The (new) HD800 Impressions Thread

[bosiemoncrieff]

Sennheiser HD800 vs. AKG K1000 (bass light)
 
Third Installment - Opera, or, “Look, Pa, no EQ!” 

 
Note: this is an ongoing series of posts comparing classical music as rendered by the old champ (K1000) versus the reigning champion (HD800). Opinions are strictly my own, and reflect my personal taste, biases, preferences, what I had for lunch, etc.
 
Find the prologue here, and the solo keyboard installment here.
 
In the previous installment, I mused that older, poorer recordings require listening time devoted just to them for the brain to adjust to their worse sound. A week into K1000, I think something like that might be true of sound signatures. I’ve been experimenting without EQ, and the results are not as displeasing as they were a week ago. The soundstage, excellent transient response, and transparency will hit you immediately. The sound signature may be best eased into, with decreasingly bass-boost-treble-reduction EQ. Please forgive any repetitive or contradictory observations. These were composed over a dozen evenings across two weeks and I’m fallible.
 
Vivaldi - L’Incoronazione di Dario (Ens. Baroque de Nice / Bezzina) - Overture

1. Legitimately more on the fence here than any of the other operas. HD800’s closed-in nature has a sumptuousness that you don’t get with the airy K1000, but K1000 has an elegant refinement of tone that HD800 simply can’t match. Gonna call it a draw & move on.

 
Mozart - Don Giovanni - Catalogue Aria - Gardiner - Ildebrando d'Arcangelo as Leporello (& other tracks)

1. K1000 has the more sparkly transient response & natural tone
2. it’s very close
3. HD800 is a bit slower, but lusher as well. Definitely the better value (at ~1/2 the price) and much, much easier to listen to. There are operas that go on long after you’re ready to take K1000 off your head (but she pushes you back onto your bed and tells you to suck it up and finish).
4. I’m actually put in mind of my HE-6 in the sense that there is an electricity, a tactility to the experience
5. to my horror, I tried the Q701, and it’s definitely more than 1/10 as good as k1000, despite being approximately that price. They lack most of the soundstage, but the AKG signature is there—not as refined, but present. If you’re looking for a slightly bass-lighter alternative to HD800, Q701 is a very, very good value.
6. Only a true K1000 nut could listen to the finale of Don Giovanni played on period instruments and think “wow HD800, that’s a lot of bass.”  K1000’s soundstage is wider, gets further left and right, shows you a bigger picture, which when you have eg a trumpet far right is shocking and wonderfully delightful
7. I continue to struggle to figure out how much of K1000 is a sales pitch for treble heavy sound signatures and how much is other stuff. The clean sound you get from good treble tilt is something else. I loved my HD800, but I think my review makes clear my changing preferences. HD800 has a more powerful, impactful finale, but details are lost by comparison. Perhaps the bass-light revision fixes this.
8. Deh vieni alla finestra, though, almost makes me want to do an installment on classical guitar. K1000’s baritone is round and full, the guitar pert and quick, the pizzicato refined and subtle. HD800 is more intimate. the Don’s voice sounds as though it’s inches from a microphone, and the orchestra as though it’s in a recording studio. Perhaps closer to fact, if less thrilling to hear.

 
Così fan tutte - Teodor Currentzis. I’m in love with this conductor and his recent Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy. He conducts with verve, humor, sensitivity, and unbelievable passion. His casts are excellent and his orchestra clearly adores him—the harpsichordist in particular is given free reign to add improvised flourishes to the score and the result is recordings as brilliant as Böhm, Levine, and Harnoncourt, but with a youthful freshness that evades all of them.
 

1. HD800 seems to have a wider left-right axis, though this may be a result of the K1000’s cross-talk softening the imaging. 
2. Female vocals have to give their crown to K1000. The highs are so effortless, pure, seem to stretch on forever. Come scoglio was bliss, the woman could have been fifteen feet from me. I’ve been turning over in my mind the conventional wisdom that K812 puts you “onstage” and HD800 puts you “a few rows back.” K1000 is so unlike anything else that comparisons can break down into “more speaker-like in this way, that way, the other way,” but I think you could very well say that they put you closer to the musicians. The sound is, for all its cross-feed, more immediate, more gripping. I can see musicians standing on the stage—up center right, down left, dead center. It’s uncanny. 
3. They put you in the conductor’s chair. You will feel the urge to conduct along with Currentzis.
4. In terms of tone: perhaps as the HE1000 can be called a mellower HD800, so the HD800 is a mellower K1000. The detail is all there, but the presentation is a bit more distant. It is not surprising that K1000 is even more intolerant of anything other than classical and some other acoustic. Going to HD800, it sounds like someone hung a few tapestries. 
5. If K1000 pulls vocals forward, the net result of that is that the orchestra, and especially the bass, is deemphasized just a bit. Here the question is about preference more than superiority. Ditto soundstage presentation. Ultimately I think they’re more or less equally fast.

