[jynxed]

yeah I agree. They look fantastic in person.

Congratulations! I have had mine for a couple of weeks now and love them. I have been rediscovering my music collection coming from a pair of fidelio x2. My husband has used my x2's alot however, he can not listen to the hd800's because they have too much detail.

I quite like the design of them too, but I can see how alien they must have looked when 1st released as the design is very different to anything other than the 700's. Industrial design apart though...the comfort is just amazing, the most comfortable headphone I have tryed, almost can forget you are wearing them.

 

[Shetzu]

Congratulations! I have had mine for a couple of weeks now and love them. I have been rediscovering my music collection coming from a pair of fidelio x2. My husband has used my x2's alot however, he can not listen to the hd800's because they have too much detail.

I quite like the design of them too, but I can see how alien they must have looked when 1st released as the design is very different to anything other than the 700's. Industrial design apart though...the comfort is just amazing, the most comfortable headphone I have tryed, almost can forget you are wearing them.

Hey. Thanks and reciprocate the wishes belated of course. Yes the X2 has a very good sound I would call them my balanced HP. I enjoy them a lot. For me when I saw the 800 i always thought to myself I am surely going to get my hands on them and finally I belled the cat. Yes indeed they are the most comfortable HP. So tell me which amp you are using with 800. I am gathering all information I can get and later decide for a good compatible amp for them. Cheers. 

 

[jynxed]

My intention was similar to yours, just take time and look around for something that worked well, buying something like a mojo or iFi to power them in the mean time, whilst researched / demo'ed. However, I was offered a deal I couldnt turn down HD800, HDVD800,ballanced cable and all connectors £1200 all in from a local shop. It was used but only a month or 2 old, so pristine, the guy who owned them was his friend, who had sadly passed away. So was selling them cheap for the familly who just wanted them to go to a good home. I was even able to register them with Sennheiser. So I have a pretty amazing souvinear to take home to the UK from my 4 month stay in Sweden!
 
The amp compliments the HD800's really well, I proberbly would have saved up and bought something different if the offer was not so stupidly good as the dac is kind of average. His top recomendations if I wanted something new was Hugo and Woo products, he even recomended the Mojo as a cheaper alternative if I wanted to come in under the £1200 mark. At that price though I feel I would have been daft to turn the package down.

 

[dharma]

   
I think the Apex lineup of amplifiers more than covers all aspects and forget the $10k pinnacle, to which there is no equal other than a crayon amp. Just the Peak/Volcano will best most balanced amps out there. If your amp has balanced and SE options yes the balanced will more likely sound more preferable but as far as balanced overall is better than SE is just silly imo.

 
Thank You all! My English is little 'broken', so I needed to 'crossreference' my interests about 'balanced/non-balanced' debates from different threads...
also got new viewpoints (in upper-mentioned iFi thread) related to your suggested 'post links'...
Thanks!

 

[Shetzu]

  My intention was similar to yours, just take time and look around for something that worked well, buying something like a mojo or iFi to power them in the mean time, whilst researched / demo'ed. However, I was offered a deal I couldnt turn down HD800, HDVD800,ballanced cable and all connectors £1200 all in from a local shop. It was used but only a month or 2 old, so pristine, the guy who owned them was his friend, who had sadly passed away. So was selling them cheap for the familly who just wanted them to go to a good home. I was even able to register them with Sennheiser. So I have a pretty amazing souvinear to take home to the UK from my 4 month stay in Sweden!
 
The amp compliments the HD800's really well, I proberbly would have saved up and bought something different if the offer was not so stupidly good as the dac is kind of average. His top recomendations if I wanted something new was Hugo and Woo products, he even recomended the Mojo as a cheaper alternative if I wanted to come in under the £1200 mark. At that price though I feel I would have been daft to turn the package down.

I ma go for the tube amp. All say tube makes the Hd 800 sound fantastic. Something happened. It came as a boon in disguise. A friend of mine invited me to test his gear. That time i had chance to demo his HD 800 before I bought it. I got chance to test it with is Auralic Stack (taurus+Vega) & woo Audio Wa22 along with Chord Hugo. I got zapped and freaked out at how good the HD sounded. There itself I made my mind to buy the Hd 800 first which I did of course. Of course I am not in that high end league but I would go for a different Tube model soon.
Yes currently I have my Ifi Ican Micro to use it with the HD. 

 

[vc1187]

Originally Posted by ****zu /img/forum/go_quote.gif
  I ma go for the tube amp. All say tube makes the Hd 800 sound fantastic. Something happened. It came as a boon in disguise. A friend of mine invited me to test his gear. That time i had chance to demo his HD 800 before I bought it. I got chance to test it with is Auralic Stack (taurus+Vega) & woo Audio Wa22 along with Chord Hugo. I got zapped and freaked out at how good the HD sounded. There itself I made my mind to buy the Hd 800 first which I did of course. Of course I am not in that high end league but I would go for a different Tube model soon.
Yes currently I have my Ifi Ican Micro to use it with the HD. 

