The HD800 & HD800S thread

Yep, that's the one.

 

Not sure where to post this, but I went through another material to potentially replace the discontinued SBAF mod material. It wasn't a success, but I realized it actually works well in front of the driver. In this case covering the driver boosts the upper mids, without reducing the treble too much like what happens with felt, for example.

Here's a quick FR on the first prototype of my WIP HATS:


I tried to compensate the measurements so they make sense to me, i,e. stock HD600 should be pretty much flat. But I can't say for sure, I just eyeballed it.

Will have to do more comparisons to see if I prefer it, but it does have potential.

 

The constant never ending attempts to "fix" this headphone remind me of a certain montage in a movie...

 

I could be just one of those 800s fools as I now prefer it to every headphone but Susvara and over Utopia but MJ3 is an acceptable budget solution to shoehorn 800s.

 

I think at some point I'm going to have to hear an HD800 (probably not HD800S) just to see whether I can get it to work with my sonic priorities. I realize this is maybe one of the more complicated endgames to aim at, but I think given some of the upsides I eventually have to hear it. At the leisurely pace I do these evaluations, that's going to mean buying one, which of course means buying used.

Something tells me that this might be more fraught than a lot of headphone purchases, even though there for sure are several out there. I'm not in a hurry, but is there anything I would need to specifically keep in mind when looking? Should I just assume every used pair is a treble spike abomination that some dissatisfied listener ripped off their head?

 

Sub 10k s/n are known to be less problematic, but unit to unit variance is also a thing. It's kinda like playing the lottery. You buy the ticket and you take the ride. If it's not your flavor, you release it back into the universe for another weary traveler.

 

Sub 10k s/n honestly have the most problems, it's an extreme lottery. The safest bets are in the later serials.

 

Agree, I listened to several HD 800s before they got jarred and they can wildly differ. e.g. one 6k was a hailstorm of a HD 800, really impressive how it resolved and barraged with details, yet the tone was overly aggressive and accentuated, let's say zingy. Kinda reminded me of Beyerdynamic fake detailing.
Then there was another 6k that was relatively in the same brightness but seemed more rounded, less spiky, just within a few hundred serials.

Sennheiser must have mastered the process better and better and improved in consistency.

 

I haven't had a chance to try other TOTL headphones, so take this for what it's worth, but I went from finding the 800 unlistenable to thinking that the HD 800 (SDR) could be my go to on the MJ3 (on PP, no feedback). With the Bryston I was using before even on "great" recordings, jazz, classical, it just never felt worth the effort to plug in the 800s over the great tonality of the HD650s.

My only complaint about these right now might be that there is less of the immediacy that you get with the 6XX series and I don't always like the way it makes badly recorded music so obviously badly recorded. At least with the 600s you can kind of hear everything as kind of good -- those might be matched closer to the mean quality of recording for most digital tracks, where the 800 is on some steroids to help you hear the sounds that only the best recorded music bothers to translate to you.

Then again you can hear smacking lips and other such things even with the 600s, so it does stand to question why one needs these headphones. i will keep listening to them for now. This is my fourth pair after having owned the 800 / S (twice each) so I hope to god they stay this time.

 

I've had a few weeks with a completely stock HD800 now, and it's... just not that problematic in the highs to me. The peaks are really audibly there on a sweep, they just don't jump out to me in music listening. It can be made problematic with the wrong gear (like BF 2/64 + high gain Piety), but original Bifrost 2 and Lyr 3 is perfectly fine, with some tradeoffs (doesn't fully address weak bass, trades off a bit of resolution and staging). Somehow, this is -less- fatiguing than my other headphones.

What I'm really trying to do is figure out why this sounds the way it does to me. I had an inkling my preferences might line up with it, but... I didn't think it'd be this trouble-free, so I can't help but wonder. Maybe I got a very well-behaved headphone? Maybe Lyr 3 is just this good at treble control? Maybe I'm not listening to the right/wrong kind of music? Something else I'm not thinking of?

 

Could be a little bit of all of it. Also if you pick up 5 different random 800, I can pretty much promise you that they won't all sound the same. You may have just got a good 'un.

 

How old are you? Have you recently had your hearing tested? High-frequency hearing loss can make a lot of gear (and recordings) sound better.

 

I think it may start new, very interesting trend.
HD800S, on my system and to my ears, sounds good to me! What's my problem?
Here are possible solutions:
- have your hearing tested. You may be too old to be doing this.
- cycle through the gear until you find the setup that does not sound good at all
- try different HD800S serial numbers, until you find a pair that sounds shitty. Buy it.

 

I'm in my 30s. It's been a while since my hearing was tested, so I don't know about peaks and dips, but on a sweep I still have up to around 17k. I kept the higher frequencies for a while; it was kind of a relief when I realized the 19k was finally gone. I don't think this is it, but maybe...

Haha, I appreciate what you're saying here. It's not that I don't enjoy what I have, though! I just kind of want to understand why it's better than expected.

 

Simply because it is a lot better than you've heard from others before trying it yourself? It really could be that simple!

When I first heard HD800, I knew I simply had to have it. There has been been audio equipment I loved, including HD600 among headphones, but I don't recall any other box, speaker or phones, within financial possibility, having that that effect on me. True, I had quite severe HF hearing loss by then, but still, it was not only the highs of HD800 I loved.

As you are listening to sweeps and stuff, I'm thinking that you do experiment with sound. In which case you are probably aware that there is actually very little music up there in the higher limits of human hearing. Do a low-pass sweep, and it's quite surprising how soon music becomes a series of little hisses.

Am I saying that it is ok to throw that away? Which is what lossy compression does? Well, the music still sounds pretty good. No, I'm not saying that (we loose "air" which is certainly a real thing, for starters) but I am saying that what happens up there in the higher frequency bands may not be as important as some claim. Unless they are are lucky enough (unlucky enough?) to be in the super-ear minority!