The HD800 & HD800S thread

Hi guys, mod-related questions, as in Tyll version:

— Does it in the end make HD800 a neutral headphone (HD600 definition of neutral) or just a bit less bright? Can't tell from http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/diy-modification-sennheiser-hd-800-anaxilus-mod-page-2.

— Do you really (and if, why) need the foam part of the mod (not just felt), and could a really thick layer of felt work better (3mm-ish)?

— Does cabling help? There are polarizing opinions. Technically the cable seems to be perfect (copper/silver), but can cabling really help with brightness or it is all snakeoil?

 

Makes it less bright. It still retains that HD800 signature of slight mid-bass hump, slight upper midrange recession, and slight mid-lower treble emphasis.

Dunno, but self-adhesive creatology foam, and the felt sheet are easy to get and cheap from Michael's. They cost 3 bucks.

Dunno about cables.

 

Hmm quick question for the people here, since we dont have that best amp for HD800 thread here.

Have anyone tried the L2 vs Blackwidow? Which would you prefer? =)

 

I'd advise you to drop felt altogether and just use foam. No need for doubling it up just using 2mm-5mm is fine. On top of that really look at the Rabid Dog option to use a Rug Liner. You can use Tyll's for the metal ring with just foam and use the Rug liner for the mesh. But yes it's going to sound less bright, more balanced, musical even, but it's always going to be bright. Also keep watching the latest three mods at Tweaks and Mods, currently in the works, might be up your alley as well.

I have a regular cable, a Sennheiser XLR cable and a ForzaAudioWorks Noir Hybrid HPC. Aesthetics aside, I've tried to test it with three different HD800s and can't for the life of me hear a difference (yeah except that XLR sounds louder). So I'm gonna say for me it's a no.

 

1) No. The HD800 simply can't be made a "neutral" headphone along the lines of the HD600. That's just a pipe dream IMO. It'll always retain its own character that makes it "not neutral".

2) Yeah, you do need the foam. However... neither is really ideal for modding the HD800 IMO. Other materials (microfiber cloth instead of felt, open-cell foam instead of creatology closed-cell) are much better, both at transparency and at their ability to reduce high frequency contents.

3) No, a recable won't help. A cable may "smooth" out certain things, but it's a very minor thing, and it very much depends on your setup. Some amps are more susceptible to a cable change (because of cable capacitance, parasitic inductance, etc...) than others.

Best bet for the HD800 if you'd like to keep it but don't want to fumble around with mods or chasing uber amps is to just use EQ. Or... stick with HD600/650. HD600/650 does get to about 80-90% of the details of the HD800 on a good rig, and they are much more agreeable in tonality than the HD800.

I think... very honestly, that an HD600/650 with a super good amp beats HD800 on a bad/not-so-good amp any day. Say, try HD650 on Geek Out v2 with balanced output versus HD800 (stock) on something like, say the Objective-2 and ODAC, and I'd bet the HD650 will sound better and more resolving.

 

Well I had hoped the Asgard 2 would be sufficient in driving the HD800, and though volume wise on high gain the Asgard 2 does a good job, I have a feeling that synergy wise there have to be other more powerful amps out there which would handle it better.

Problem is, with a limited budget and all, most of the suggestions that I see are for the Val2/Lyr2, which then raises another problem. My home environment would preferably do without any tubes or anything fragile for that matter.

Which is a bummer because I might have to pick something up that is less demanding. The ability of the HD800 to extract the minutest of detail is frankly quite amazing. I must have spent hours flipping through my entire music library finding hidden nuggets that my lesser gear had not been able to reveal.

I agree with Tyll's findings that the HD800 isn't exactly a bright pair of headphones; it's just the sheer resolving power. Unfortunately most modern recordings are pretty shit, and the HD800 just ruthlessly exposes it as crap. And unfortunately I've realized that a majority of my library is precisely that.... Ah well.

 

No, not by a long shot, but something like the Sonarworks plug-in does make it flat (HD600 definition of neutral)
The 6kHz resonance will still be there, but at least it won't be audible any more.

