[purrin]

Ok. So I was debating where to put this post or whether to start a new thread, but in the end, I decided to put this here; because ultimately, this is about the HD800. A variety of topics and gear are touched upon: tube rolling, the Eddie Current Super 7 prototype, the Eddie Current Balancing Act, the PS Audio Perfectwave DAC, the QLS QA350, balanced headphone connections, optical and USB connections, the importance of the source, the HD800's 6kHz peak, and the HD800's bass potential. And finally, the big picture, how crucial it is to setup all components to play with each other.
 
Since the Super 7 was a prototype, no specific comments about it's sound quality will be made other than the in the context of our tube rolling to give it similar tonality to my amp (we may hint at a few things or sneak in some general comments though.) It's our understanding the production version will have different output transformers. The unit you see in the photo has the ZDT transformers if I am not mistaken.

The story basically starts something like this: Anaxilus says "Dude, the HD800 out of the Super 7 doesn't sound like how it did at the Venice meet. It has too much treble and bass isn't the same [as your setup.]" I will now let Anaxilus speak for himself when he catches up on this thread.
 
So I told him to come on over and we'd figure this out. We grabbed a few affordable 6SN7's in the two weeks beforehand. Our goal: How to get the HD800 sound "right" on a potential setup he was considering. To me, this meant: Let's get this thing to have similar or better tonality than my setup with ECBA with the HD800. For the record, I am running the solid plate EML 300B tubes and a Brimar 6SN7GT black glass black base with wings.
 

 
So at the end of the day, and it was a long day, we learned the following:
 

• Using the tubes we had available, the Super 7 prototype sounded most similar in tone to my setup with this combination of output tubes: 2 x EH6SN7, 2 x Sylvania 6SN7GTA chome-top, and 2 x russian Tung-Sol 6SN7GTB. This setup yielded slightly more bass in the lowest octave compared to the ECBA. We also used a variety of driver tubes: RCA VT-231 gray glass, Ken-Rad VT-231, and the aforementioned Brimar. Rolling different combinations of tubes was tedious but very rewarding. [8/26 UPDATE: 4x KenRads, 2x russian Tungsol GTB for the output tubes]
• Using combinations of different tubes, we were able emphasize their strengths while minimizing their weaknesses. For example, the EH tubes, by themselves, have good strong bass, but everything else is crap - they sound muddy. The Sylvania chrome-tops are extended and clear, but their bass is leaner. The russian Tung-sols, well, are just average all around with good bass. In the end, we used one pair of each. The EH brought out the bass necessary for the HD800s, the Sylvania cleared up the mud, and the Tung-Sol served as the moderator between these two. Running two pairs of one type of tube seemed to bring it's qualities (good and bad) out too much.
• The HD800s needed the JaZZ / Arnaud modification to tame the peak and the brightness. I was running a "light" variation of this mod using felt on my phones with the ECBA. Anaxilus used a thicker 2mm foam material on his headphones. I liked what I heard with the foam and will definitely test this material with my own 'phones. I know it sounds dumb. Why does a $1400 headphone require "mods?" My only answer is "Why do people modify their 'Vettes, NSXs, and 911s?
• Balanced output sounded better. There is greater bass extension, more air, and increased extraction of low level information on both the BA and the S7. These are not fully balanced amps in the traditional sense. The implementation of balanced here is that the grounds for each channel are isolated from each other. Positive and negative wires go into each end of an output transformer. The grounds are not common. I don't know why this (sounding better) happens, why it affects the bass, but it just does.
• The optical connection of the PS Audio Perfectwave DAC sounds lean. This connection requires re-sampling feature to be turned on.  
• The PWD USB input is better than the optical input. It actually doesn't sound that bad. It is slightly warmer and has better ability to resolve low level information. We can disable re-sampling and run at the "Native" setting without negative results. The differences are slight though.
• Ethernet to the PS Audio Bridge was far superior to both optical or USB. Warmer sound and huge difference in resolution. It's brings a "reality" factor into play and pushes the DAC up into another class. The S7 was sufficiently transparent for us to hear these differences.
• The source matters. Doh! I guess I just kind of took this for granted. But something that really got ingrained into my head today is that the source is indeed just as critical as the rest of the chain. If the source doesn't have it, no downstream component is going to be able to reproduce or reconstruct what it doesn't have in the first place. Once we got the S7 tuned with the HD800s, we switched the source from the PWD to QLS QA350. Using the headphone out of the QA350, we lose the lowest bass octave, quite a lot of punch and slam, and a lot of resolution. Using the QA350's line out, we lose all bass. It just becomes weak. However, the resolution isn't too shabby. As an aside, I can't figure out why the QA350 is like this when feeding these amps. It uses the same DAC and op-amp chip as the AMB γ2, but unlike the QA350, the γ2 is really powerful down low. Probably comes down to the execution.
• The S7 and ECBA are not that far apart. Without being too specific, it's matter of refinement, that is in the sense of a higher-end Grado commonly being described as more "refined" than lower end Grado's. That being said, there are certain things that the ECBA does so well that the S7 cannot come close.
• So I guess the moral of the story is: Everything counts in large amounts. Dammit, why I am thinking Depeche Mode? (And no, we didn't use any of their material.)

 
P.S. Before we began, Anaxilus' setup with HD800s sounded like ....

 

[Mr.Sneis]

Apologies if this has been covered.  Is there any evidence of production differences in sound between recent production and early production batches?  Also anyone send in their early model for spring creak issues?  What ended up happening?
 
Thanks in advance.

