[lin0003]

  Yes, it's a great sound – although admittedly I haven't heard the HD800 with anything else yet. 
 
I'm keen to try a recommended amp (Like the black cube linear) with the Hugo as a DAC but it may only detract from this great combo.
 
Any thoughts here? 

If you are going with a full sized amp why not go with a full sized setup? 

 

[wink]

Quote:audiokid

 I decided to move the Stax 507/323s on and keep the HD800, driven by a Chord Hugo. 

The Stax SR-009 from a Stax SRM-323S is not in the same league as The Stax SR-009 from a KGSSHV.
 
I prefer my HD800 more than the SR-009/SRM323S combo.
The HD800 is not in the same league as the SR-009/KGSSHV combo.
 
btw, the HD800 are driven by a 80W/ch Class A balanced amp.

 

[audiokid]

I'd like to keep the Hugo as I do often listen in various places around the house. It's convenient. 
 
However, when at my desk I prefer having a proper volume control, and a neater set up, without the cables flying out everywhere. 

 

[audiokid]

  The Stax SR-009 from a Stax SRM-323S is not in the same league as The Stax SR-009 from a KGSSHV.
 
I prefer my HD800 more than the SR-009/SRM323S combo.
The HD800 is not in the same league as the SR-009/KGSSHV combo.
 
btw, the HD800 are driven by a 80W/ch Class A balanced amp.

Ah yes of course, I had the Kimik 007tII with the 009 although I understand some don't recommend that either. 

 

[zilch0md]

I need to revisit the HD800's when I demoed a pair with he Hugo they were new out of box and sounded bright/thin, how many hours do they need to settle down and produce their best, I have heard it can take a while?

 
Having checked your profile, I have to say that even with hundreds of hours of burn-in, the HD800 will always sound bright and thin to anyone accustomed to the Audeze LCD-3 - all else being the same. In the end, you might have to drive the HD800 with a different amp and perhaps a different DAC, as well, to move its signature in the direction of the Audeze sound, but you'll never actually get there. That's OK, though. In my opinion, and I'm saying this as a huge fan (four years and counting) of the LCD-2 rev.1, the HD800 brings so much to the table that you owe it to yourself to adapt to its signature. And I'm confident I would offer the same encouragement if I were an LCD-3 owner.
 
So, accepting the fact that the HD800 will always sound like an HD800 is the first hurdle for an Audeze-conditioned listener, but in addition to some recommendations made here in this thread for DAC/amp pairings and/or mods that can degrade or mask some of the HD800's most distinguishing virtues, there are several recommendations of DAC/amp pairings that can supply the HD800 with a signal that allows its virtues to thrive while simultaneously displacing undesirable traits inherent to the DAC/amp pairings lesser headphones fail to reveal. The HD800 reveals problems with anything and everything upstream, including your recordings, that a headphone like my LCD-2 rev. 1, easily masks - by nature of its lower resolution, shelved highs, and excessively energetic bass - traits that conspire to enable a greater number of recordings, DACs or amps to sound good - and really good if the amp can deliver at least 1000mW into its 50-Ohm load.  The HD800 will never mask anything that's wrong with upstream factors. 
 
Thus, accepting that the problems lie not with the HD800 (with the exception of a 6kHz spike in its FR), but rather with your upstream gear, is the second hurdle. Relative to my LCD-2 rev.1, your LCD-3 has a lot more finesse, with improvements across just about every parameter, but it's still much more like an LCD-2 rev.1 than it is similar to an HD800, when it comes to enabling or masking upstream problems.
 
I'm a solid state die hard, but for a guy who likes tube gear (again looking at your profile), I think you might be all set in selecting an amp for the HD800 - with the Woo 234s.  

  But I'm just guessing, really - having never heard it. I don't know what you're using as a DAC, but my HD800 journey took a huge jump in the right direction when I got the Metrum Octave MkII - a non-oversampling DAC that has done a lot to remove the digital harshness that I found so fatiguing when using any of my ESS9018 or ESS9023 (oversampling) DACs with the HD800.  Further improvements were made with using a low-feedback, single-ended Class A amp (the amazingly affordable NuForce HA-200).  I'm convinced that the HD800 is best served by non-oversampling DACs and by single-ended, Class A designs having low or zero negative feedback (not to mention by well-mastered recordings).
 
