Sennheiser HD800S Review (Headphone)

[richard12511]

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 agree. "Know" is too strong.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

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.

My planar magnético hav

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.

Yep sadly there is no measurements for this thing, i don't considerer any review of headphones and in ear as pro review because no one of them can say the whole history, you only are limited by thd and fr.
my planar magnetic headphone have this type of driver wich allow move more air

https://www.danclarkaudio.com/pub/media/wysiwyg/V-Planar-Animation320.gif
https://www.danclarkaudio.com/pub/media/wysiwyg/standard-animation320.gif

 

[infinitesymphony]

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.

I'm fascinated by this list and find myself agreeing with a lot of it. Even though a pair of headphones might be close enough to the Harman curve to allow very close calibration to it, there's still something missing.

See the Shure SRH440 ($79), which scores a 95 preference rating and is #2 on @jaakkopasanen's ranking list.

@crinacle gives the Shure SRH440 nearly his top rating for "tone grade" but gives them a C+ for "technical grade."

Quantifying that difference will be the key to understanding what differentiates good headphones from bad beyond raw frequency response.

 

[GimeDsp]

Great review Amir!
I think you'll get a lot of interaction with the investment you made in headphone testing and members/community will get immense value from this.
I am not a headphone geek,most I have owned was 5 pairs at once, but I know there are headphone lovers that will go crazy over this info.

I am still getting used to seeing the frequency response graph that looks different from speaker FR.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

i really want to know what happen to the distortion when you turn up the sub bass, i think they gonna rise up but how much?

 

[wasnotwasnotwas]

I'm fascinated by this list and find myself agreeing with a lot of it. Even though a pair of headphones might be close enough to the Harman curve to allow very close calibration to it, there's still something missing.

See the Shure SRH440 ($79), which scores a 95 preference rating and is #2 on @jaakkopasanen's ranking list.

@crinacle gives the Shure SRH440 nearly his top rating for "tone grade" but gives them a C+ for "technical grade."

View attachment 99622

Quantifying that difference will be the key to understanding what differentiates good headphones from bad beyond raw frequency response.

Bingo. And why saying that something has good FR, low distortion, can take EQ and is comfy still does not automatically make it a "great" headphone. Good, for sure.

 

[MZKM]

I'm fascinated by this list and find myself agreeing with a lot of it. Even though a pair of headphones might be close enough to the Harman curve to allow very close calibration to it, there's still something missing.

See the Shure SRH440 ($79), which scores a 95 preference rating and is #2 on @jaakkopasanen's ranking list.

@crinacle gives the Shure SRH440 nearly his top rating for "tone grade" but gives them a C+ for "technical grade."

View attachment 99622

Quantifying that difference will be the key to understanding what differentiates good headphones from bad beyond raw frequency response.

Which then brings into question, what besides raw FR matters.

Left & Right FR matching
Left & Right Phase matching
Driver angling (PRTF)
etc.


For Driver angling, RTINGS took their dummy head and measured the FR of a speaker (equalized flat) placed at 30-degrees.

 

[KeithPhantom]

$400 HD650

I can say the same thing about the HD 6X0 series, where my MSR7 has under 1% THD for the full range of frequencies, and it was only $250 MSRP. I think this is something that even though it can be technically improved, it should not impact performance.

 

[infinitesymphony]

Which then brings into question, what besides raw FR matters.

Left & Right FR matching
Left & Right Phase matching
Driver angling (PRTF)
etc.


For Driver angling, RTINGS took their dummy head and measured the FR of a speaker (equalized flat) placed at 30-degrees.

@maverickronin brought up a point earlier in the thread about what you might call the headphone version of directivity and the ways RTINGS tries to measure it. In addition to driver angles influencing perception of width, it appears that the size of the drivers might also correlate to a wider soundstage.

HD650 & HD800 Drivers

 

[beagleman]

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.

I see a few mention, as our hearing declines, we never notice it. So a totally neutral speaker will sound completely normal to us, but at the same time, if our hearing changed, how could it?

I do not believe we become accustomed TO losing hearing completely. Maybe to some degree, but if we did, then a hearing aid would make everything sound wrong to us.....??

I am not sure how we can have it both ways.

 

[Degru]

Amir has subsequently said that he could listen to the "94dB" sine sweeps with no discomfort, so it's indicating that SPL is not being reported accurately for some reason.....(the sine sweeps are 0dBFS).

Oh yeah I missed that. Then again, I would not be surprised with his talk of making the HD650 vibrate his earlobes from bass (!!) during his amp reviews. 94db sine wave is *extremely* loud and uncomfortable and if he can handle even louder... Ouch.

 

[Rock Rabbit]

The thing is, Amir said he's measuring SPL at 425Hz, which is basically the same dB level as 1kHz when referencing the Headphone Harman Curve, and most of the frequency response is higher than this point (in dB), so given all that it seems that Amir's comments about 94dB being below normal listening level are a little crazy, I don't get that currently.

