The HD800 & HD800S thread

I was not a fan of Beyers, but wanted more resolving power and detail but couldn't afford an HD800/T1. T90 is damn near a close relative and I got it for $300 used. I became a very happy man. The differences between the HD800 and T90 were too subtle for me to care.

But I still want an HD800 because I want the best. Soon....

 

I relegated the HD800S to its box these past 2 months as I listened to my speakers most of the time. This week I took it out and gave it a listen for two days. Despite its uneven frequency range, I am in love with the HD800S. The transient response, dynamics, clarity and resolution via my Yggdrasil-Rag combo is astonishng.

I listened to Renaissance (Palestrina), Baroque (Bach), Classical (Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven), Romantic (Bruckner, Brahms, Wagner, Rachmaninov), Modern (Ligeti, Shostakivoch, Stockhausen, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Prokofiev, Bartok) and every single recording was fantastic. I had my body in goosbumps so many times, and felt like crying to the adagios of Beethoven or Bruckner.

There is an emotional connection to the music that I used to occasionally get with the HD800. Despite the HD800 sparkle and very slight increased clarity, the Yggdrasil-Rag could not get rid of its shortcoming - the treble peak. An SD modded HD800 may be a alternative to the HD800S, with possibly better bass definiton and clarity, but I don't think I'll move to an HD600 / HD650 for now. I would certainly miss the super-resolving, transient response and soundstage of the HD800S especially for the huge range of orchestral pieces I listen to every day.

Now my keenly awaited Campfire Audio Andromeda will hopefully take my 'on the go' music listening to another dimension!

 

If one feels that the HD800 is a face-tweeter, then surely the T90 must be a pitchfork to the ears:



And no, it's not just HeadRoom's measurement system:

• T90: http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/BeyerdynamicT90.pdf
• HD800: http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/SennheiserHD800.pdf

 

actually T90 is indeed fork.

 

They say if you can handle the T90s you can handle anything. The unforgiving drill Sergeant of headphones. I heard about one guy who had a T90 and was warned about the HD800 treble. When he finally made the switch he was like "what treble?"

I find the T90 treble issue to be largely chain dependent and ruthlessly revealing of any deficiencies. I've had a lot of success adding ERS cloth in various places in the chain to clean up EMI/RFI which ended up helping tame the harshness. And as a side effect, brought greater realism and lowered the noise floor.

 

Hi. I am getting the 800/Yggdrasil/Rag at some point. I am torn between the 800 classic and 800S. Would you say the 800 classic is a good pairing with Yggdrasil/Rag? I am not worried about the treble, my T90 is worse and I don't have problems with it. Was the treble issue the only thing you didn't like about the 800 classic? Also what does the 800S bring to the table besides fixing the treble?

Anyone can chime in.

Thanks

 

I am no expert with headphones as I mainly listen to speakers via Yggdrasil-Rag. However I lived with the HD800 via Vali1 and then Rag via Musical Fideliti m6i onboard VDAC2 until I paired it with Yggdrasil/Wyrd. The HD800 did scale up markedly once the Yggdrasil-Rag was in place.

At first I loved its airy soundstage and super-resolving character. However after a few months I felt it was way too bright with quite a few recordings. I listen almost exclusively to classical music nowadays, and need to hear every nuance of orchestral music recorded in 40s (Furtwangler, Toscanini), 50s (E. Kleiber, Klemperer) and 60s (Solti) as well to recent recordings. The HD800 was excruciatingly painful on some old recordings (e.g. Klemperer Beethoven Missa Solemnis) whilst on others it was fantastic (Bach cantata cycle by Suzuki, Sibelius symphony cycle by Vanska). This hit and miss pattern was a bit of a pain for me and I couldn't be bothered to mod them, so I shelved it for a better day thinking about going into tube land and stuck to speakers via Yggdrasil-Rag.

Once I got hold of of the HD800S within weeks of it being on sale in January, I was hooked and this time for good. The HD800S was a bit veiled, subdued with slightly less instrument separation compared to the HD800 sparkle. The bass was slighty more pronounced but possibly less defined. However I could not compare both together as the HD800 was sold within hours of putting it on sale.

Staging, imaging, dynamics and transient response was perfect and similar to the old phone. Yggdrasil-Rag somewhat brings the staging to a more life-like state, that is not too wide or deep (the Yggdrasil plays a huge part in this). This subdued character somewhat feels good for long-term listening. The treble was more controlled allowing the mids to be lifted. However the lifted mids highlighted another deficiency of both headphones - lower mids taking over high mids due to the 4K dip. This is so obvious in string trios with double bass / cello and viola being more in your face and violins further away compared to a live rendition and speaker listening. Symphonies such as Bruckner's 5th, in which brass make a huge impact feel unbalanced with violins being overrun by the freakin trumpets. Equalisation just messed up the whole tuning whether I tried lifting or lowering frequencies via the built-in parametric equalisation of JRiver. Equalising Yggdrasil's engineering masterpiece is a big 'forget about it and throw it to the dogs' in my books. So I turned to speaker listening for another 2 months!

However just last week I took the HD800S out of its box and listened to it for a whole 16 hours (with few breaks). It was a marathon and I loved it! It may not pair with every single recording due to its uneven frequency response but that resolution with sound coming out of nothing is splendid.

I gave it all kinds of music and felt goosebumpbs galore all day-long ....

Renassance: Palestrina Missa Papa Marcelli - bass, tenors, altos and soprano voices were crisp, occasionally bright and the staging felt like being in a cathedral.

Baroque: Bach (who is a GOD!) sounds mesmerising. I istened to quite a few of his cantatas by Suzuki. The baroque period strings are not strident at all and the basso continuo blends really well and feels more natural to the HD800. Bass was impactful without overarching onto mids with Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor BWV582 (E Power Biggs). The fugue was heavenly!