I'm convinced (by the writings of Cees Ruijtenberg and Nelson Pass, primarily) that the HD800's extreme resolution makes it less tolerant than most headphones of the complexity of distortions that can be heard in low level signals with amps that employ negative feedback.  I believe that's why so many tube amps (those having zero feedback) are successful with the HD800, where most solid state amps (those having lots of feedback) are not.  And it's those low level signals (easily corrupted by negative feedback) that contain a wealth of "data" our brains can process to discern the original timbre of instruments, the faint trailing edges of their decays, the natural, low-energy echos and micro-details that define the recording space, etc. - precious factors that can lend a "naturalness" to the reproduction.

 

Spoiler: Additional reading on the advantages of low- or zero-feedback, single-ended, Class A amps...

Here's a Nelson Pass article I found on the use of negative feedback:
 
https://passlabs.com/articles/audio-distortion-and-feedback
 
And here are some key excerpts:
 

At one extreme, the position is that “feedback makes amplifiers perfect”. At the other extreme, “feedback is a menacing succubus that sucks the life out of the music, leaving a dried husk, devoid of soul”.

 
Quote:

We use negative feedback in audio amplifiers to stabilize the gain, increase the bandwidth, lower the output impedance and lower the non-linear distortion. It is the aspect of reducing the distortion which tends to generate the most controversy – negative feedback is very successful in lowering distortion to very tiny numbers as measured by distortion analyzers.

 
Quote:

But when two tones are passed through a non-linear device, the amplitude of each of the tones is altered, or modulated by the other tone. The result is a series of “sidebands”, additional tones occurring at the sum and difference of the original frequencies. These additional tones are not generally musically related.

Worse, real music consists of very many tones passing through the nonlinear gain device, and each of these interacts with each of the others. The result will be very complex, and very unmusical.

 
Quote:

Negative feedback is good at reducing all forms of distortion, linear and nonlinear. As a concept, it's pretty straight-forward: You create one of more gain stages in series in order to get enough gain to equal the final gain figure you want plus the amount of feedback you think you want to use.

As the feedback figure exceeds 20 dB or so, you find that all the measurements will improve by the amount of additional feedback. If the open loop distortion of the amplifier is 5%, then 60 dB of feedback should make it about .005%. It's relatively easy to construct additional stages or to milk existing stages for more open loop gain, so why not 80 dB for .0005%?

Sounds like something for nothing, doesn't it?

Not quite. I think it's a bit more like a credit card – convenient if used wisely, but carrying interest payments and penalties when it's not.

 
Quote:

We have seen that nonlinear distortion becomes larger and more complex depending on the nonlinear characteristic of the stages, the number of cascaded stages, and the number of spectral elements in the music.

Negative feedback can reduce the total quantity of distortion, but it adds new components on its own, and tempts the designer to use more cascaded gain stages in search of better numbers, accompanied by greater feedback frequency stability issues.

The resulting complexity creates distortion which is unlike the simple harmonics associated with musical instruments, and we see that these complex waves can gather to create the occasional tsunami of distortion, peaking at values far above those imagined by the distortion specifications.
If you want the peak distortion of the circuit of figure 13 to remain below .1% with a complex signal, then you need to reduce it by a factor of about 3000. 70 dB of feedback would do it, but that does seems like a lot.

By contrast, it appears that if you can make a single stage operate at .01% 2nd harmonic with a single tone without feedback, you could also achieve the .1% peak in the complex IM test.

I like to think the latter would sound better.

 
 
Also consider the following excerpt from a thesis by Dan Cheever, on the use of negative feedback in amplifier design:
 
  Quoting http://www.dancheever.com/main/cheever_thesis_final.pdf
 

1. Introduction

In September on 1995, Stereophile, an established highly respected hi-fi magazine, ran a review of the Cary 300SEI, the first mainstream review of a single ended amplifier. In this design, a single output device is tasked with producing both polarities of the signal swing and had zero negative feedback.

Robert Hartley, one of the senior reviewers, states:

"The 300SEI communicated music in a way I’d never experienced before. There was an immediacy and palpability to the sound that was breathtaking- a musical immediacy the riveted my attention to the music. It reproduced massed violins with beauty unmatched by any electronics I’ve had in my system. It excelled in the most important areas: Harmonic rightness, total lack of grain, astonishing transparency, lifelike sound staging, and a palpability that made the instruments and voices exist in the room."

