Headphone System with the the best Soundstage for Movies & Gaming (HD800)

I've been doing a little experimenting, and reading. I came to the conclusion that any depth I was perceiving with the Mjolnir 2 was actually just a sense of voices being distant, there was no front to rear imaging information. I suspected that this was due to recessed mid-range plus some veil. I used EQ to verify this quite easily.

We already know headphones don't really do depth in their natural state. So I'm currently thinking the natural state for a headphone is the perception of 3 spheres Left/Centre/Right. Even the good HRTF DSP solutions don't really provide much depth. This binaural video of New York City was the only place I have really felt any:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/12/8...ural-immersive-vr-sound-times-square-new-york

This is an informative post explaining headphone stage depth, and some of the artificial ways it can be brought about in headphone design:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/478352/how-soundstage-depth-works-or-doesnt-work-in-headphones

So I have a question for you guys:
When it comes to tubes, especially OTL amps, is the characteristic of soundstage depth just a recessed and veiled mid-range, or is there something I am missing? I'm feeling this may be something of a misnomer in the amplifier impressions I have read.

 

OMG, you'r so innocent!

Seriously no one can tell you what you are missing, but I can tell you that you are missing A lot if you have not heard a proper EC, DNA or similar.
There is no veil, no shit, no dryness, no grain etc. Totl set obliberates any solid state with HD800, that is not an overstatement.
Based on other's impressions I get the sense that Mjol 2 is kinda half way there, with lack of depth being most obvious shortcoming. But then good SET is expensive, no way around it. 100 yo technology won't get cheap all the sudden.

What ever you do, don't blind buy Lehman BCL, it sucks with HD800. There are better options at third or half the price.

 

Hahaha. Well everyone starts somewhere. I just don't have access to the amps that are well regarded here. The Mojo 2 seemed like the best compromise. Once I understood just how poor it's frequency response was I was able to compensate with EQ. Not liking the veil though. In every other respect it's leagues ahead of anything I have previously used. I was considering trying different tubes, but there doesn't appear to be a consensus on what to get, and I have no desire to tube roll.

My mention of the BCL was conditional, "Performance and price aside". The new pricing is insane for what it is. Used it can be had for a bit more than a new Asgard 2.

The best OTLs we have in Europe with servicing facilities are the Schiit Valhalla 2 and Feliks Audio Elise. With the Mjolnir 2 I have now experienced some of that engaging/involving nature of tubes, I see the appeal.

I would like to understand how an OTL can create depth without effecting the tonal balanced of a headphone, though.

 

Good luck with your journey. I am looking forward to seeing where it takes you. I to am looking at the best SET amp I can get shipped to Europe without breaking the bank. It is hard. I adored the resolution of my HD800s when I first got them but they are not doing it for me anymore.

 

Advice on tubes for HD800 and Mjolnir 2 ----> over here. Most things out of Heerlen, Holland are good.
Another option which I like and quite a few other people like is these adapters and a pair of WE396a's (Brent Jesse has them for $100US/pair). Similar tonal signature to the ones recommended in that link, maybe a bit bassier, ergo fine for HD800, but most saliently for your ends you do get noticeably greater soundstage depth. (Mjolnir 2 is indeed a bit flat by default).

 

So, I got LISST..

I was about to give up on this approach and settle for a super simple system. I only had a few days with them and have been away for 3 weeks since, so take this only as initial impressions from memory, but..

Holy shit!

Also, f**k those stock tubes..

Stock screwed up the tonality so much I could never get an EQ right, LISST behaves normally. I hadn't realised how much stock ruined bass performance. With LISST and an EQ I still can't believe the bass I'm getting out of the HD800, I didn't think they were capable of it. Previously no matter what I tried it was always one-note weak-sauce bass. Now they have some decent weight so I'm no longer missing my TH900. The stock tubes always made everything sound so thin.

LISST also improves resolution quite a bit, stock reducing it way too much or introducing too much veil, or both.