Classical: Mozart piano sonatas (Ingrid Haebler) - holy mahony.... the timbre of the piano is so realistic.
Beethoven late piano sonatas (Igor Levit) - this young pianist has got such a talent. I had an emotional connection to this music that the HD800S served on a silver plate.

Romantic: Wagner The Ring - Gotterdamerung (Solti) - voices and instruments are rendered accurately. Macro and micro dynamics are superb on Siegfried's funeral.
Bruckner - Synphony no 7 (Wand, Karayan, Bohm,) - this symphony has better balance in instrumentation than Bruckner's 5th. High mids are pleasing and I feel like listening to music rather than hi-fi equipment.
Brahms - Symphonies 1, 2, (Bernstein) violin sonatas - violin and piano sounded correct as did the orchestra.
Rachmaninov - symphony 2 (Ashkenazy)

Modern: Ligeti - string quartets, Stockhausen Gruppen - this last piece involves 3 whole orchestras - no issues with imaging or instrument separation.

In summary -

HD800 (unmodded) + Yggdrasil/Rag for me is a No-Go

HD800S + YggyRag is GooseBumbySupremeSauceNirvanaOrgyFest

Someone else could chime in with modded HD800 experience with Yggdrasil/Rag.

Nothing is perfect and you have to accept the most obvious weakness (uneven frequency range). If you are into speakers the Yggdrasil/Rag is great. If you only want headphone listening - the consensus seems to be that tubes are better for HD800 and probably HD800S. Others with way more experience with tubes can show the way.

 

That's alot of useful info. Thanks.

I also listen to mostly classical and jazz these days and am starting get into folk music and stuff like Bob Dylan. Brahms and Mozart being favorites.

I found that the better my system got the harder it was to listen to modern music and all its dreadful mastering techniques. Which is a shame because a lot of modern music is excellent. But there's nothing like listen to Karajan conduct the Berlin Philharmonic to stuff like Brahms and Beethoven. Or the dazzling viruousity of Miles Davis or Less McCarren/Eddie Harris. Really good equipment seems to favor live sounds rather than a lot of the electronic studio mastering stuff with modern music.

I have the T90 being driven by a Denon receiver and Schiit Bifrost 4490/Uptone Regen Amber. Most receivers dont have great headphone outs but the Denon has multichannel RCA inputs which bypasses all the internal processing of the receiver and purely uses the amp section. In that regard it is exceptional (sounds better than the Asgard 2). And I snagged it for $140 used (retail is $400). So in that sense I get exceptional SQ. The T90 seems a bit better suited to jazz with it's average soundstage. So I have been wanting the HD800 to round out the classical and get some better imaging and detail.

How would you say the Vali1 was with the HD800? I am thinking of adding some tube life to my cans but the cheap price scares me a bit.. does it compete with other good amps? Does the HD800 retain all its famous detail, imaging and soundstage with the Vali1?

Also, how do you find tubes with the 800 vs solid state. What are the SQ differences with the 800 specifically?

Again, this is for anybody.

thanks.

 

It really depends on how high a level are we discussing. Low end to mid tier they are trading blows with HD800.
Vali 1 is not much better than next decent ~100$ amp I have heard. Vali 1 was very raw, no microdynamics, meaning rather disjointed presentation and moderately microphonic (tube in it picked up a few kHz ring), on the plus side it had nice slam, meaning good macrodynamics and expansive stage, almost no depth tho. I'd say it was roughly as good as a Sansui A40 receiver I had once for my HD800.
Bottom line is you are probably not gaining much by getting into Vali 1. But then I hear Vali 2 and Valhalla 2 are much better amps, one of these might be your ticket. These do save up your rack/desk space, for many this is also important.

 

Surprised at the lack of micro dynamics of the Valid 1. Im doing some research and some say they like it for micro dynamics. Maybe they are using different headphones.

 

Just thought I'd give my thoughts.

I owned both the HD800 and HD800S before moving up to speaker world.

I personally prefer ed the 800 vanilla. Althought the 800S dealt with the 6khz spike it fudged the bass and made it sound slightly wooly and annoying compared to the 800.

I'd say grab a used 800 and do the superdupont mod or move up to speaker world

 

Not to be an enabler or anything, but wait till you hear a modded HD800S on Yggdrasil/ZDS. Can't guarantee if you'll want to go back to Yggdrasil/Rag.

 

How did you mod your hd800S?

 

I applied the SuperBAF mod with the stock dust covers on. Dunno why but I haven't seen anyone else try the SBAF mod on HD800S. Yes, it was originally designed for HD800, and I did apply the SBAF mod on my HD800 before I had the HD800S, but wasn't quite impressed by it at first. On the other hand, it was perfect for HD800S IMO and attenuated the overall brightness of the HD800S while presenting a more forward mids.

 

Or get Ozone 7 and apply Dynamic EQ to tame the HD800 and leave the sound stage intact. Ozone 7 is studio quality (used to process Beck's Morning Phase which won an engineering Grammy). I realize there is an ethos out there that it is somehow cool to put carpet inside your headphones but uncool to digitally modify a digital signal, but if one puts the music ahead of being cool it is a fine solution.

Not cheap though.

 

BTW I appreciate all of the posts over the last two pages. I have never heard the HD800S but I assumed that it would be a further improvement over my HD800. Maybe not.

 

Was the process the same? Did you have to remove anything from the S like its own resonator?

 

The collection of mods I'm currently running include 'targeted' EQ compensation, mechanical/acoustic, and electrical mods all working in tandem.

The 800's are Very tweakable.

JJ