The article then follows with lab bench test results. They were easily the poorest result in every specification; output power, frequency response, output impedance, total harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion, and cross-talk.

"This amplifier measured so poorly as to be a joke...contrary to what we consider good technical performance. I’m convinced the 300SEI doesn’t harm the signal in ways push-pull amplifiers do, and that what the 300SEI does right is beyond the ability of today’s traditional measurements to quantify. I have become convinced single ended tube amplifiers sound fabulous in spite of their
distortion, not because of it."

 

Anyone not familiar with Robert Harley [not "Hartley", as spelled in Dan Cheever's thesis] should know that he commands a lot of respect in the HiFi community. He's the author of The Complete Guide to High End Audio and writes reviews for The Absolute Sound.
 
 
Here's another paper by Nelson Pass, this one on the merits of single-ended Class A amplifiers:
 
Quoting:  https://passlabs.com/articles/single-ended-class-a
 

Regardless of the type of gain device, in systems where the utmost in natural reproduction is the goal, simple single-ended Class A circuits are the topologies of choice.

 
 
And lastly, a Nelson Pass write-up on his Zen amplifier, which is I believe is well emulated (for headphones) by the $350 NuForce HA-200 that I'm currently using with the HD800:
 
   Qutoing http://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/art_zen_amp.pdf

Simplicity is not the only reason for the use of the single-ended topology. The characteristic of a single-ended gain stage is the most musically natural. Its asymmetry is similar to the compression / rarefaction characteristic of air, where for a given displacement slightly higher pressure is observed on a positive (compression) than on a negative (rarefaction). Air itself is observed to be a single-ended medium, where the pressure can become very high, but never go below 0. The harmonic distortion of such a medium is second harmonic, the least offensive variety.

It is occasionally misunderstood that single-ended amplifiers intentionally distort the signal with second harmonic in order to achieve a falsely euphonious character. This is not true. Low distortion is still an important goal, and it is my observation that deliberate injection of second harmonic into a musical signal does not improve the quality of sound.

Single-ended amplification is distinct from push-pull designs in that there is only one gain device for each gain stage, and it carries the full signal alone. Linear singleended designs operate only in Class A.
 

 

 
Mike

 

[longbowbbs]

 

I need to revisit the HD800's when I demoed a pair with he Hugo they were new out of box and sounded bright/thin, how many hours do they need to settle down and produce their best, I have heard it can take a while?

 
Having checked your profile, I have to say that even with hundreds of hours of burn-in, the HD800 will always sound bright and thin to anyone accustomed to the Audeze LCD-3 - all else being the same. In the end, you might have to drive the HD800 with a different amp and perhaps a different DAC, as well, to move its signature in the direction of the Audeze sound, but you'll never actually get there. That's OK, though. In my opinion, and I'm saying this as a huge fan (four years and counting) of the LCD-2 rev.1, the HD800 brings so much to the table that you owe it to yourself to adapt to its signature. And I'm confident I would offer the same encouragement if I were an LCD-3 owner.
 
So, accepting the fact that the HD800 will always sound like an HD800 is the first hurdle for an Audeze-conditioned listener, but in addition to some recommendations made here in this thread for DAC/amp pairings and/or mods that can degrade or mask some of the HD800's most distinguishing virtues, there are several recommendations of DAC/amp pairings that can supply the HD800 with a signal that allows its virtues to thrive while simultaneously displacing undesirable traits inherent to the DAC/amp pairings lesser headphones fail to reveal. The HD800 reveals problems with anything and everything upstream, including your recordings, that a headphone like my LCD-2 rev. 1, easily masks - by nature of its lower resolution, shelved highs, and excessively energetic bass - traits that conspire to enable a greater number of recordings, DACs or amps to sound good - and really good if the amp can deliver at least 1000mW into its 50-Ohm load.  The HD800 will never mask anything that's wrong with upstream factors. 
 
Thus, accepting that the problems lie not with the HD800 (with the exception of a 6kHz spike in its FR), but rather with your upstream gear, is the second hurdle. Relative to my LCD-2 rev.1, your LCD-3 has a lot more finesse, with improvements across just about every parameter, but it's still much more like an LCD-2 rev.1 than it is similar to an HD800, when it comes to enabling or masking upstream problems.
 
I'm a solid state die hard, but for a guy who likes tube gear (again looking at your profile), I think you might be all set in selecting an amp for the HD800 - with the Woo 234s.  

