Sennheiser HD800S Review (Headphone)

[Alexander Gödde]

I also have a pair of HD650's that I listened to for many years, and there's just absolutely no comparison with an EQ's HD800. That's my $0.02.

The difference between the original HD580 (basically already a HD600) and HD800, both with EQ to the same target curve, is stunning.

Based on objective measurements - $1400 dollars for garbage FR, lots of bass distortion and equaled if not bested by a much cheaper model. If these were speakers they would be nearly universally criticized. Why do headphones get a pass?

Because the HD800(s) provide an excellent listening experience.

If you do the EQ correction currently you will lost a lot of these over exaggerated details due to the overemphasis on details in his FR.

I got a pair of HD800 a couple months back and I have never listened to them without EQ (except for verifying their functionality immediately after unpacking). With these EQ settings (https://www.dropbox.com/s/v999jbft39506ma/Sennheiser HD800.pdf?dl=0) applied, they are the most detailed headphones I have heard. As an example that came up during my listening yesterday, the cowbells in a Mahler symphony were identifiable as such, and as mutliple ones, while on other headphones there is an at least somewhat chaotic, metallic sound with an unclear source.

 

[Alexander Gödde]

Can I get someone to volunteer writing a mini article on all the EQ options available for different OS platforms?

I can cover some options on Windows, Linux and Android. Message me if that is OK. Also happy to cooperate with somebody who can cover iOS and Mac OS.

 

[Doodski]

I can cover some options on Windows, Linux and Android. Message me if that is OK. Also happy to cooperate with somebody who can cover iOS and Mac OS.

Please add the details at this thread. Thank you.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ware-for-windows-linux-mac-and-android.18450/

 

[maverickronin]

Is a little weird when a headphone can show the 20hz easily but isnt tactile as speakers.. Even that tactile effect in headphones are different but how you can cuantify that? I mean is a importante aspect

Subwoofers and full range speakers move much more air and you can feel it with your whole body.

Headphones just move a tiny little bit of air coupled very closely to your ear. Depending on the specific driver and its moving mass you also get a little bit of vibration coupled to your head as well.

 

[Alexander Gödde]

For a high-end model like this, from a reputable manufacturer like Senn, it would be nice if we could hear from their designers and engineers (not the marketing department!) to see what they were going for in designing these headphones. Surely in that price bracket the tonal balance of these was deliberate and they could pursue whatever general tonal balance they chose.

I would rather expect that the frequency response is a compromise. Tuning headphones appears to be very hard. All the high-end ones have problems there, often much worse than the HD800(s).

For reference, this is the best current ranking of headphones that I am aware of: https://crinacle.com/rankings/headphones/

The HD800 gets an "A-" for tonality, and there are a lot of expensive headphones from established brands which score worse.

From my personal collection, I use the Etymotic ER3XR without EQ, and I can use the Oppo PM-3 and Sennheiser HD580 as-is if I have to. I apply EQ to everything else.

 

[phoenixsong]

I would need more time to analyze what is going on. As I noted though, my current hypothesis is exaggeration of certain frequencies above 5 kHz combined with the larger caps and maybe even driver design. If it is the latter aspects then measuring their effect is beyond our reach right now.

Sounds like impulse response and CSD measurements, since distortion alone doesn't cut it. As for the frequency response, it may be hard to come up with an absolute psychoacoustic standard as a reference, since it's like a complex sum of many variables (from experience faster measured impulse responses also gives the subjective impression of possessing more treble, despite measuring the same in terms of level)

 

[richard12511]

Not at all. There is no way I can evaluate headphones properly with just listening. Measurements are a must to point to potential problem areas where experimentation then starts to see if those areas need to be addressed or not. This is far from slapping a pair of headphones on and going on and on with random vocabulary to describe the sound.

I never meant to imply that you should evaluate with just listening. In fact, later in that post you quoted, I shared "my" ideal review workflow, which includes measurement.

My point with the section you quoted here was in response to the criticism that ASR is delving too far into the subjective world with these headphone reviews. It's my view that because the measurement science is so much less precise, and so less well established than it is with loudspeakers, the subjective portion of the review HAS to take on a more prominent role in the review. I just don't see any other way, at least not yet.