If you're looking for a good introduction tube amp for the HD800, I'd personally be looking at the Schiit Valhalla 2.
 
If you want to spend a little more money, I can think of no other tube amp that falls under the $1K range and synergizes amazingly with the HD800 other than the Glenn OTL (customizable to your personal configuration)  With the proper tube selection, you'll probably be looking closer to the $1K range or more though.
 
Of course, as always, YMMV.

 

[Taowolf51]

  I remember thinking that the HD800 looked terrible when it first came out. It looks much better in person compared to photos.
 

 
The HD800 does look pretty nice in person, definitely better than many other headphones out there. In black it looks so excellent, I'd love to colorware my pair at some point. The more you use them, the more you realize the HD800's design is all clever engineering, but they were able to make it look good on top of that.
 
Quote:

  If you're looking for a good introduction tube amp for the HD800, I'd personally be looking at the Schiit Valhalla 2.
 
If you want to spend a little more money, I can think of no other tube amp that falls under the $1K range and synergizes amazingly with the HD800 other than the Glenn OTL (customizable to your personal configuration)  With the proper tube selection, you'll probably be looking closer to the $1K range or more though.
 
Of course, as always, YMMV.

 
I can second the Valhalla 2 recommendation. Excellent amplifier at a surprisingly low price. It also provides a lot of headroom for the HD800. To put it one way, at 300-600 ohms (the HD800's impedance range), the Valhalla 2 and the Mjolnir 2 are just about even in power delivery.

 

[dharma]

iFi PRO series audio production is starting...The Pro series plans are the iDSD, iCAN, iUSB Power and others.
 
 
iCAN PRO Balanced Hybrid Headphone Amplifier (will be next month? available)
 
...instead of making their iCAN+iTUBE, they have chosen to combine the two into a single unit (mixing J-Fets, Bipolar transistors and Mosfets)….
This is going to be iFi Audio’s “all out assault at the state-of-the-art and drive every headphone out there”.
 
Key features are:

• Balanced Output options on 3-Pin & 4-Pin XLR plus 6.3mm Jack on front panel.
• Unbalanced outputs on 6.3mm Jack (direct) and two 3.5mm Jacks with built-in fixed iEMatch attenuation on front panel to drive IEMs etc. (same attenuation as in iDSD micro).
• Balanced XLR & RCA outputs on back can carry Headphone out signal (for use as preamp or with Electrostatic Energiser) or loop through signal from inputs (for use with external pre-amp).
• 1 pair of XLR Inputs and three pairs of RCA Inputs.
• 20V maximum output, > 600mW into 600 Ohm headphones, appx 16,000mW maximum into 16 Ohm and appx. 6,000 mW continuous output into 16Ohm.
• Three levels of gain selectable from Front Panel.
• Balanced ALPS Volume control with remote control.
• 3D Holographic® for Headphones and XBass® (each adjustable in 3-Levels + Off).
• Class A operation for all stages up to 240mW/600 Ohm, circuitry derived from professional tube-based studio equipment, implemented in a hybrid design mixing J-Fets, Bipolar transistors and Mosfets (as in Micro iCAN).
• Full Dual-Mono design including internal power supplies, supplied with 15V/4A Ultra Low Noise PSU (Generation 2 design as also the updated PSU for Micro).
• Optional Electrostatic Headphone Energiser in separate Box will be introduced, 1,700V Peak-Peak maximum output, Bias selectable for Stax HiFi/Pro, Sennheiser and others, Output Levels selectable, 3 * Stax Pro & HiFi Sockets fitted.

 
Balanced Headphone Amplifier
 
PowerSource:
External DC 15V/4A
Inputs (Back):
1 x XLR True Balanced Stereo
 
3 x RCA Stereo
Output Front):
4-Pin XLR Headphone Balanced
 
Dual 3-Pin XLR Headphone Balanced
 
6.3mm Headphone x2, single ended or balanced
 
6.3mm to 3.5mm adapter included
 
3.5mm iEMatch attenuated x 2
Output (back):
XLR selectable Loop or HP Out
 
RCA selectable Loop or HP Out
Volume Control:
Motorised ALPS 6-Way potentiometer in unique extended range series/shunt operation
 
 
Analogue Processing:
X-Bass, +3dB at 80Hz, 160Hz, 320Hz 
 
3D Sound. 30/45/60 Degrees virtual Speaker angle
Gain:
0dB, 12dB and 24dB user-selectable
Signal to Noise Ratio:
>117dB(A)
Total Harmonic Distortion (THD):
<0.003%
Frequency Response:
0.5Hz to 500KHz(-3dB)
Output Power (16R cont):
> 6,000mW
Output Voltage (600R):
>20V (Balanced); > 10V (single ended)
Size:
220mm x 62mm X 190mm (W X H X D including feet and connectors)
 
 
iCAN PRO thread started here (no impressions yet)
 
Pro series discussion thread here
 
About iFi (interview)

 

[jibzilla]

  If you're looking for a good introduction tube amp for the HD800, I'd personally be looking at the Schiit Valhalla 2.
 