  But I'm just guessing, really - having never heard it. I don't know what you're using as a DAC, but my HD800 journey took a huge jump in the right direction when I got the Metrum Octave MkII - a non-oversampling DAC that has done a lot to remove the digital harshness that I found so fatiguing when using any of my ESS9018 or ESS9023 (oversampling) DACs with the HD800.  Further improvements were made with using a low-feedback, single-ended Class A amp (the amazingly affordable NuForce HA-200).  I'm convinced that the HD800 is best served by non-oversampling DACs and by single-ended, Class A designs having low or zero negative feedback (not to mention by well-mastered recordings).
 
I'm convinced (by the writings of Cees Ruijtenberg and Nelson Pass, primarily) that the HD800's extreme resolution makes it less tolerant than most headphones of the complexity of distortions that can be heard in low level signals with amps that employ negative feedback.  I believe that's why so many tube amps (those having zero feedback) are successful with the HD800, where most solid state amps (those having lots of feedback) are not.  And it's those low level signals (easily corrupted by negative feedback) that contain a wealth of "data" our brains can process to discern the original timbre of instruments, the faint trailing edges of their decays, the natural, low-energy echos and micro-details that define the recording space, etc. - precious factors that can lend a "naturalness" to the reproduction.

 

Spoiler: Additional reading on the advantages of low- or zero-feedback, single-ended, Class A amps...

Here's a Nelson Pass article I found on the use of negative feedback:
 
https://passlabs.com/articles/audio-distortion-and-feedback
 
And here are some key excerpts:
 

At one extreme, the position is that “feedback makes amplifiers perfect”. At the other extreme, “feedback is a menacing succubus that sucks the life out of the music, leaving a dried husk, devoid of soul”.

 
Quote:

We use negative feedback in audio amplifiers to stabilize the gain, increase the bandwidth, lower the output impedance and lower the non-linear distortion. It is the aspect of reducing the distortion which tends to generate the most controversy – negative feedback is very successful in lowering distortion to very tiny numbers as measured by distortion analyzers.

 
Quote:

But when two tones are passed through a non-linear device, the amplitude of each of the tones is altered, or modulated by the other tone. The result is a series of “sidebands”, additional tones occurring at the sum and difference of the original frequencies. These additional tones are not generally musically related.

Worse, real music consists of very many tones passing through the nonlinear gain device, and each of these interacts with each of the others. The result will be very complex, and very unmusical.

 
Quote:

Negative feedback is good at reducing all forms of distortion, linear and nonlinear. As a concept, it's pretty straight-forward: You create one of more gain stages in series in order to get enough gain to equal the final gain figure you want plus the amount of feedback you think you want to use.

As the feedback figure exceeds 20 dB or so, you find that all the measurements will improve by the amount of additional feedback. If the open loop distortion of the amplifier is 5%, then 60 dB of feedback should make it about .005%. It's relatively easy to construct additional stages or to milk existing stages for more open loop gain, so why not 80 dB for .0005%?

Sounds like something for nothing, doesn't it?

Not quite. I think it's a bit more like a credit card – convenient if used wisely, but carrying interest payments and penalties when it's not.

 
Quote:

We have seen that nonlinear distortion becomes larger and more complex depending on the nonlinear characteristic of the stages, the number of cascaded stages, and the number of spectral elements in the music.

Negative feedback can reduce the total quantity of distortion, but it adds new components on its own, and tempts the designer to use more cascaded gain stages in search of better numbers, accompanied by greater feedback frequency stability issues.

The resulting complexity creates distortion which is unlike the simple harmonics associated with musical instruments, and we see that these complex waves can gather to create the occasional tsunami of distortion, peaking at values far above those imagined by the distortion specifications.
If you want the peak distortion of the circuit of figure 13 to remain below .1% with a complex signal, then you need to reduce it by a factor of about 3000. 70 dB of feedback would do it, but that does seems like a lot.

By contrast, it appears that if you can make a single stage operate at .01% 2nd harmonic with a single tone without feedback, you could also achieve the .1% peak in the complex IM test.

I like to think the latter would sound better.