 

[grokit]

I don't know about actual evidence, but I had an early pair (14xx) that fatigued me with their shrillness and lack of body on the low end, and my newer pair (109xx) has remedied these issues for me. In fact I greatly prefer them to my LCD-2 (rev.1) now, when it used to be the other way around.

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

Apologies if this has been covered.  Is there any evidence of production differences in sound between recent production and early production batches?  Also anyone send in their early model for spring creak issues?  What ended up happening?
 
Thanks in advance.

Spring creak?  The only thing I worry about is paint chipping.

 

[pumbaa32]

Quote:

I don't know about actual evidence, but I had an early pair (14xx) that fatigued me with their shrillness and lack of body on the low end, and my newer pair (109xx) has remedied these issues for me. In fact I greatly prefer them to my LCD-2 (rev.1) now, when it used to be the other way around.

My pair was an early production too (21xx), at first 50-70h they did have shrillness and thin-body in their sound, but after 150h my pair sounds much better. Except for rock music, i would take the hd800 over my LCD rev2 (and my old rev1 too) any day on any amp i owned or had a chance to test. The sound from these HD800s is so airy, so detailed, and the sense of space is out of this world. Side by side, to my ears, the LCD 2 sounded muffed, unnatural because of its dark signature and the fit is awful.

 

[.Sup]

Quote:

Apologies if this has been covered.  Is there any evidence of production differences in sound between recent production and early production batches?  Also anyone send in their early model for spring creak issues?  What ended up happening?
 
Thanks in advance.

Yes I have that issue, early serial. Its the part that goes from the cup into the headband. Not sure what to do. If I move it usually makes the sound.

 

[purrin]

dallan's HD800s are well below s/n 1000 (I think it was ~500.) I compared with mine s/n 10XXX (took out the mods), and it was quite evident his pair had more edge to it. The variable is dallan's HD800 had an aftermarket cable to reduce the brightness / bump-up bass. He said they were almost unlistenable before the cable mods.
 
There was another HD800 I compared to with s/n 1XXXX. It sounded similar to mine. I think Anax's pair is a high serial # too and is also similar sounding to mine. 

 

[.Sup]

Quote:

dallan's HD800s are well below s/n 1000 (I think it was ~500.) I compared with mine s/n 10XXX (took out the mods), and it was quite evident his pair had more edge to it. The variable is dallan's HD800 had an aftermarket cable to reduce the brightness / bump-up bass. He said they were almost unlistenable before the cable mods.
 
There was another HD800 I compared to with s/n 1XXXX. It sounded similar to mine. I think Anax's pair is a high serial # too and is also similar sounding to mine. 

Which aftermarket cable did he have purrin?

 

[purrin]

DHC Complement full size HD800 SE (from his profile). I'm pretty sure those were it. I'm a retard when it comes to cables.

 

[.Sup]

Quote:

DHC Complement full size HD800 SE (from his profile). I'm pretty sure those were it. I'm a retard when it comes to cables.

Thanks. I remember when I had HD600 and Cardas cable did exactly what you said his cable did to HD800- reduced treble and added bass.

 

[MacedonianHero]

Quote:

DHC Complement full size HD800 SE (from his profile). I'm pretty sure those were it. I'm a retard when it comes to cables.

 


Quote:

Thanks. I remember when I had HD600 and Cardas cable did exactly what you said his cable did to HD800- reduced treble and added bass.

Pretty much sums up my experiences with my aftermarket cables and my HD800s. My stock cable has sat in my HD800's box for over a year.

 

[Mr.Sneis]

Quote:

dallan's HD800s are well below s/n 1000 (I think it was ~500.) I compared with mine s/n 10XXX (took out the mods), and it was quite evident his pair had more edge to it. The variable is dallan's HD800 had an aftermarket cable to reduce the brightness / bump-up bass. He said they were almost unlistenable before the cable mods.
 
There was another HD800 I compared to with s/n 1XXXX. It sounded similar to mine. I think Anax's pair is a high serial # too and is also similar sounding to mine. 

Awesome responses!  So are you suggesting the differences in cable seem more to attribute to perceived sound differences than the drivers/cups themselves?
 

 

[MacedonianHero]

Quote:

Awesome responses!  So are you suggesting the differences in cable seem more to attribute to perceived sound differences than the drivers/cups themselves?
 

I did find that my DHC cable took the "edge" off the treble and made my HD800s sound more "organic" and fluid. I did seem to lose some detail, but I'd take the tonal change over a slight loss in detail any day with the HD800s. I did forget to mention that I'm now running them balanced (Cardas Gold cable) and find the changes even more pronounced. The HD800s really respond well IMO to being run balanced (even a bit more bass, more forward treble and less strident treble).
 
http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare.php?graphType=0&graphID[]=863&graphID[]=2321
 
 

 

[Anaxilus]

Yes, I'm a 1XXXX.

 

[purrin]

 
Quote:

Awesome responses!  So are you suggesting the differences in cable seem more to attribute to perceived sound differences than the drivers/cups themselves?
 

Hard to say. If dallan had used the stock cable, then in theory his HD800s would have been even worse (more lean and edgy) compared to my more recent production HD800s. I do know for sure the JaZZ/Arnaud mods make a significant (measurable) difference compared to cables. 
 
I'm using the stock cable terminated into balanced. I re-terminated Anax's Twag silver cable to balanced too. There was no difference when I compared the Twag and stock cables on my headphones - keeping in mind that these two cables are probably more similar than different - on the detailed / bright side. As I said, I'm a retard when it comes to cables.