NO

 

Really??

 

Well okay I think a better way of putting it is that though the HD800 is indeed quite bright, the treble isn't nearly as hot as what I thought it'd be, certainly not according to the extensive reviews that I've encountered. Barring all things like YMMV and subjective tolerance levels, the the pair of HD800 that I have isn't even the brightest piece of IEM/headphones that I've owned so far. Not even in the top 3.

Treble is shit hot with some of my recordings. But very minimal in others which did exhibit nasty treble glare with my either gear. Hence why I deduced it to be the poor source rather than the fault of the HD800.

 

Oh, yeah, it's not DT990-hot for sure.

 

Indeed, the HD800 are definitely not as bright or cold sounding as most impressions would lead you to believe. I found the same true for the LCD2 in which it wasn't as powerfully bassy sounding as impressions lead me to believe.

Coming in with an expectation and then having it shattered is a strong experience.


All that said, I still rather have the HD800S assuming it does what it does.

 

Welp. For the first time ever, I might have downgrade-itis. Seems like from all accounts, Marv's included, that the Vali is a better natural match for the HD800 since it has the tubey flavour the Asgard 2 doesn't.

 

What do you think about Geek Out v2 vs. iFi idsd micro with HD650/HD800?

 

I must concur.
I've found that most of the 'zippyness' can be greatly ameliorated by tweaking the upstream system including the power being fed to the dac and amp.
It's my conclusion that 800's are BRUTALLY revealing.
If the dac/amp stack and wiring etc is a limiting factor it will be presented by the 800's with full articulation and detail.

And so many 'blame' the 800's, or at least try to 'fix' the problem by modding the 800's.
While this can help balance out the total system it also tends to compensate for the results of the problems rather than going to the root of the problems in the first place.

Just my 2¢

JJ

 

I am biased but I would say ifi micro iDSD as it offers more format options and can be improved even more with power supply and so forth.

 

I see your 2 cents and raise you 2 pence..........oh and I agree with your points. I don't find the HD 800 too bright but just very revealing and I like that. I have heard a number of recent albums which sound quite mundane on other headphones but which snap into focus with the 800s.

 

Anybody who knows me and my postings, will know about my highly frequent and irritating question on comparisons of the ECP L2 vs other amps (BW, etc).

Having had the chance of owning the BW for sometime now, i can safely say this. Unless you're willing to blow more than USD2.4k (ZDS), forget about everything else and go for the BW.

Here is a brief comparison of the L2 from another lurker here. His views of the BW correspond very much with mine, however, i have not heard the L2. It was very informative to me, and i hope its of use for you guys. I edited it a little to hide his identity, although i think people who know him will be able to recognize his writing pretty easily.

Here is why i decided to sell my L2

Long story short : I preferred the BW to L-2. Yes, even with the HD800. Why am I saying this? You, my "friend", have asked this question today at another place, which I took notice of. Now here's the long story version.

Like you, it was Tyll and Birgir's rave review of the amp (ECP-L2) was what tempted me to go on a wild goose hunt for it in the first place and finally purchase a unit.

Several months ago fellow "pyr*te-turned-friend" XXX, one of the first ten who had ordered the BW prototype, contacted me for a mini-meet at my place. Turns out we actually lived quite close from one another. So he brought his BW and Schiit, and we were able to directly A/B my L-2 and his BW. The consensus? We both agreed that my L-2 was put to shame. Don't get me wrong, the L-2 had been the best amp for the HD800 I've heard up to that point, it was a step up or two from my previous EC ZDSE. But to see it get bested by a supposedly entry-level, solid-state amp made by the very company (which never had any experience with SS amps) that made the ZDSE at only half the price? Insane.

That's when I knew that the L-2 had to go.