 
 
Also consider the following excerpt from a thesis by Dan Cheever, on the use of negative feedback in amplifier design:
 
  Quoting http://www.dancheever.com/main/cheever_thesis_final.pdf
 

1. Introduction

In September on 1995, Stereophile, an established highly respected hi-fi magazine, ran a review of the Cary 300SEI, the first mainstream review of a single ended amplifier. In this design, a single output device is tasked with producing both polarities of the signal swing and had zero negative feedback.

Robert Hartley, one of the senior reviewers, states:

"The 300SEI communicated music in a way I’d never experienced before. There was an immediacy and palpability to the sound that was breathtaking- a musical immediacy the riveted my attention to the music. It reproduced massed violins with beauty unmatched by any electronics I’ve had in my system. It excelled in the most important areas: Harmonic rightness, total lack of grain, astonishing transparency, lifelike sound staging, and a palpability that made the instruments and voices exist in the room."

The article then follows with lab bench test results. They were easily the poorest result in every specification; output power, frequency response, output impedance, total harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion, and cross-talk.

"This amplifier measured so poorly as to be a joke...contrary to what we consider good technical performance. I’m convinced the 300SEI doesn’t harm the signal in ways push-pull amplifiers do, and that what the 300SEI does right is beyond the ability of today’s traditional measurements to quantify. I have become convinced single ended tube amplifiers sound fabulous in spite of their
distortion, not because of it."

 

Anyone not familiar with Robert Harley [not "Hartley", as spelled in Dan Cheever's thesis] should know that he commands a lot of respect in the HiFi community. He's the author of The Complete Guide to High End Audio and writes reviews for The Absolute Sound.
 
 
Here's another paper by Nelson Pass, this one on the merits of single-ended Class A amplifiers:
 
Quoting:  https://passlabs.com/articles/single-ended-class-a
 

Regardless of the type of gain device, in systems where the utmost in natural reproduction is the goal, simple single-ended Class A circuits are the topologies of choice.

 
 
And lastly, a Nelson Pass write-up on his Zen amplifier, which is I believe is well emulated (for headphones) by the $350 NuForce HA-200 that I'm currently using with the HD800:
 
   Qutoing http://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/art_zen_amp.pdf

Simplicity is not the only reason for the use of the single-ended topology. The characteristic of a single-ended gain stage is the most musically natural. Its asymmetry is similar to the compression / rarefaction characteristic of air, where for a given displacement slightly higher pressure is observed on a positive (compression) than on a negative (rarefaction). Air itself is observed to be a single-ended medium, where the pressure can become very high, but never go below 0. The harmonic distortion of such a medium is second harmonic, the least offensive variety.

It is occasionally misunderstood that single-ended amplifiers intentionally distort the signal with second harmonic in order to achieve a falsely euphonious character. This is not true. Low distortion is still an important goal, and it is my observation that deliberate injection of second harmonic into a musical signal does not improve the quality of sound.

Single-ended amplification is distinct from push-pull designs in that there is only one gain device for each gain stage, and it carries the full signal alone. Linear singleended designs operate only in Class A.
 

 

 
Mike

I would concur completely with Mike's position on the HD800. As an HD800 fan first, I have struggled getting into the Audeze's! Not there yet. The chain is everything with the HD800's too. Generally tubes can tame some of the high end challenges from bright or poor recordings. The DAC match is also very critical. I have spent time with every top HP (Abyss, every Audeze model including all Fazor, Beyer, HiFi Man,etc) and for me nothing has supplanted the HD800's as my primary choice.

 

[RingingEars]

  The DAC match is also very critical. 

Agreed.
I had a Parasound and then a Teac UD-501 recently. Both sounded incredible with the HD800 through a Decware CSP3. Excellent controlled, tight lows, clear highs, very detailed, good separation. Unfortunately both had issues(read defects) and had to be returned.
Point is I am using a Fubar II Mk2 at the moment until my Geek pulse comes in. The Fubar is a good, inexpensive dac that has served me well for a few years, but the HD800 shows it's flaws with extreme prejudice. 
After hearing what a good dac can do in combo with the HD800 it's so hard to go back to a budget dac. It just sounds flat and unrefined. It's going to be a long winter until the Pulse shows up. 

 

 

[dxanex]

Has ColorWare ever done any promotions or sales on the HD 800 paint job for current owners?

