Sennheiser HD 820

Good things come to those who wait. But not too long. Like I'm not waiting for a 20th anniversary HD800 edition. By then headphones could be neural implants. Take care of your tinnitus at the same time.

 

You mean with the glass on the inside?

 

Glass is also very dense not like plastic or wood.
Would be interesting to have some one tap the glass and comment on the sound.

He already did give away two important clues:
1- the pads are more comfortable and deeper than stock.
This alone will alter the sound and would be interesting to try those pads on a stock unit.

2- He stated it sounds "a little more full" in lower spectrum...but not more bass..
That says a lot.
Thicker sound.
In any case "full" is not a Synonym to words "Clearer" or "better"... But different.

 

Every unit will be shipped along with measurements. I already requested measurements from Sennheiser, but so far I haven't been lucky - which could be because the HD820 is still in a prototype phase and the tuning is still being enhanced until final production starts.

 

Perhaps @ultrabike should have said reliable measurements as well as impressions, because the ones provided by Sennheiser for these are completely useless for any meaningful interpretation aside from "yeah, these make sound when I feed them a signal".

 

How do you know that? Have you seen what is not available yet? I am pretty sure Sennheiser has reliable measurement gear. The ones Audeze provides are also useable, as are those included by Etymotic.

 

I'm sure Sennheiser's equipment is more than adequate, it's how the present the information that is problematic and useless to the end user.

Here's the measurement from my own HD 800 S for reference:

I'll eat my hat if they provide a better frequency response graph with the HD 820 than they did with the previous 800 series headphones.

 

This. I think we all know the price will hit sub-$1500 after some period of time.

I'm so glad I'm done chasing ultra expensive TOTAL cans.

 

Ok, that’s terrible! Haven’t seen that before

 

Terrible? It looks like staying within ± 2dB through that range.

 

I believe he meant that it deviated so strongly from other, more reliable measurements due to the iffy target curve used, aggressive smoothing, and the fact that it only goes up to 12kHz for some odd reason.

 

Yes, that's why it's terrible because it isn't true. Like, @chakku said: useless. Even more so, deceiving.

 

That's a good question indeed.

 

Well bummer... I keep trying to extract myself from this "hobby" but every once in awhile a cool new closed headphone concept comes up. If Sennheiser can pull off a closed HD800S...

Since the announcement, I have purchased an HD800S and Schiit stack to A/B when the 820 is released. And of course, I'm back to lurking the forums when I should be working. My body is Reggie...

 

Sennheiser has reliable gear, but it's an open question what they are measuring, what stage they are measuring it at, the parameters they use to measure, the compensation curve they are using, and so on.

I believe this is a picture of the Sennheiser measurement gear from their factory:



It's not even clear to me if this set up simulates ear canals, and it doesn't seem to have a body at all.

Sennheiser supplying these measurements without the context, they might as well instead be supplying Certificates of Awesomeness as Awarded By Sennheiser.

 

I'm starting to associate extra cables from Sennheiser being included as a tacit admission by them that they are price gouging.

HD 800, fine, 1k.

HD 800 S, hm, we added a simple resonator, how can we charge more, let's throw in a balanced cable and jack the price up half a grand.

HD 820, hm, we added some glass on the back, doesn't seem like enough, let's throw in a pentaconn cable as well and another half G we go.

HD 660 S, hm, clearly this isn't as good as the 650, oh well, throw in those balanced cables lying around and let's charge half a G for this.

 

@ultrabike regarding isolation, I did read that but I am one of those “software engineers stuck in an open office setting.” Basically I just need enough isolation to mask low level office noise(computer fans, typing, etc) and enough of a seal to not be blasting my terrible retrosynthwave nonsense all over my office mates.

Regarding the MSRP, yes that is ridiculous. However, I took a big stand back in the changstar days against the lcd-3/abyss/he1000 price gouging tactic, and the industry couldn’t have cared less. Sennheiser just wants to get their little taste, who can blame them. That being said, I am banking on Jan still sneaking them out of Germany for hundreds under MSRP. Fingers crossed...