The HD800 & HD800S thread

I actually have a post-it notes stuck at the corner of my screen to reminds me about safe listening practice. Can't help it though when the shuffle decides to play a favorite track, got to crank the volume up!

Yep yep, certainly reminds me how loud is my dad's guitar. Man that boomy dreadnought give me quite a scare when I was little. Well now, I too did remember, back then that old upright piano in grandma's house is also a fear inducing acoustics for a toddler (which is me).

 

So....basically Senn has implemented some variation on the arnaud/jazz/anax line of mods, plus the popular colorware black paint job, plus forced us to buy its own aftermarket cable, along with the stock cable (instead of just making the stock a 4 pin xlr cable plus xlr -> trs adapter), in order to raise the price by $300 (if rumors on HF are to be believed). Sounds like quite a coup.

I will be very eager to see how the official hd800(s) measures compared to ZD&Marv's and Bill P's mods.

[Edit - just saw the 10 page thread digging into this in detail. Sorry for restating a bunch of old news!]

 

This is a upgrade (or sidegrade?) over so long time i might be willing to consider in world of ToTl phones.

 

Guys, I am trying Sonaworks with both the original and new HD800 plugins. It is a fascinating piece of software. The aim is admirable. But in sound terms I am not really feeling it. I do not find it sufficiently transparent to the original music file. YMMV but Ozone 5 with a bit of targeted treble reduction around 6 Kh is working better for me.

 

Did you try messing with all the wet/bass/tilt knobs? For me personally any ultimate transparency that is lost is worth it for the easy customizeable and zero-fatigue sound.

 

So

Sure. I get that. I think that it is going to depend also on your equipment.

I actually like the original HD800 preset over the newer one. But in both cases the bass is a problem for me. It is not as natural as leaving the bass alone. But then I am not suffering from insufficient bass with the HD800.

 

I would actually prefer a "no cable" option when purchasing the hd800s. I have two custom cables already.

 

Also try messing with filter modes under advanced. You may or may not hear a difference between mixed and linear phase.

I too think that a 6k bell filter fixes most of what's wrong with the 800. I personally throw on a few dB of low bass as well.

 

Cool, do you have a set of measurements of the stock pair in that rig?

 

This is my view about what is going on with the introduction of this new model....
It is only Senn's response to the current market.
They are no longer the only one at the top.
Both the competition from others, and the used HD800 market,
has cut into their sales.
With the 800 now widely known for not being easy to "amp-match", and being a "face tweeter", many will seek for a more substantial bass & easier to match headphone, which is whats the current trend in todays market.
That plus a probable assumed backlog of inventory(from viewing a Senn video) pushed them to find a solution that would not need to throw out current parts stock or revamp its design.
I can see right thru this "bandaid" fix which should be minimal at best, and not a real solution or enough reason for them to even give it another model number.
But for the uninclined, a few decibels of difference will be the next best greatest thing for them..
And so Senn will succeed in doing what Senn really cares about, which is to generate sales.
Again, this is only MY conjecture, and so is my personal take on the subject,
so take it with a grain of salt..

Sennheiser to me, is a sleeping giant that is finnally awakening to the market competition..

 

Sennheiser wanted to originally release differently tuned HD 800s as "different countries can prefer different sounds." I'm guessing they tuned it like an 1980s diffuse field can to appeal to many nouveau riche persons who wouldn't bat an eyelash at dropping 1600 dollars on a headphone if it was the best as that's the sound those nouveau riche cultures are stereotyped as prefering. I'm guessing the false detail brightness was meant to make it stand out to the target market over lower priced, more neutral headphones for short term, in store auditions even though almost everyone tends to gravitate towards a more neutral frequency response over extended listening.

It's not really any different than Iovine and Dre noticing that the "urban market" wasn't buying audiophile and studio headphones so they commissioned something that sounded like a shitty, distorted, underpowered car subwoofer.

 

sorrodje, you inspired me to try the dust covers again after a year without them

 

mmh sounds a bit veiled imo, but I will give it a try for a few weeks.

edit: but will "a little bit better" be enough to suit to "2016 market"? HD800 was very bass-shy without mods and eq to my ears so I think "a little bit" may not be enough to address people who prefer popular modern music. Will see ...

 

Nah... the reason Senn tuned the HD800 as it was was simple: the board of directors at Sennheiser thought it sounded best that way. And when we talk about BoD at Sennheiser, I'd think most of them would be old men who have gone through World War II. So... guess how their hearings are?

As for the rest... I initially thought that the HD800's details are partially fake (due to the brightness?) as well, but now that I have made it a lot darker, and not lost an ounce of detail or soundstage, I believe now that the brightness is actually just due to the tuning. The drivers are capable of far more than the old tuning. But hey, Axel had his bosses to answer to.

That's not a knock to any member who prefers the HD800 in its stock form, of course. With the right setup, I don't find it so bad at all.

Just as an aside, I don't find @sorrodje 's friend's measurement system is comparable to the ones most folks at SBAF use, since the measurement makes the HD800 look a lot darker than it really is.

Here's mine. You can find this and more in the mod/tweak thread:


Compare this one to @purrin 's measurement and you'll find that the curves are somewhat similar. My rig simply accentuates the 6KHz peak, and that's on purpose because subjectively, I find the peak really that bad.

Oh, and as for stock with dust covers on being blurry, I think spectrograms can show that:





Decay with dust cover on is actually slightly slower, or otherwise not as "sharp" as without. Also without dust covers, the high freqs ring quite a bit more, too. (note: again, not a knock to those who prefer dust covers off. I prefer the dust covers off myself due to improved energy distribution in the high mids and also sharper transients)