with my Mjolnir. I could not hear a noticeable difference, and I also don't perceive the Mj to be lacking when driving the HE-6 compared to the EF-6 I rented with it originally or the WA5, Taurus MkII, and unknown giant speaker amp I recently tried with my HE-6 at a meet.
 
Given how much HE-6 owners are praising the Rag, especially people who've tried many amps with them, I think the far more likely explanation isn't that the Rag and Mj are both bad, but that they're both good, and people may just be assuming the Mj is bad because it's cheap (relative to other HE-6 amps).
 
It certainly wouldn't be the first time people assumed or even perceived false deficiencies in audio gear that correlated to price, or deficiencies in a piece of gear after a higher-end model is released that they were perfectly happy with before.
 
I ended up returning the Rag — it needed service for shipping damage anyway, but I converted it to a return after realizing I was enjoying the Mj's relative simplicity, smaller size, and cooler temperature more than the value I was getting from having Rag's speaker and single-ended outputs. (Schiit was way too nice about the return and refused to charge me the restocking fee, which I was volunteering to pay since I felt guilty about it, since it was returned initially for repair. I'm considering it a few hundred bucks worth of logical credit to the next thing they release that I want — maybe a future Mjolnir 2 with the crazy new balanced topology that Jason mentioned here.) It's a fantastic amp that was simply a poor fit for my priorities.

 

[cizx]

Why don't you expect a significant difference in freq. resp. between -3 and -3F when lots of people say there's a significant difference?

 

[mkozlows]

  Again, this is all my opinion based on having the Rag here for a few days and directly A/Bing it (unblinded, given) with my Mjolnir. I could not hear a noticeable difference, and I also don't perceive the Mj to be lacking when driving the HE-6 compared to the EF-6 I rented with it originally or the WA5, Taurus MkII, and unknown giant speaker amp I recently tried with my HE-6 at a meet.

 
I find this attitude to be refreshing and also very true, which makes me curious -- do you think the Mjolnir is a noticeable upgrade from the Asgard in the way that you didn't think the Ragnarok was from the Mjolnir? Or is it only something you need if you're driving demanding headphones like the HE-6?

 

[BirdManOfCT]

   
The HD 800 always sounds at least very good, but the endless hoops and voodoo people jump through — myself previously included — to try (and often fail) to make it sound great say more about the HD 800 than the gear. Given your stated opinions in this thread, I suggest you buy or rent (from The Cable Company) an HE-6. (Disclaimer: I love my HE-6 so much that I sold my previously purchased HD 800 and entire Stax SR-009 setup after renting and then buying one.)
 
The HE-6 is the most undeservedly overlooked high-end headphone on the market today due to its power needs. With most headphones, powerful amps really are optional and the gains are minor. With the HE-6, only a very small handful of amps on the market are even fair to evaluate it with, and the difference with lower-powered amps is huge — unlike so much in this business, it's clear as day in an A/B test. So an HE-6 requires an amp purchase for most people, with the cheapest suitable amp I've found being the Schiit Mjolnir at $750 (which I use, and bought used here for $550). Anyway, almost every HE-6 review with a suitable amp praises it in almost every regard, but puts "needs a very powerful amp" as the one major con (despite this also applying to every electrostatic and a couple other orthos).
 
Well, you already have a Ragnarok, which many would consider the best amp in the world for the HE-6. You could get what some — myself included — would say is the best overall headphone/amp combo in the world, even better than the SR-009, for $1300 more (and likely sell your HD 800 for most of that).
 
(Personally, I A/B-ed the Ragnarok with the Mjolnir on my HE-6 and couldn't reliably tell them apart — I really wanted the Rag to blow me away, but the simple fact is that the Mjolnir is already an insanely great amp, and most HE-6 amp snobs don't give it enough credit. The Rag's primary advantage over it — in my opinion, please don't set me on fire — is the many more input and output options, not a massive sound-quality increase.)
 
Where the properly amped HE-6 really shines over the HD 800 and SR-009 is in what you're saying you want:
 
1. It has much more full bass. Not like Beats or anything, just proper bass.
 
2. It achieves incredible midrange presence, treble detail, and speed, like the 009 (and unlike every Audeze I've heard, including the 3F), but without the harshness that usually comes with that. I don't know how, but it does.
 
3. It sounds better on more music, including on lower-quality recordings. Again, I don't know how. It just does.
 
You already have the Rag — give the HE-6 a shot.

Wait a minute -- you're passing on one set of headphones because of the difficulty of matching components, only to settle on another set of headphones that's even MORE difficult to match?

 

[marcoarment]

  Why don't you expect a significant difference in freq. resp. between -3 and -3F when lots of people say there's a significant difference?

 
Again, it was simply my guess based on the nature of the Fazor modification and how closely the FR graph seemed to correlate with what we heard on his 3F. Whether there's a big difference or not is irrelevant to the point I was making — the HE-6 and LCD-3F are both fantastic, but your preference will depend on whether you like a bit more bass, rolled-off highs, and slightly less midrange presence (3F) or not (HE-6).
 

   
I find this attitude to be refreshing and also very true, which makes me curious -- do you think the Mjolnir is a noticeable upgrade from the Asgard in the way that you didn't think the Ragnarok was from the Mjolnir? Or is it only something you need if you're driving demanding headphones like the HE-6?

 
It's hard to compare Mj/Asgard directly since Mj is balanced-only and Asgard is SE-only, and the HE-6 is my only balanced headphone. I'm sure there are differences between amps, but I've always had a hard time hearing them between amps that I choose (maybe because I avoid tubes and anything considered significantly non-neutral) except when one is clearly underpowered for the load.
 
I can at least confirm, using the HE-6's balanced-to-SE adapter, that Asgard 2 and Lyr 2 are both definitely underpowered for the HE-6. But they don't claim otherwise. Really, the HE-6 is a special case that you can't fairly judge most amps with except those that can truly put out 5W+ into 50 ohms over a balanced connection, and the number of those is very small.
 
If you're looking to power the HE-6, I don't think you need to look past the Mjolnir if you only need to drive balanced headphones, or the Ragnarok if you want SE and speakers too. You can look past them, but I'd say doing so is completely optional and not likely to be noticeably better beyond placebo. (please don't set me on fire)

 

[marcoarment]

 
Wait a minute -- you're passing on one set of headphones because of the difficulty of matching components, only to settle on another set of headphones that's even MORE difficult to match?

I wouldn't say the HE-6 is difficult to match. Give it truly enough power and it's happy. That's it.
 
Matching amps to the HD 800, on the other hand, is much more complex because it's not as simple as "more power".
 
edit:
 
I think there's a tendency around this hobby to declare certain headphones as the unqualified "best" (not taking into account things like people's different preferred tonal balances), and if someone expresses any disappointment in one of the "best" headphones, everyone immediately starts blaming their other equipment.
 
Like "Well, if you aren't blown away by your new HD 800, you need to upgrade your amp/DAC/cables/encoding/software/brain/taste." The possibility that e.g. the HD 800 may not be as good as its reputation suggests, or may not be as universal of a recommendation as people think, is suppressed far down the list of possible explanations.
 
So many people get into this rabbit hole of upgrades to everything else in pursuit of the sound they really want, possibly never realizing, or realizing many months/years and dollars down the road, that they really just bought the wrong headphone, and maybe the common wisdom doesn't fit their tastes exactly, or maybe the common wisdom is outdated or incorrect.
 
I'm curious to see what the common wisdom says about the HD 800 in retrospect when it's no longer the top of Sennheiser's lineup.