 

[beagleman]

This is ridiculous.
I still listen to real life with the same ears I use to listen to my hifi.
I have seen this sort of comment before about compensating for age related hearing loss and there is not even a tiny glimmer of logic to it.
My reference is the outside world and the many, many more concerts I have been to since I was young and, hence, a much keener knowledge of what real acoustic music, as opposed to music from speakers, actually sounds like.
Any relationship with my age is more knowledge and experience. When I was young and had pretty well only heard music over speakers, and almost exclusively pop music at that, I am sure I would have liked the preference curve Harman have assembled from a lot of listeners.
Now I am very much more knowledgeable and experienced I definitely do not.
Talking preference back in the day nearly everybody I knew had the "loudness" contour on and/or the bass turned up. "Preference" IME has little to do with accurate reproduction.

But your hearing has changed over the years....so how it is the "Same ears"?
So you are basically saying your "Reference", continually changes? As your hearing gets worse, you simply get used to it, and never realize it is worse??

I do not see the logic in that. I remember songs I heard 15 years ago, and can TELL that certain high frequency sounds are not as bright now compared to back then.
I mean I can easily realize I can not hear 14-16khz hardly at all now.

 

[MZKM]

Huzzah!!!
I can now interpolate for any frequency with a good deal of accuracy:
View attachment 99547

Basically identical.

I'm going to have to check my math (using standard deviation and slope formulas work, but I can't seem to get his equations for standard deviation and slope to work)

​

Oratory1990 got an 83 for his sample. I am using a 50Hz cut-off point as that is what he uses; however, the patent only mentions 20Hz, but he states the AES paper uses 50Hz for AE/OE, can anyone with an AES membership confirm? It is 50Hz.
The 2018 patent never mentions 50Hz.

Also, not that is matters for the score, but I wonder what frequency point/range I should reference the curve to the target, currently I just chose 500Hz.

 

[wasnotwasnotwas]

I see quite a number of people use eq but I don't. Will doing eq color up the sound/music somewhat ?

Yes. For the most obvious example, find a way of putting a low shelf filter at, say, 200Hz of 1 dB, 3 dB, 5dB etc and see how immediate the effect is and how noticeable as you increase the levels by only a dB or so each time.

Proper EQ gets all areas of the frequency range (hopefully) into something you like better than stock. But its very very noticeable when done right.

 

[richard12511]

I think "know" is too strong a word to use in this context.

"Some people believe" would be more like it.

Much as I respect and enjoy the writings of Dr Toole, I do not consider him to be the messiah.

Average preference is useful. Taking it as absolute is risky, IMHO.

I'm torn.

Your logic that "I hear everything in life with this hearing loss" makes perfect sense to me, and it's a point I've brought up several times in response to other posters using hearing loss as an explanation for why they prefer non-neutral loudspeakers/headphones. At the same time, I can't ignore what the data that @bobbooo posted seems to be saying.

@pozz and @andreasmaaan have made good points.

Based on scientific data, we know that as people age:
- they prefer less bass and more treble
- their hearing gets less reliable as a means to properly evaluate loudspeakers

we don't know:
- why older people prefer less bass and more treble. "Hearing loss" is a hypothesis, and it's one supported by the data(imo), but it just doesn't make sense to me logically. @pozz 's explanation makes more sense to me.

Some other questions I was thinking about this morning

We know that the reference changes as we age, but does that guarantee that the preference also changes? We're kinda assuming that what sounds best to one individual is what matches closest to what he/she hears in the rest of life, but what if "best" is (for example) what is closest to what the mix/master engineer heard? Perhaps there is an "ideal sound" for each recording that our brain(and the mix/master engineer brains) are shooting for that is independent of our rest of life reference. Stepping back and asking more generally, what if preference remains as the reference changes? The sad implication of this is that life itself will sound "less good" as we age, since our brains are subconsciously still comparing it against the same target. Perhaps the rest of life would also benefit (in terms of listener preference) by decreased bass and boosted treble as we age?

