[afhole]

Been looking for a balanced cable upgrade for a while now for my HD800 to use with my WA22, spotted this new official Sennheiser balanced cable which apparently is available in the next month or so:
http://www.custom-cable.co.uk/sennheiser-hd800-xlr-connecting-cable.html
Has anyone heard much about this cable? At £250 for a 3m lead it's certainly at the more reasonably priced end of the HD800 balanced cable market, I'm interested to see a review of it, and comparison to other third party options. Thoughts?

 

[FraGGleR]

Most people get aftermarket cables because they don't think the stock one sounds good enough.  
 
This is just a stock cable with an XLR connector on it.  I'd seriously look into getting someone to reterminate your stock cable instead of get this if you think the stock cable is fine.  Should save you a bunch of money.
 
For the price, you can get a number of well received aftermarket cables.  I'd look around more.

 

[GSARider]

Those at the London meet had the opportunity to listen to the new cable that's coming out soon and the consensus was that it is good, I have one on order from custom cable.

Axel Grell from Sennheiser was at the meet also and I followed up with him after the meet via email, this is what he has to say about the new cable...

The cable itself is the same cable as the HD 800 cable with the 6.3mm plug. For each side there are 2 silver plated OFC conductors. They are shielded against electro-magnetical interference. In the 6.3 mm version the "minus" pole of each side is connected to ground, in the XLR version each of them is connected to an individual pole of the XLR plug. The signal transmission from the DAC or analog input is completely balanced (or symmetrical). The inverted signal is subtracted from the signal in the voice coil of the HD 800.
What we measure is: better signal separation, less distortion and less interference when the balanced amplifier and cable is used.
What we hear is: more detail and we listen more deeply into the room...

The XLR connector is the nicest XLR connector on the market (it is a matter of taste It matches perfectly with the surface of the HDVx amplifiers.

 

[afhole]

Quote:

For the price, you can get a number of well received aftermarket cables.  I'd look around more.

Can you recommend any 3m/10ft balanced cables around the £250 price range? Most of the ones I find are getting of for twice that.
 
Edit: there's this one at £300 but I can't find many reviews: http://www.custom-cable.co.uk/adl-ihp-35h-xlr-sennheiser-hd800-balanced-upgrade-cable.html
 
Then obviously the Cardas I've seen at £325. It shouldn't matter I suppose but the Cardas never looks very sturdily constructed though it does seem to get positive reviews.

 

[minimus]

I would head over to Headphone Lounge.  Looks like you can get a 10 ft balanced cable for your HD800s for about $250, a lot less than your 250 GBP budget.
 
I own one of their balanced JH16 IEM cables, which cost about a third as much as most of the competition but outperforms others I have owned pretty substantially.  (For example, it sounds significantly better than the $300 Whiplash Audio cable I also own.)  Headphone Lounge will be my first and only stop for any future aftermarket cable I need to buy.

 

[afhole]

Quote:

I would head over to Headphone Lounge.  Looks like you can get a 10 ft balanced cable for your HD800s for about $250, a lot less than your 250 GBP budget.
 
I own one of their balanced JH16 IEM cables, which cost about a third as much as most of the competition but outperforms others I have owned pretty substantially.  (For example, it sounds significantly better than the $300 Whiplash Audio cable I also own.)  Headphone Lounge will be my first and only stop for any future aftermarket cable I need to buy.

That looks promising, thanks minimus.
Which cable did you go for? Silver, Copper or Hybrid? I don't get what difference it would make, I don't really understand.
I believe silver is the best conductor but mixing silver and copper just seems odd, I wonder what benefit it brings. Even the silver cable is only silver coated copper - I would imagine that pure silver cable would be the ideal conductor.
 
As an aside this cable will be for the HD800/WA22 combo so I'm wondering whether to bother with XLR terminations? From what I gather the XLR outputs and the TRS output on the WA22 output identical unbalanced signals anyway. Which also makes me wonder whether to get an aftermarket cable at all as it'd only be the cable that could make any difference/improvement rather than the switch to XLR.

 

[saxman717]

Currently have a Norne Vanquish cable and am acquiring an HDVA600 amp for my HD800.  Is there a benefit to upgrade to the CH 800 S over the Norne cable for this pairing?