Today I listened to a pair of 1960's Telefunken E88CC tubes that I just received . Listened with the Lyr w/Bifrost-Uber stack, and both HD800 and LCD-3 headphones.
With the HD800 these tubes were crystal clear and precise in all frequencies. The soundstage was very wide and moderately deep. The first impression is that the bass is a little light, however, I believe that these tubes come closest (among the tubes I've heard) to delivering what is actually in the recording with no coloration. The bass is actually there when the recording delivers it. Mids and highs are so clear that they sound ethereal (when they are supposed to sound that way, as in certain passages in Mahler 8). Extremely dense and fast passages (Mahler 8) are rendered with awesome precision. My personal rating - 9.5/10, which puts them in my Top 5, probably #3 or #4.
With the LCD-3, chamber music and medium-sized baroque ensembles sounded excellent, with a little added warmth and smoothness when compared to the Senn's. However, with heavily orchestrated symphonic music (Mahler 8 - it doesn't get more heavily orchestrated than this), the LCD's sounded congested and just could not deliver enough separation and detail to satisfactorily render very dense passages (admittedly a very difficult task with Mahler 8, although the HD800's were superb). My personal rating - chamber/small to medium ensemble 8.5/10. Orchestral 6/10.
As an interesting aside, I think that the Telefunkens do not sound "tubey", which I guess is another way of saying that they seem to have no coloration. The reason I did not give them a 10/10 in my personal ranking system is that my highest ranked tubes (Amperex pinched waists; S&H CCa) have a special "something" in their presentations that makes them sound amazing to me. I can't quite define it, but I can hear and feel it. Call it "color" or "rendition" or whatever, but it is special, and frankly, for me, finding it is the whole reason to roll tubes.
In summary, the Telefunkens are top-class with HD800's if you want accuracy and detail. They are not for bassheads, and I can't speak to how they sound with genres of music other than classical.