 

[threni]

But your hearing has changed over the years....so how it is the "Same ears"?
So you are basically saying your "Reference", continually changes? As your hearing gets worse, you simply get used to it, and never realize it is worse??

I do not see the logic in that. I remember songs I heard 15 years ago, and can TELL that certain high frequency sounds are not as bright now compared to back then.
I mean I can easily realize I can not hear 14-16khz hardly at all now.

The argument seems to be that you must fix this "problem" with a hearing aid in your head, never with eq on the system. The distinction is lost on me. Clearly it's much easier to do the latter, especially as we're talking about the sort of hearing loss you'd not bother with a hearing aid to deal with.

 

[andreasmaaan]

Based on scientific data, we know that as people age:
- they prefer less bass and more treble

I don’t disagree with your post as a whole, but I’d be a bit cautious about saying we “know” this. We have an indication from one study with a small group of subjects and in which the differences between the preferences of older listeners and the mean was relatively small (0.6 to 1.1dB).

I think at this stage it’s an interesting finding and an indication that further research is warranted (unless that research has already been done and I’m not aware of it).

 

[MadMan]

Why are people writing about age-related hearing changes as if people only have decreases in high frequency extension and sensitivity? People lose low frequency extension and sensitivity too.

 

[pkane]

I don’t disagree with your post as a whole, but I’d be a bit cautious about saying we “know” this. We have an indication from one study with a small group of subjects and in which the differences between the preferences of older listeners and the mean was relatively small (0.6 to 1.1dB).

I think at this stage it’s an interesting finding and an indication that further research is warranted (unless that research has already been done and I’m not aware of it).

I guess I'm a counter-example to this result, being firmly in the age group that is being discussed. Compared to the Harman's target, I prefer more bass and less treble with all my headphones. Harman's target sounds harsh and bright to me. Yes, it makes things stand out more, but it is as unnatural to me as a hard Photoshop image sharpening filter. My frequency hearing range seems to be age-appropriate...

 

[richard12511]

What? Did you read the review I wrote? I said it is only recommended with equalization. It is NOT recommended otherwise.

And no, there are plenty of speakers that are worse than this. Find me one that goes down to 20 Hz with equalization as this headphone does.

You're right in terms of bass extension. I tend to ignore bass extension when evaluating speakers(since I use subwoofers in all my systems), but for someone who doesn't use subs, these are probably better than most of the speakers you've tested.

Ignoring bass extension, how many speakers that you've measured differ more from neutral(on axis) than this headphone differs from the "ASR Target"? Going by memory, this has got to be pretty close to the absolute worst. Maybe the LRS or Canon speaker deviates more? I've seen "deviation from target" graphs with headphones, though never really for loudspeakers. Could you provide such a graph? Target for headphones would be the one you provided. Target for loudspeakers would be a straight line. Maybe @MZKM could help?

Huge caveat is of course that I don't personally believe these measurements to be as accurate or informative as the measurements the NFS produces. I'm sorta assuming that they are to make my points.

 

[MZKM]

You're right in terms of bass extension. I tend to ignore bass extension when evaluating speakers(since I use subwoofers in all my systems), but for someone who doesn't use subs, these are probably better than most of the speakers you've tested.

Ignoring bass extension, how many speakers that you've measured differ more from neutral(on axis) than this headphone differs from the "ASR Target"? Going by memory, this has got to be pretty close to the absolute worst. Maybe the LRS or Canon speaker deviates more? I've seen "deviation from target" graphs with headphones, though never really for loudspeakers. Could you provide such a graph? Target for headphones would be the one you provided. Target for loudspeakers would be a straight line. Maybe @MZKM could help?

Huge caveat is of course that I don't personally believe these measurements to be as accurate or informative as the measurements the NFS produces. I'm sorta assuming that they are to make my points.

I do a Tonal Balance chart in my spreadsheets. It does a weighted average (according to the weights in the preference rating) of the slope normalized PIR curve and the on-axis. It'll not be that accurate below say 100Hz, but showing just on-axis won't be great, as it won't show dispersion and directivity mismatch.