 

[frankrondaniel]

  Agreed.
I had a Parasound and then a Teac UD-501 recently. Both sounded incredible with the HD800 through a Decware CSP3. Excellent controlled, tight lows, clear highs, very detailed, good separation. Unfortunately both had issues(read defects) and had to be returned.
Point is I am using a Fubar II Mk2 at the moment until my Geek pulse comes in. The Fubar is a good, inexpensive dac that has served me well for a few years, but the HD800 shows it's flaws with extreme prejudice. 
After hearing what a good dac can do in combo with the HD800 it's so hard to go back to a budget dac. It just sounds flat and unrefined. It's going to be a long winter until the Pulse shows up. 

 

 
I'm waiting on a Pulse as well.  Hopefully it won't disappoint - especially with the HD800!

 

[shabta]

  I would concur completely with Mike's position on the HD800. As an HD800 fan first, I have struggled getting into the Audeze's! Not there yet. The chain is everything with the HD800's too. Generally tubes can tame some of the high end challenges from bright or poor recordings. The DAC match is also very critical. I have spent time with every top HP (Abyss, every Audeze model including all Fazor, Beyer, HiFi Man,etc) and for me nothing has supplanted the HD800's as my primary choice.

 
I wonder why people also don't mention the weight of the planars? I am unable to wear an Audeze or Hifiman for more than a half hour. If I do, I will have neck pain the rest of that day. Ok, so in my case I have a whiplash. But years of wearing those heavy headphones for hours a day has got to do something bad to your neck/spine. Whereas I can wear HD800s for 8 plus hours and never have any pain. My sensitive neck just unmasks what I am pretty sure will be a problem for long hour, over the long term listeners to planar dynamics. 
 
And yes I find the overall sound of the HD800s combined with the soundstage totally fabulous. I resisted headphone listening for years has they often sounded too closed in relative to speakers.But with the HD800s, that was no longer an issue. And yes, the my wife sort of sealed the deal, when we left our huge california house and moved into our very modest sized southern french village townhouse.  She is grateful that most of my listening is through headphones nowadays.
 
I do like the stax though but the amp thing bothers me a bit...

 

[62ohm]

I think the Schiit Ragnarok can actually help dynamic/planar cans user with electrostatic cans. Get the Rag to drive dynamic/planars straight away, and plug an energiser to its speaker taps for the e-stats.

 

[paradoxper]

Energisers gimp Stax - not worth it. Go all in or just pass.

 

[brat]

Yesteray I sold my stax sr-007mk2 and I'm planning to reinvest the cash in some good dynamics. The best dynamic headphones I've heard so far are HD800. I don't like the tonal balance but it can be tuned by cables, amps or sources, not a big problem.
I don't have much time to browse this forum or other internet sites, so my question is: Are there some indications or rumours abour new flagship sennheisers? I don't want to be surprised after the purchase by a thread about new HD1000 that surpass the 800s in every aspect...

 

[isquirrel]

   
Having checked your profile, I have to say that even with hundreds of hours of burn-in, the HD800 will always sound bright and thin to anyone accustomed to the Audeze LCD-3 - all else being the same. In the end, you might have to drive the HD800 with a different amp and perhaps a different DAC, as well, to move its signature in the direction of the Audeze sound, but you'll never actually get there. That's OK, though. In my opinion, and I'm saying this as a huge fan (four years and counting) of the LCD-2 rev.1, the HD800 brings so much to the table that you owe it to yourself to adapt to its signature. And I'm confident I would offer the same encouragement if I were an LCD-3 owner.
 
So, accepting the fact that the HD800 will always sound like an HD800 is the first hurdle for an Audeze-conditioned listener, but in addition to some recommendations made here in this thread for DAC/amp pairings and/or mods that can degrade or mask some of the HD800's most distinguishing virtues, there are several recommendations of DAC/amp pairings that can supply the HD800 with a signal that allows its virtues to thrive while simultaneously displacing undesirable traits inherent to the DAC/amp pairings lesser headphones fail to reveal. The HD800 reveals problems with anything and everything upstream, including your recordings, that a headphone like my LCD-2 rev. 1, easily masks - by nature of its lower resolution, shelved highs, and excessively energetic bass - traits that conspire to enable a greater number of recordings, DACs or amps to sound good - and really good if the amp can deliver at least 1000mW into its 50-Ohm load.  The HD800 will never mask anything that's wrong with upstream factors. 
 
