marcoarment
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2014
- Posts
- 181
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- 213
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.