This is my first post to Head-Fi in a few months, mainly since having found audio nirvana in my Sennheiser HD 800 / HDVD 800 combo.
I felt inspired to post some impressions of the IE 800 to my social media channels a few minutes ago and thought I'd share them here:
Just taking a moment to share my appreciation for one of my favourite things, my Sennheiser IE 800 IEMs. I bought these over a year ago from Audio Sanctuary in the UK and have since used the IE 800 almost constantly to savour my favourite music. Without being overly analytical, I just love their perfect fidelity and versatility with every genre of music I feed them, largely due to their very neutral sound signature which is also hugely revealing of the micro details on recordings.
As phenomenal as they are as a tool to savour recorded music, I wondered how effective they would be as an IEM for monitoring when performing as a musician and had a hunch that they would be just as good. Well, a few weeks ago my expectations were met and surpassed when I used these as my IEMs during the Dr. John Cooper Clarke and former Stranglers frontman Hugh Cornwell "This Time It's Personal" UK tour on which I had such great fun drumming. With the appropriate ear-bud size selected the IE 800 provided great noise cancellation and hearing protection from outside sounds and facilitated me having a pristine monitor mix every night.
I can't recommend this headphone enough. Not only are they built like a tank (once when I met their visionary designer Axel Grell, he stood on an IE 800 to prove that point), all parts are user-replaceable and Sennheiser's customer service is outstanding, so investment in headphones such as the IE 800 is in my humble opinion - as someone who has tried and reviewed many of the world's finest headphones - well worth it and would most probably result in the only headphones you'd ever want or need for the rest of your life.
I think the Sennheiser IE 800 are amazing and I highly recommend them!
One final point of note: if you are considering buying an IE 800 (go on, you're worth it!) you may see that there are many on eBay at a fraction of the price of the Sennheiser RRP. But please don't be fooled - even though such eBay IE 800s, which are copies of the official Sennheiser IE 800 and appear almost identical visually and actually sound pretty good, I attest that the real deal IE 800 straight from Sennheiser are far superior in every way.
Much love.
xWx