If you want to spend a little more money, I can think of no other tube amp that falls under the $1K range and synergizes amazingly with the HD800 other than the Glenn OTL (customizable to your personal configuration)  With the proper tube selection, you'll probably be looking closer to the $1K range or more though.
 
Of course, as always, YMMV.

 
It is not so much tubes as ohm output. There are not allot of amps out there though that have ohm output without tubes. There is one person that I know of and that is Doug of ECP audio. Doug also does both SE and balanced but one or the other which to me is a very good idea. Just me but I like the fact that the apex amps are just SE and the schiit mojo is just balanced. I wish more amp makers would catch on to this.
 
I like the gsx-mk2 but all the bells and whistles kind of turned me off. At least for me no need for multi gain settings and balanced and SE headphone outputs. I didn't even like the iem mode in my Teton.

 

[whirlwind]

 

Originally Posted by ****zu /img/forum/go_quote.gif
  I ma go for the tube amp. All say tube makes the Hd 800 sound fantastic. Something happened. It came as a boon in disguise. A friend of mine invited me to test his gear. That time i had chance to demo his HD 800 before I bought it. I got chance to test it with is Auralic Stack (taurus+Vega) & woo Audio Wa22 along with Chord Hugo. I got zapped and freaked out at how good the HD sounded. There itself I made my mind to buy the Hd 800 first which I did of course. Of course I am not in that high end league but I would go for a different Tube model soon.
Yes currently I have my Ifi Ican Micro to use it with the HD. 

If you're looking for a good introduction tube amp for the HD800, I'd personally be looking at the Schiit Valhalla 2.
 
If you want to spend a little more money, I can think of no other tube amp that falls under the $1K range and synergizes amazingly with the HD800 other than the Glenn OTL (customizable to your personal configuration)  With the proper tube selection, you'll probably be looking closer to the $1K range or more though.
 
Of course, as always, YMMV.

I totally agree....Glenns OTL is such a nice warm analog sound and it is so transparent to tube rolling....I listen to mine everyday.

 

[Shetzu]

  If you're looking for a good introduction tube amp for the HD800, I'd personally be looking at the Schiit Valhalla 2.
 
If you want to spend a little more money, I can think of no other tube amp that falls under the $1K range and synergizes amazingly with the HD800 other than the Glenn OTL (customizable to your personal configuration)  With the proper tube selection, you'll probably be looking closer to the $1K range or more though.
 
Of course, as always, YMMV.

Yeah. I agree . I can  extend my budget a bit to check tube amps over 1000$ range.

 

[JamieMcC]

Originally Posted by ****zu /img/forum/go_quote.gif
  Yeah. I agree . I can  extend my budget a bit to check tube amps over 1000$ range.

 
Be sure to include the Bottlehead Mainline ($1200)  in your short list. I've been using mine for nearly a year now and it never fails to impress and make me grin each and every time I listen. Pairing it with the hd800 it makes for a killer combo.

 

[vc1187]

Originally Posted by ****zu /img/forum/go_quote.gif
  Yeah. I agree . I can  extend my budget a bit to check tube amps over 1000$ range.

FYI, whirlwind and I don't follow each other around or anything, we just consider the Glenn OTL such a great amp for the HD800 regardless of price bracket 

.
I think it's important to raise awareness for great amps that aren't as popular due to small production, otherwise people will seldom view them as options.
 

   
Be sure to include the Bottlehead Mainline ($1200)  in your short list. I've been using mine for nearly a year now and it never fails to impress and make me grin each and every time I listen. Pairing it with the hd800 it makes for a killer combo.

Bottlehead makes excellent sounding amps, just be sure you are ready to build it yourself or pay extra to have it built.

 

[shultzee]

Originally Posted by ****zu /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 

  If you're looking for a good introduction tube amp for the HD800, I'd personally be looking at the Schiit Valhalla 2.
 
If you want to spend a little more money, I can think of no other tube amp that falls under the $1K range and synergizes amazingly with the HD800 other than the Glenn OTL (customizable to your personal configuration)  With the proper tube selection, you'll probably be looking closer to the $1K range or more though.
 
Of course, as always, YMMV.

Yeah. I agree . I can  extend my budget a bit to check tube amps over 1000$ range.

Mjolnir 2 also is very good  with the HD800.

 

[pickleweed]

I've got a magni/modi schiit 2 stack, and use spotify as a source.  that setup sounds fine through my HE500, but would that be enough to utilize an hd800?  Or is the hd800 SO much more revealing and power hungry this wouldnt be a decent enough setup for it?