Thus, accepting that the problems lie not with the HD800 (with the exception of a 6kHz spike in its FR), but rather with your upstream gear, is the second hurdle. Relative to my LCD-2 rev.1, your LCD-3 has a lot more finesse, with improvements across just about every parameter, but it's still much more like an LCD-2 rev.1 than it is similar to an HD800, when it comes to enabling or masking upstream problems.
 
I'm a solid state die hard, but for a guy who likes tube gear (again looking at your profile), I think you might be all set in selecting an amp for the HD800 - with the Woo 234s.  

  But I'm just guessing, really - having never heard it. I don't know what you're using as a DAC, but my HD800 journey took a huge jump in the right direction when I got the Metrum Octave MkII - a non-oversampling DAC that has done a lot to remove the digital harshness that I found so fatiguing when using any of my ESS9018 or ESS9023 (oversampling) DACs with the HD800.  Further improvements were made with using a low-feedback, single-ended Class A amp (the amazingly affordable NuForce HA-200).  I'm convinced that the HD800 is best served by non-oversampling DACs and by single-ended, Class A designs having low or zero negative feedback (not to mention by well-mastered recordings).
 
I'm convinced (by the writings of Cees Ruijtenberg and Nelson Pass, primarily) that the HD800's extreme resolution makes it less tolerant than most headphones of the complexity of distortions that can be heard in low level signals with amps that employ negative feedback.  I believe that's why so many tube amps (those having zero feedback) are successful with the HD800, where most solid state amps (those having lots of feedback) are not.  And it's those low level signals (easily corrupted by negative feedback) that contain a wealth of "data" our brains can process to discern the original timbre of instruments, the faint trailing edges of their decays, the natural, low-energy echos and micro-details that define the recording space, etc. - precious factors that can lend a "naturalness" to the reproduction.

 

Spoiler: Additional reading on the advantages of low- or zero-feedback, single-ended, Class A amps...

Here's a Nelson Pass article I found on the use of negative feedback:
 
https://passlabs.com/articles/audio-distortion-and-feedback
 
And here are some key excerpts:
 
 
 
Also consider the following excerpt from a thesis by Dan Cheever, on the use of negative feedback in amplifier design:
 
  Quoting http://www.dancheever.com/main/cheever_thesis_final.pdf
 
Anyone not familiar with Robert Harley [not "Hartley", as spelled in Dan Cheever's thesis] should know that he commands a lot of respect in the HiFi community. He's the author of The Complete Guide to High End Audio and writes reviews for The Absolute Sound.
 
 
Here's another paper by Nelson Pass, this one on the merits of single-ended Class A amplifiers:
 
 
 
And lastly, a Nelson Pass write-up on his Zen amplifier, which is I believe is well emulated (for headphones) by the $350 NuForce HA-200 that I'm currently using with the HD800:
 
   Qutoing http://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/art_zen_amp.pdf
 

 
Mike

Wow thanks Mike, a lot of information there. My DAC's are a Light Harmonic DaVinci Dual DAC (separate DSD & PCM DAC's) a Chord QBD 76 & a Hugo for portable use. 
 
My system is very analog sounding, I tried the HD80's with the Studio Six and couldn't find a balance I liked, having said friends have said that the HD800 needs a lot of time on it to sound its best, no surprises there most equipment does.
 
Its interesting to read your comments about single ended amps I tend to agree, my experiences with 300B's and the Woo's have been revelatory. I am going order a pair of the HD800's and give them a proper go. I heard whispers that Sennheiser were going to release a new top model, anyone have any news on this?
 
Also of interest were your comment are modding the HD800's I see that people who's opinion I value like Currawong have modded theirs, is that a general comment as no mods work well? 
 
Thanks for the taking the time to put your post together, appreciate it.

 

[Sorrodje]

@isquirrel : it seems many people mod their HD800 and as much people don't mod it ( we're speaking about Anax mod or variants) . Depends on music listened and owner tastes mostly   .
 
About the Gear : find and read purrin's amps recommendations. it does maybe not cover all the market but it can give you a good idea for best amps.  In your price bracket : Eddie Current amps , DNA Stratus or Apex Teton seem to be the best contenders for the Ultimate HD800 amp title.  Ragnarok for SS amp. 
 
The only rumors we heard was about a very limited Electrostat for the 70th anniversary.  No more news about any replacement of the HD800. and even if it was real , I wouldn't care so much. HD800 was born more that Five years ago and is the current Sennheiser flagship but older Senns are still very appreciated and still provide Hi-end sound for mid-fi price.