 
Uno Voce Poco Fa & Dunque Io Sono, Barber of Seville, Rossini, Maria Callas (1958). Late enough in her career to be in stereo, early enough for her voice not to be totally shot. The happy medium!  

1. K1000: dear GOD Maria could be standing in front of me. 
2. Philharmonia is rendered with utter coherence; the less EQ, the more Callas comes forward from the orchestra. Violins to the left, violas in the middle, celli and bassi to the right.
3. The bass is very finely textured, crisp and tight, very well integrated with the rest of the frequency spectrum. It is what William F Buckley, Jr, might have nodded at approvingly. 
4. Anyone catch the teeny tiny high D Callas drops at 4:34 of Dunque Io Sono? K1000 reveals it with effortless precision. The final D is bigger but perhaps less exquisite.
5. HD800 has somewhat louder bass, equally good imaging, perhaps even finer instrument separation. HD800 is certainly more clinical; it may be second only to SR-009 in the “picking things apart” element of music, though I mean to suggest no harshness. You picture the bespeckled german surgeon cutting a tumor out of an organ. And with respect to imaging it surpasses Stax. 
6. If HD800 is a surgeon, K1000 is a philosopher, more intent on capturing the whole gestalt of music than dissecting it (though it is no less ruthless if any element of the performance or recording falls short). 

 
Pavarotti, Ah Mes Amis from La Fille du Regiment (Donizetti)

1. very good recording engineer, K1000 presents very coherent orchestral layout from far left to far right, and Luciano audibly moves back and forth across the stage. There is no grain in the high Cs. Pizzicati in the celli and bassi undergird the final section (‘militaire et Marie’) in the most satisfying manner
2. my temples are screaming for relief 
3. HD800 puts me further back, relaxes the sound somewhat. The tenor doesn’t pop out as much, is more part of a fabric. My previous remark about HD800 being to K1000 what HE1000 is to the HD800 bears repeating. People addicted to the Audeze school of sound will hate this, but K1000 gives the finger to bassheads. The bass isn’t bad at all—though I find the more you EQ K1000, the more she will rattle in defiance—but it is restrained. In an almost Steve Jobsian fashion, it is as though K1000 has decided you need just so much bass and no more. It is wonderfully refined and goes down low enough for all the classical music I listen to, but it does not slam. Mjolnir 2 can’t drive it as well as a $5,000 power amp, of course, and adding a subwoofer is a recurring fantasy, but if you don’t mind a lighter, refined headphone, this is your bet.
4. I’m still trying to sort out the neutrality/transparency question. If HD800 is the gold standard for neutrality (I defer to David Mahler here), K1000 adds a few very slight colorations that make the music, for me, jump out all the more. If HD800 is the stately realism of Henry James or George Eliot, K1000 either harkens back to the romanticism of Keats and Shelley or forward to the modernism of Proust and Woolf.  

 
Tristan und Isolde - Carlos Kleiber (studio) (prelude, nacht der liebe, liebestod) 

1. K1000 has its usual ‘floaty’ sound, it is lighter, more delicate, ethereal. With EQ (K1000 v.2), I’m beginning to sense that loud volume and extra bass can cause rattle. Sometimes it’s just a specific recording, sometimes she’s just being temperamental. Favoring a lack of EQ.
2. both voices sound incredibly immediate and natural
3. I feel like I’m in the opera house, the sound engulfs me. Individual celli leap out of their section at 7:43 in the prelude.
4. Oh! that first Oboe line in the prelude. so perfect. The tone is just spot on.
5. Rene Kollo’s tenor gleams just a pinch brighter from K1000. HD800 dampens it somewhat.
6. HD800, and here I return to bang/marry/kill, is ultimately more in control. K1000 at times gives me the impression of only just being able to hold it together. Is the rattle gone? Better savor the time without it, because in a second it’ll—oh, there it is. Is it a loud section? Need to turn it down, or we’ll get transient clipping, etc. (Mjolnir 2 problem, yes, but I decline to declare the headphone the exclusive domain of the amplification 1%). HD800 reveals problems in the source, but itself remains a neutral actor. Its soundstage, tone, treble spike etc. is what it is, but it executes what it aspires to without fail. There is no danger of error—none whatsoever. K1000 is the drunk diva (Edith Piaf?) who has moments of glory but watch out for when she accidentally vomits into your lap during that costume change after one too many pints of gin.
7. HD800 may place me in a private box in the back of the ‘parterre’ (to use the Met’s excessively bougie terminology), but it is a clearly delineated space, A/Bing, I continue to crave that out-of-head experience that is the exclusive purview of K1000. I think this is best described as the conductor’s podium, though I haven’t yet conducted at the Met (or anywhere else).
8. In the climax of of the prelude (7:00-7:40), HD800 doesn’t compel me to close my eyes and lose it in the music, even as the bass seems to hit slightly harder. Here the euphony/neutrality/transparency question comes back yet again. Tentatively: K1000 is less neutral, more euphonic, and ultimately more transparent. 