I think Amir is just talking about a 0dBFS test tone at 425Hz in terms of his comments on dB level (it's annotated in the following graph):
View attachment 99492
EDIT: ah, I see your point now RayDunzl, you're saying that would be the peak, which it would, and music is not always at 0dBFS......although a lot of modern music is consistently bouncing off 0dBFS if you analyze a few tracks in a program like Orban Loudness Meter....so I think the idea that 94dB (peak) is below normal listening levels, I find that a little strange & unbelievable still.

94 dB SPL is an average (rms) not peak value of acoustic pressure. The test is at constant rms voltage from the pre, it really doesn't matter (on a good dac) the value in the digital domain (dBFS). The hp amp is adjusted to measure the acoustical output of headphones under test...and the voltage output of the preamp is always constant.
Obs.: at ear level even 85 dB SPL (constant exposure) is considered harmful, average

 

[PenguinMusic]

If you can choose between pulseaudio and alsa my fairly limited understanding is that alsa is better but pulseaudio allows more than one device at a time via support for mixing. I did some eq using pulse but it was glitchy and used a lot of cpu and I read it was buggy. The eq i use on alsa is low cpu and rock solid. If you're interested in alsa I could probably provide some help. If someone here knows more about it I'd be interested in learning more myself. I'm about to write a short blog about how I built a portable music player out of a raspberry pi 3 and lego and the Apple usb dongle which will include details about the alsa eq.

Hi,

thanks for your offer to help.

All in all, PulseAudio is just like a "frontend" for Alsa.
The latest versions of PulseAudio included a nice feature called "avoid-resample".
Before that, everything that was played through PulseAudio would be "downsampled" or "upsampled" to be played back at 16/44.

The only problem with that option is that, if you launch let's say Google Chrome (that cannot playback in anthing else than 16/44) BEFORE you launch other PulseAudio services, that app will "hijack" Pulseaudio and Pulse will then resample everything to 16/44 again :-(

There's is one thing that you can do if you have say TosLink and USB on your computer.

If you want to use ALSA with "Toslink" then you just can turn off the Toslink output in PulseAudio and then use that socket as ALSA playback socket.
Works like a charm...

Still, you cannot redirect my favourite Audio Player (Lollypop) to use ALSA socket.
So you have to stick with Pulse or use another player (I like gmusic browser and Cantata... and those cna both be configured to use one of the audio output with ALSA).
Still, ALSA also sometimes resamples things and that is somewhat misleading too...

That is why I decided to go for the dedicated music player... It runs pretty nicely, of course without part of the flexibility of the computer player

Regards.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

I'm fascinated by this list and find myself agreeing with a lot of it. Even though a pair of headphones might be close enough to the Harman curve to allow very close calibration to it, there's still something missing.

See the Shure SRH440 ($79), which scores a 95 preference rating and is #2 on @jaakkopasanen's ranking list.

@crinacle gives the Shure SRH440 nearly his top rating for "tone grade" but gives them a C+ for "technical grade."

View attachment 99622

Quantifying that difference will be the key to understanding what differentiates good headphones from bad beyond raw frequency response.

i did the EQ just for curiosity for my Ether flow, sound very tiny and bright, very incorrect.... i way prefer the EQ that i made for my efo.

 

[threni]

Hi,

thanks for your offer to help.

All in all, PulseAudio is just like a "frontend" for Alsa.
The latest versions of PulseAudio included a nice feature called "avoid-resample".
Before that, everything that was played through PulseAudio would be "downsampled" or "upsampled" to be played back at 16/44.

The only problem with that option is that, if you launch let's say Google Chrome (that cannot playback in anthing else than 16/44) BEFORE you launch other PulseAudio services, that app will "hijack" Pulseaudio and Pulse will then resample everything to 16/44 again :-(

There's is one thing that you can do if you have say TosLink and USB on your computer.

If you want to use ALSA with "Toslink" then you just can turn off the Toslink output in PulseAudio and then use that socket as ALSA playback socket.
Works like a charm...

Still, you cannot redirect my favourite Audio Player (Lollypop) to use ALSA socket.
So you have to stick with Pulse or use another player (I like gmusic browser and Cantata... and those cna both be configured to use one of the audio output with ALSA).
Still, ALSA also sometimes resamples things and that is somewhat misleading too...

That is why I decided to go for the dedicated music player... It runs pretty nicely, of course without part of the flexibility of the computer player

Regards.

Yes, I'm sticking with a dedicated music player too. One Pi talks to a Topping E30 directly using ALSA; the other to the Apple USB dongle via the ALSA equalizer.

Interestingly, this month, Raspberry Pi OS is switching to Pulseaudio:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/new-raspberry-pi-os-release-december-2020/

"Audio on Linux is really quite complicated."

 

[solderdude]

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.

No indeed it isn't, so the question is why drag the price of a better performing HP into the equation in the first place?

 

[Robbo99999]

No indeed it isn't, so the question is why drag the price of a better performing HP into the equation in the first place?

