Comments on Profile Post by Torq

A better closed back maybe not. But there are many better IEMs.

I'm sure Sennheiser could've made it a lot better. Or maybe I'm giving Axel Grell too much credit. I doubt he could do much better, but it's certainly not nearly as good as it could've been or should've been

Is that based on listening to a production unit? And compared directly to it's familial stablemates? I'm far from convinced that you'd be able get much closer to an HD800S with mechanical engineering alone based on, well, physics.

IEMs are great ... but they are a different set of trade-offs.

Based on listening to the one in May which Axel told me was production tuning. But it might not have been, who knows...

The problem lies right there though. Close to an HD800S. Just putting the HD800 driver in there would've improved it a ton. Then fix the wonky midrange with better back damping, better pads and work on the sibilance by tweaking the front baffle and it could've been pretty darn good. Price it at 2k instead of 2.5 and you have a winner.

I'm pretty sure that if it was *that* simple, Sennheiser would have done it ages ago. Of course, they'd also not have taken six YEARS to sort out the resonance/spikes with the HD800 either.

And other than being very slightly more present, I'm not hearing anything "wonky" (nor "honky") about the mid-range, either. But that's with my production HD820 sitting next to my HD800S. Should grab an un-modified HD800 for a laugh.

I have a production, unmodified HD800 in addition to the HD800 J-mod for such comparisons.

Sounds like a date, mate!

I guess it's still better suited to certain genres, rather than an all-rounder though?

Well, put it this way ... I can't think of a better all-round closed-back model than the HD820. So, in that regard, it's the least specialist and best performing of the closed backs I've had my ears on (currently own HD820, ZMF Eikon, TH900 Mk2, MDR-Z1R, TR-X00 Ebony).