In terms of soundstage LISST sounds flat depth-wise in comparison, it was quite surprising. (EDIT: Staging a little smaller overall, the imaging is more well defined without the hazy nature of the stock tubes). The stock tubes also sound distant, EQing the mid-range doesn't overcome this. What is creating the sense of depth? I can only guess distortion. They can't magically imbue real depth to a fundamentally depthless audio technology, so it must come at a cost. Between the two I'd take LISST in a heart beat though, given all the drawbacks of the tubes. As much as the tubes have an engaging characteristic LISST is what really brought the Mjolnir 2 alive.

I'd be curious to try the WE396a some day but they're expensive to import, and quite frankly I've achieved even more than I ever set out to with the DEQ2496 -> Modi Multibit -> Mjolnir 2 w/LISST -> HD800 headphone system. Everything sounds "right". This chain as whole kicks the TH900 in the teeth, so as much as I used to love them, they're going.

So I think I'm pretty much done! Mission accomplished. Thank you all for your input, and SBAF in general.

(EDIT: Months later I tried the stock tubes out again and my impressions compared to LISST became a bit more refined. They were overly smooth and veiled, with a lot of detail lost. The issues I thought were frequent response related were due to the veil in the mid range. Bass was not thin, but it was not as tight or impactful.)

(EDIT: Made a large addition to the Summary at the end of page 2 to reflect this, and included a photo of my final system:

)

 

Damn why the he'll didn't I find this post 6 months ago. You answered everything I've wanted as a high end PC Gamer audio and could of saved 100 hours or so on research as I have the Modi Multibit, Ether Flow, and just ordered the Mjolnir 2 with solid state tube. I'll have to check out the Equalizer.

Have you tried going balanced and or using a sound card?

 

Well it certainly does take that long to unravel all the widely purveyed horse-shit. This sort of post gets buried as the focus is generally on music, with pretty different priorities, and SBAF though the best place for dependable information is pretty focused in a particular direction.

Balanced is the only way to go with the Mjolnir, as the single ended output has been put through a summer to convert from the balanced output. It''s much less powerful, and the audio seems to get smoothed over. It is there for utility purposes only.

I've only split off optical from HDMI so far to keep things simple, I have not tried any internal soundcards, though I hear E-MU positively mentioned a lot. You need to use optical output for that Modi Multibit otherwise it sounds pretty veiled with USB, but bare in mind not all optical outputs/transports are created equally. I've not tested for latency on the hardware equalizer, though I haven't noticed any obvious issues in general use.

There are a bunch of articles at innerfidelity.com about frequency response measurements and equalization, start here: http://www.innerfidelity.com/conten...es-harman-target-response#E62jQ034XaQKRdoF.97

You can try software equalizers as well, the challenge is getting it to work system-wide, and checking if it is impacting performance. On the Mac I use the TDR Nova plugin with Audio Hijack which certainly takes up some CPU cycles. I have only had a quick go with Equalizer APO on Windows but it seems to work and with a pretty low overhead, but you need to use the Parametric EQ modules not the default Graphic EQ one. There is also a way to make Jriver work system-wide, in which case you can use TDR Nova. TDR is by far the best software EQ plugin I have tried, and I have tried a bunch! (EDIT: Sonarworks EQ have just released a system-wide version for both MAC and Windows, I've never tried their software though.)

It would be worth hearing about some of the dead ends you followed, so that others may avoid those same pitfalls.

 

I have tried using all sort of different things over the past 2 years.

Razer surround and Out of your head are not very good for gaming. k712 is definitely a good headphone for cheap, but 650 is better. I had the HD 800 with Modi Multibit, Valhalla 2, and Sound blaster Z. It was very good, but I thought the Ether Flow had 90% of the same soundstage and had better treble and bass. The mids are about the same. Somethings was it worth the extra $800? I don't know.

I got my tax refund back and am going higher end and hoping to finish the chain here fairly quickly. (Probably never going to finish the chain, but I'm 3K in the hole I better be damn close lol)

From a movie and gaming perspective I wish there was a list of amps/dacs that had super high soundstage, separation, and depth. I am curious about the Philips w396? bulb from the Mjolnir thread to see if that improves anything at all.