I think bobbooo was a bit annoyed about your flowery language when describing the 800s ("I like to call this 'effortless' sound") which might have been a pyschological indicator that you're "bought into the elitest hype" of the 800s rather than basing it on real fundamentals, and he wanted to show that some other significantly better value headphones can do similar in terms of soundstage, as well as he was trying to characterise the factors that can create soundstage (the rtings reference). So, yeah, you didn't drag price into it, but he wanted to put your post into perspective I think....I was agreeing with his angle. I'm sure I'd like 800s after EQ if I tried them, because soundstage is very important to me in a headphone preference, as I know from my experience with K702 - other headphones that I own don't have the soundstage of the K702 (eg HD600 & NAD HP50).....so it's possible I'd like the 800s more than my K702, but I couldn't ever see myself spending £1400 on a headphone....so cheaper alternatives that can do all of the good things that an 800s can do (almost to the same degree, or perhaps better, who knows), then that's a good thing to highlight cheaper alternatives.

 

[pozz]

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?

Sitting behind the mixing engineers desk makes you at once more critical and more forgiving, in my experience. You can hear the decisions that were made and appreciate them. The tweaking really comes in where you consider yourself in charge of the sound. Audiophiles are in this in-between active/passive relationship where you look for something that both immediately fits your want and responds to your attempts to tailor it.

The thing that doesn't make sense with "restoring" hearing loss with EQ, whether done at the source or built into the device's FR, is that it's not SPL-specific. When looking at new hearing aids, they have DSP EQ, with gain, Q and compression adjustments built-in based on level and envelope:


https://starkeypro.com/pdfs/The_Compression_Handbook.pdf

That's about as close as you get to matching internal sense of loudness.

Really, the main thing to leave with is the following:

• Headphones are based on coupling to the hearing system.
• Most people have some degree of hearing damage and a varying sense of loudness.
• EQ is always a coarse adjustment, but should be a regular tool in the listener's arsenal.
• You can't expect a perfect match. Passive headphone tech can't do that.
• What you can expect, once you futz around with EQ, is to understand the FR profile that you like and the sorts of minimal adjustments you have to make to get it there.

The thing that headphone manufacturers should go for, IMO:

• Blind tests on angled drivers, including varying driver size and the distance to the ear, and documenting the variation in FR depending on angle of incidence. This will be really hard to do given all the weight differences, fit and so forth. But also building the headphones for testing, given how hard it is to control resonance.
• Provide measurements of headphones showing how EQable they are. They need to be able to take a broad range of adjustment across the spectrum without complaint. So a graph should show a basic FR with a complementary range of values per frequency showing that +/- this it's all good. Perhaps also supplemented with information about how fine a Q you can reasonably adjust and how many Hz over you have to go to make an equivalent adjustment in the opposite direction (boost/attenuation). Like the results of a stress test.

 

[PuX]

since everybody loves EQ in this thread I just had to come and say I hate the idea of EQ.

if you dislike how your headphones sound just replace them with some other headphones.

or chose one of your pairs depending on your mood/music.

I have all the classics - HD650, K712, DT880 (pro 250 Ohm and special 600 Ohm versions) and more - they are all very different and while you could try to make them sound sort of like each other with EQ, it would defeat the point.

also pretty sure frequency response does not show the full picture. for example, AKG K712 supposedly has a very similar frequency response to HD800, but can you hear all the details and separate instruments as easily?

 

[wasnotwasnotwas]

I think bobbooo was a bit annoyed about your flowery language when describing the 800s ("I like to call this 'effortless' sound") which might have been a pyschological indicator that you're "bought into the elitest hype" of the 800s rather than basing it on real fundamentals, and he wanted to show that some other significantly better value headphones can do similar in terms of soundstage, as well as he was trying to characterise the factors that can create soundstage (the rtings reference). So, yeah, you didn't drag price into it, but he wanted to put your post into perspective I think....I was agreeing with his angle. I'm sure I'd like 800s after EQ if I tried them, because soundstage is very important to me in a headphone preference, as I know from my experience with K702 - other headphones that I own don't have the soundstage of the K702 (eg HD600 & NAD HP50).....so it's possible I'd like the 800s more than my K702, but I couldn't ever see myself spending £1400 on a headphone....so cheaper alternatives that can do all of the good things that an 800s can do (almost to the same degree, or perhaps better, who knows), then that's a good thing to highlight cheaper alternatives.

Then has our host also succumbed to the hype?

"It manages to provide a spooky layering and I guess I should say clarity that is not only surprisingly but delightful. I don't know if the effect will be too much if it comes across a lot of music but so far, I can't help but liking it and liking it a lot."

I don't think either this or @solderdude language out of place when describing the sonics of a pair of headphones.

Just reading the many comments on this and other threads suggests there are some qualities that the measurements we see here don't cover. Worthy of further study for sure. We may have to tolerate some less than objective descriptors. For now.