So my initial plan was to wait it out for the production version of BW, which is said to be even better than the prototype with a more advanced power supply in a single chassis. But I learned from Marv that the ZDSE was upgraded to ZDS with vast improvements, because even he too admitted that the BW was better sounding than ZDSE and it wouldn't make sense to sell a worse sounding amp for nearly twice the money (remember, I too felt that BW bested L-2 which in turn bested ZDSE). While BW would work well with almost any headphone, Marv told me that the upgraded ZDS is still better than BW when it comes to driving high impedance Senns which happen to be my most favorite and currently the only cans I own right now.

Now I own the ZDS, and it is much better than the ZDSE from what I remember by leaps and bounds. The ZDS currently uses stock tubes as I haven't found a decent tube yet after purchasing it, on the other hand my previous ZDSE was equipped with unobtanium NOS Mullard ECC35 and even that the delta between ZDS and ZDSE is huge. For a measly $100 increase in price, the ZDS has become even more of a tremendous value.

I have owned most of the flagships, BHSE/Omega, Qualia's, WES/SR009 etc. And the HD650 (Planning to get a HD800S when its released) driven by ZDS is a giant slayer. Add Yggdrasil to that and you have the best sub-$5K headphone system money could buy that works splendidly with every genre of music you throw at it. With BW and Gungnir Multibit you get something very very very very close for less than $3K.

All those years I've spent chasing ridiculously expensive stuff that don't sound half as good as what I'm hearing now... whenever I think about that time I purchased WES/SR-009 believing it was the best sounding system in the world, I feel like coughing up blood. And I have one particular guy to blame for my disastrous ride from one hype train to another...


To summarize,

For HD650/800 : ZDS > BW > L-2 > ZDSE
For harder-to-drive planars : BW > L-2 > ZDS > ZDSE

Maybe I was a bit too harsh on the L-2 amp though. I described as though the BW obliterated the L-2 in every way, but I'd say the L-2 still performed at least 90% of BW.

What was amazing about the BW was that it really retained the best qualities of both tube and SS amp. I've never heard an SS amp that gets better than this, and this is coming from a guy who has heard the LAu/Abyss combo (but then again, I thought the LAu/Abyss was overpriced and overhyped). The L-2 also has both tube and SS-like qualities, being a hybrid amp after all, but I'd say it sounds more "tubey" than BW. The BW has that exceptional sonic clarity and speed found in the best SS amps, but man you gotta love that organic, non-fatiguing sound. If I wasn't such a fan of Sennheisers, I would've chosen BW over the ZDS in a heartbeat.

In fact, now that I think about it, I feel the BW is cleaner sounding than ZDS, which is slightly grainy in comparison (it's an OTL tube amp after all). The ZDS on the other hand throws a wider, deeper, more holographic soundstage while adding a magic touch of euphony. I wouldn't be surprised if certain HD800 owners end up preferring BW to ZDS. It's that good, i can only imagine how much better the production 2 boxed version is compared to the single boxed prototype.

I hope this was as helpful to you guys as it was to me. Congratulations to Marv and Craig for making something this good.

 

I wonder how the BW compares to Cavalli Liquid Carbon. Have you heard it? Also, have you heard the Cavalli Liquid Glass, and if so, how did you find it?

 

Any chance Sennheiser will let you turn in your HD800 (assume authentic with receipt from authorized seller) and some money for an 800s? I'd buy both but I don't like to have gear that I don't use.

The thing I've found odd about the HD800 is that it sound good, possibly best, with a cheap and less-resolving dac/amp. I think it sounds great with this $40 ES9023 dac I have, but too analytical with the $1,800 reference dac/amp. It's like you paid all that money for a feature that you don't want to use.

Expanding the above to a more general point: the audiophile community's fatal defect is that they don't understand that details and transient response are not what makes a good song. It's some other characteristic of the song that makes it good, and that other characteristic comes through on a cheap $50 speaker or even when you're humming it in your head. That's why the audiophile community is generally marginalized; they're chasing something that no one cares about, because it doesn't matter.

 

LMAO the abyss is such an overpriced ***. Sorry newbie trying to get rich off the community, you overreached and got pwned.