The HD800 & HD800S thread

Well, looks better.

 

ahh!! I was just hoping to own a pair of HD800's someday, now they are announcing this????

 

Would be nice of them if they made the new "acoustical absorber" a purchasable add-on accessory for the original HD800, similar to pads, headbands, cables, etc.

 

This might be the one to own. If it fixes some of the HD800s flaws then goddamn!

I'm in as long as its under 2k.

 

Good for us. Maybe we will soon see used HD800s for $600.

 

or maybe even a reduction in price of brand-new HD800's even!

 

Or an option to send in our 'vanilla' HD800 to Senn to have them pimp it black!

Man what a timing, the dark tyrannical brother of HD800 is just being revealed to the world

 

Oh man. If they actually got this headphone right out of the box, there is going to just be a flood of HD800s on the market.

 

It's going to be evil trying to correctly write the plural of HD800S's (or is it HD800Ss?). Several of the old model would be HD800s. One of the new model will be HD800S. Some folks may be sensitive to 6kHz peaks, while other have grammar OCD. Heaven help those with both afflictions.

 

I find myself cranking the volume up more than before with the HD800. Is this normal? This feels normal.

 

Does that happens gradually over the length of your listening session or...?

 

No, just right at the start. Instruments sound further away and softer than when the volume pot is at the same setting with other headphones (e.g. HD600).
Also, the amount of detail I'm hearing is greeeeeaaattt

 

Hmm funny, back then when I'm still window shopping the HD6x0 and HD800 in meets, I actually tend to lower the volume a bit while using HD800 since... well, the treble, you know; and raise the volume back by a bit too with HD650 since it sounds kind of dampened to me (perhaps because it's an older production 650).

But well anyway, don't get too cozy with your HD800, you have to leave some space left in your heart for the 800S.

 

Sounds like to want to listen to music at realistic levels

 

You mean, like, front row head on with the tower of speakers on rock concert?
been there done that... came home with tinnitus that stays for a week.

 

Depends on what you're listening to. Compressed rock stuff or ultra dynamic jazz, classical, acoustic. I have no problem cranking the later to realistic levels. We've had this discussion before...bottom line is real acoustic instruments are loud. Try banging on some toms softly. It doesn't work. Some of us are looking to reproduce the real thing, others just want background music while they browse facebook. Yep, I think even most audiophiles fall into the latter category for some reason.

 

The volume has to be at least 80 decibels or so to get real instrument tones due to the equal loudness contours of the human ear. Everything has been mixed at an average of 80-90 something decibels even if tracked much louder too. Guitar amps sound better the more you crank them; eg the Marshall JCM 900 gets it's distinct beeswarm/lava/tv static tone from distorting when you dime the volume and gain so that is ridiculously loud (and also why many death metal bands had a problem with the guitars frequency masking the drum kit back in the day. Guitar and drums are still be mixed down to the levels of the other tracks. Classical musicians and drummers (of all genres) are actually deafer than most studio musicians and electric guitar players due to needing to hear the music at a realistic level to play and practice along at a realistic level for hours and hours. Those drummer studio headphones may isolate incredibly well but the sound pressure levels inside will be much higher than the guitarists' as drummers just won't hit hard to softer, safer unrealistic levels.

Unfortunately most audiophiles are not into accurate reproduction of recordings but in euphony, hence all the crap. They don't even want something like an HD 650 that's neutralish except for slight treble roll off so you can listen to some idiot bash the high hat for four hours at an 80 decibel average without earaches.