 
Was tempted to do the Kleiber live Otello (Giuseppe Verdi) with Domingo (2/19/78, at Covent Garden), but nah, Domingo/Scotto/Levine is much better recorded (same year), if five minutes longer. I could give you a review of the dozen Otellos I own but—not the time.

1. Can’t say this enough: if really good recordings are the HD800’s crack, then the K1000 is Rob Ford (may god have mercy on his soul). This Otello is recorded under ideal conditions, and your ears thank you. We hear about how amp and recording finicky HD800 is. If that bothers you, Dorothy, the K1000 is no man’s Kansas.
2. I am constantly amazed at the transient response K1000 musters with pizzicato strings, especially in the lower registers. It’s creepy how well it is rendered. 
3. Pushed the loud sequences (opening sequence, Credo, Act 2+3 finale, death scene nearly as loud as MJ2 would go w/o hurting my ears. Zero distortion from K1000.
4. Finale to first act: am yet again blown away by K1000 soundstage. Pinpoint imaging.
5. Some slight sharpness at higher volume levels from Domingo (and trebly brass), though not in a dishonest way (it’s not much better on HE6, though that A/B really highlights how starkly out of the mainstream K1000 is in terms of bass). Esultate most prominently, obvs, though Domingo is even sharper than Scotto, and it’s stereotypically the soprano that gets demerits for shrillness. Scotto soars—utterly soars.
6. HD800 softens Domingo’s sharp tenor, though EQ helps the K1000. Still sharper than I’d like, however. Again: Bang, marry. Not the same.
7. Woodwinds have an uncanny realism with K1000—oboe especially. They float with utter persuasion. 
8. the ‘ave maria’, too, floats with K1000, never more than with the final A flat. With HD800 it moseys. It is still beautiful, but it is discernibly less exquisite. It is comparatively sedate. David Mahler’s comment about the ‘fullness of tone’ of the early HD800 vs. the airiness of the revision is perhaps the distinction I’m drawing here. Scotto is much more integrated with the orchestral colors than with K1000, where she is clearly forward and in her own space.

 
Puccini - Madame Butterfly Love Duet, Freni/Pavarotti, Karajan, Vienna Philharmonic

1. Hello, loudness wars! It’s a lush, opulent recording, but at the final high C (which Pavarotti takes despite its being only written for the soprano) you can hear scratching that the recording engineers should not have permitted in the right channel. Also just after the 3:00 mark of ‘Vogliatemi Bene’—a scratching again in the right channel as Freni sighs ’Sì, per la vita’ and Pavarotti says ‘Vieni! Vieni!’
2. HD800 nails the percussion—triangle ‘ting’ is spot on, placed very precisely about halfway to the left side.
3. It also nails the impact. Puccini in particular (who famously was said to “sound better than he is,” versus Wagner, who “is better than he sounds”) desperately needs sonics that allow his thrilling bass to come through. The K1000’s awesome midrange is not enough—he cries out for the bass slam of HD800 (first time anyone has written those words?). I’m betting HE-6 is even better. (EDIT: Yep. Very slam. Such impactful. Wow.)
4. With K1000, Pavaratti comes out at me more palpably. Freni too, but with her it’s the limitless highs, much more beautiful—with the tenor it’s a matter of presence. The harp plucks have more beauty with K1000, more body with HD800. 
5. K1000 diva places scratchy artifacts of the recording more in your face. Shocker, I know.