 

[m8o]

Hi amirm,

Thanks for taking time to reply

But if you can simulate the other headphone and have 85% similarity with the other headphone, then there's no real reason to choose a headphone for other reasons than comfort and features and build quality... and price maybe.
Provided of course, you can EQ your headphone properly, but that's another story

Or did I misunderstood what you wrote ?

I believe you understood correctly. But I for one can't disagree with that more.

EQ'ing two headphones to have the same frequency response to a sweep or steady pink noise does nothing for how dynamic music program material ...
- resonates in the cup cavities
- bounces around the front cups and/or back (if a closed headphone) and into your ear canals
- sound is absorbed into or bounces off the pads in the cup cavity; or when absorbed into the pads slightly, is diffused then permeates back out into the ear cup and eventually some makes it into your ear canal. (all of that is why pad rolling exists in this hobby)
- whether the moving element is a film or cone or dome, how "pistionic" it is (is that a word, I mean, how closely it moves like a piston) and how in particular it moves air in both speed and volume/mass
- many more things...

All of which gives one a sense of ... (in no particular order, i.e. not correlated to the list above)

- slam vs laiziness
- a very close "in your head" effect, vs. a "out of head but sound having a uniform depth helmet of sound" effect, vs. a "total 3d surround out of head with variance in depth/distance from the head" effect
- whether the above occurs uniformly across the whole frequency spectrum or differently in portions of the frequency spectrum
- congestion vs. clarity, i.e. ability to produce nuances of tones that are not masked by loud tones
- so much more, but I'll cut it short there.

See my list of headphones:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...for-testing-at-his-request.18092/#post-588358
There is not a single headphone in that list that I have not spent anywhere from some time to a significant amount of time eq'ing, using measurements I can find others have made but also the ones I like most with the aid of my TerraSonde ATB 3C with my own custom measurement rig (not a instrument grade rig so I wouldn't publish any of my measurements, but it provides uniformity across any I've measured). And if not eq, often if not most of the time I pass whatever I'm listening to (music or tv) thru a Perreaux TC2 3-band tone control.

I have been at this a long time. Empirical evidence allows me to say with a good deal of confidence that after eq, headphones will still impart their own "personalities" to the music playback.

 

[Robbo99999]

I like to call this large, angled earcups that maximize pinna activation (as Rtings have impressively attempted to quantify), in combination with listener pricing bias, and leave the nonsense Head-Fi / YouTuber vocabulary where it belongs. You don't need to be robbed of over a thousand dollars for a 'TOTL' headphone to get this 'effortless' sound (read: high pinna activation) - plenty of 'entry level' headphones offer this, such as the AKG K702, or the HifiMan HE4XX at almost a tenth of the price, the latter not only having lower distortion (beneficial when EQing up the bass to the Harman target) but even following the $60,000 Sennheiser HE-1's frequency response more closely (in fact the closest I've seen in the mids and treble):

View attachment 99577

This gives the HE4XX a Harman predicted preference rating of 88/100, just two points below the HE-1's 90, and five ahead of the HD800S's 83. I don't know how many more times it needs to be shown that price is not a good indicator of sound quality when it comes to audio reproduction equipment.

Ooo, nice, I got the HifiMan HE4xx on order at the moment....the reason I bought it was reports of excellent soundstage rating from rtings combined with hopefully low distortion and also an EQ'able frequency response and finally also not too expensive....according to rtings it has better soundstage rating than K702, if this is really the case then HE4xx could be my final headphone (although I'm happy with K702 as final headphone if HE4xx not better). Have you got HE4xx, how's the soundstage, you got K702 as well?

 

[Robbo99999]

Thanks... you're totally correct.. what was I thinking ?
I'll sell my HD800 and from now on will listen to my (Oratory EQ'ed of course) K702 that sits in its box, obviously for no apparent reason.

After all I have to get rid of my pricing biased, elitist, youtube/headfi line of thinking. I might even buy the HE4XX believing it is very close to the HE1 at 1/250th of the price because it only is 2 insignificant points below it... without EQ even.. go figure.

He's got a point though, price is not an indicator of quality.....but I'm not saying HD800s is not a good headphone....it could well do what the K702 does for soundstage to an even better level.....but price is not an indicator.