 
In short:

1. K1000’s speaker-like presentation is so unlike any headphone, you need to experience it to understand it. 
2. for K1000, feel free to use EQ as training wheels, but you will likely grow out of it after a week or two of heavy listening. It worsens her rattle.
3. Rattle tends to be worse in larger orchestral recordings, as well as the sibilant, old, or poorly mastered.
4. I prefer the out-of-head sound of the K1000 pretty much across the board
5. BUT: she is significantly more fatiguing acoustically and after an hour or two can become mildly painful physically. She also can’t do big Puccini climaxes, Aida elephant marches, etc. as persuasively.
6. HD800 will avoid transient clipping of less-than-speaker amplifiers during climaxes of big recordings at especially loud volumes. Some recordings are more ornery than others.
7. In the ‘K1000 as diva’ motif: the bass isn’t light; it’s dignified. It will not change; you must change your expectations.
8. K1000 is a smidgen less neutral, more euphonic, but more transparent?? Sometimes I think so, other times I think it’s preference and suitability of the recording.
9. True story: Just as anyone who drives faster than you is a maniac and anyone who drives slower is a moron, any amp or cans with more treble than a given head-fier likes will be dismissed as “bright” and more bass than they like will be “dark"...
10. But I like K1000. A lot.

 
OK, so next up I’m thinking of doing chamber stuff. Let me know if you have any specific requests. Thanks!

 

[FLTWS]

Great job! That's a favorite "Butterfly" for me. I've never heard that T & I with Kleiber, I might check it out.
 
Chamber: I'm thinking small ensembles doing CPE Bach or Boyce symphonies. Or were you thinking along the lines of Quartets and Sonatas?
 
One of my favorite smallish ensemble works that also happens to be an opera is Purcell's Dido & Aeneas. On Philips with Donath, Veasey, and Shirley-Quirk conducted by Davis with ASMF. This is pretty far from my standard diet of Mahler, Strauss, Bruckner, Wagner, Puccini, Ravel and Debussy, but I need a change of pace now and then. In the closing pages Dido belts out "When I am laid in earth", the chorus sings "With drooping wings" a cappella (I can almost count the number of singers), and then with just a few members of the string section the drooping wings melody is repeated to close the work quietly, (again the inner voicing of the individual players is crystal clear). It's over, but the sound of nothing that follows holds my attention for a bit. Hard to describe. This closing has always struck me like an out of body experience, after the preceding 2 sections. Especially on the 800 with MJ2 tubed. Just a thought.

 

[fjrabon]

Amping the HD800 mostly comes down to whether or not you want the amp to EQ. My theory has always been use EQ to EQ and use the amp to fuel transient response, imaging, transparency and soundstage. I'm not a huge fan of OTL amps in general, other than with the HD650 or Beyer DT880/990 600 ohm. To me they, as a generality, lack that last bit of transient response and transparency. High end OTC has been where I've gotten best results. However, my answer may be different if I weren't using sonarworks to flatten the HD800's frequency response first. If you don't use any form of EQ, you may prefer the bass hump a very high output impedance OTL amp provides in addition to euphonic distortion to blur over the treble. However, that necessarily comes at the expense of transparency, damping factor and thus transient response. If you use EQ to EQ and not the amp, you don't have to chose between transparency, transient response and frequency response, you can get all of them.

Let EQ do what EQ is designed for (fixing frequency response)
Let amps do what amps are designed to do (providing the crispest, least distorted signal)

 

[icebear]

Great write up bosiemoncrieff

This is the way all reviews should be written:
A specific mention of a recording and how certain equipment reproduces a particular passage in the performance.
A lot of reviews on the web nowadays don't mention the music at ALL

...
Only unspecific blurr and bs like "phenomenal bass" and "oh so sweet upper mids" and "highs without glare". Give me the name of the recording, name that instrument which sounds like the real thing live and spell out the name of that lady giving you the goosebumps whispering into your ears. Not mentioning any of this ... gimme a break and get lost. Funny thing (or maybe not

) is that manufacturers point to such reviews and explicitly thank the author. Without specific description such a "review" or comparison of equipment can be completely made up out of thin air. It doesn't say anything beyond the the "reviewer" is not trustworthy and has no clue about how to put musical impressions into words.
 
And btw comfort is a must have for me and the small slightly rounded triangle cushions of the K-1000 are a no go for me. These put too much pressure on my temples. It becomes painful after 10 minutes. For me these are extreme nearfield monitors but not headphones. Sound stage wise it is of course the best.

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

Not to get ahead of ourselves but—would anyone be interested in an AKG N90Q/HD800 shootout?

 

[thekorsen]

  Not to get ahead of ourselves but—would anyone be interested in an AKG N90Q/HD800 shootout?

I would. Not many detailed comparisons of the N90Q vs other equally priced high end contenders. But while the tech and sound has me interested, the styling...really makes me wish they took a different direction. Especially for a headphone meant to be used portably...and probably the most expensive headphone designed to be used portably at that.

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

I would. Not many detailed comparisons of the N90Q vs other equally priced high end contenders. But while the tech and sound has me interested, the styling...really makes me wish they took a different direction. Especially for a headphone meant to be used portably...and probably the most expensive headphone designed to be used portably at that.

I think the shure electrostatic IEMs are still the priciest but I take your point

 

[siwolfman]

Excellent job. 

Agreed! Looks beautiful!

 

[Peti]

The HD800S is off the wall of Fame. I love the utopia and maybe it's my sentimentality, but I feel sorry for the removal. It's like, the end of an era. I still immensely enjoy my hd800 though. How do you guys feel about it?

 

[apmusson]

The HD800S is off the wall of Fame. I love the utopia and maybe it's my sentimentality, but I feel sorry for the removal. It's like, the end of an era. I still immensely enjoy my hd800 though. How do you guys feel about it?

I'm a little surprised. I love my hd800 and had a 10 minute listen to the utopia at Canjam London. It was excellent but I didn't get a sense that it was night and day better. It was show conditions though. I will get a better chance to compare at a forthcoming audition at the end of September though.

 

[FatTeemo]

I'm a little surprised. I love my hd800 and had a 10 minute listen to the utopia at Canjam London. It was excellent but I didn't get a sense that it was night and day better. It was show conditions though. I will get a better chance to compare at a forthcoming audition at the end of September though.

 
I am surprised too because as far as I know, the newer totl headphones that just came out still do not match the HD 800 in imaging and soundstage.

 

[FLTWS]

   
I am surprised too because as far as I know, the newer totl headphones that just came out still do not match the HD 800 in imaging and soundstage.

 
I really like the 800, haven't heard the Focal's. But priorities for each listener will vary and we all listen with different ears.  Imaging and sound stage are at the bottom of my list of important attributes in a head phone. Well below tonal accuracy and transparency, inner detail retrieval, transient attack and decay, composure in complex loud music, dynamic range capabilities - ability to resolve the very loud from the very soft.  A headphone with fantastic imaging capabilities but that makes a violin sound like a viola won't open my wallet.

 

[pctazhp]

   
I really like the 800, haven't heard the Focal's. But priorities for each listener will vary and we all listen with different ears.  Imaging and sound stage are at the bottom of my list of important attributes in a head phone. Well below tonal accuracy and transparency, inner detail retrieval, transient attack and decay, composure in complex loud music, dynamic range capabilities - ability to resolve the very loud from the very soft.  A headphone with fantastic imaging capabilities but that makes a violin sound like a viola won't open my wallet.

I haven't heard the Focals either but certainly am aware of many positive posts about them and the new Mr. Speaker phones. What I find interesting is that a lot of positive posts I see don't seem to depend much on what DAC or amp they are using. It took me a lot of research, risk taking and then extensive tube rolling to develop good (dreaded word) "synergy" with my S. What I have achieved is pure "magic" to my ears. Maybe Focal has discovered the fairy dust that renders their phones immune to up stream gear 

 

[ubs28]

The HD800S is off the wall of Fame. I love the utopia and maybe it's my sentimentality, but I feel sorry for the removal. It's like, the end of an era. I still immensely enjoy my hd800 though. How do you guys feel about it?

 
I'm ok with it. The HD 800 is very sensitive to what is in the chain. So removing the HD 800 because it supposedly has bad treble and bad bass is something I disagree with because on an other setup that might not be the case (unless Tyll tested the HD 800 on every possible setup).

 

[Peti]

   
I really like the 800, haven't heard the Focal's. But priorities for each listener will vary and we all listen with different ears.  Imaging and sound stage are at the bottom of my list of important attributes in a head phone. Well below tonal accuracy and transparency, inner detail retrieval, transient attack and decay, composure in complex loud music, dynamic range capabilities - ability to resolve the very loud from the very soft.  A headphone with fantastic imaging capabilities but that makes a violin sound like a viola won't open my wallet.

If that's so, you will be in genuine love with the Utopia!