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Sennheiser HD 820 Review (headphone)

renaudrenaud said:
Because of the price and subconscious mental programming Amir is not able to give the right panther this thing claims.
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Subconscious programming? How did you disassociate yours in assessing this headphone?

I tested this headphone a couple of days ago and waited a day to have my son test it with no knowledge of the measurements. His assessment without EQ was that it was fine with nothing annoying. He found EQ helped it sound very good. The one observation he had which was different than mine and measurements was that he thought it did not have enough sub-bass. @solderdude showed that to be a fit issue.

As to price, I put zero value on that after testing countless products that do poorly at high prices. Indeed it is something I look up when I am writing the review. In this case, I actually said it is not something I would pay $2,400 for.
 
Seta Seta Pop said:
This is all a bit weird. I think it would be great if someone comments on measurements... blindly. Only measurements without knowing the brand, model, price...
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Bigger challenge is to find a reviewer who does NOT peek at the measurements before writing a subjective review. You can easily tell when they say, "oh there was something wrong in the 200 to 300 Hz" as if they have that kind of listening ability. Then you look at the measurements elsewhere and see response differences there.

Back to your point, as I keep saying, headphone measurements are approximate. You cannot get precise measurements no matter what methodology you use. All you can do is have a high level view which you then need to confirm with listening. It is a fool's gold to think you can just look at the measurements and be done with it when it comes to headphones. I wish we could do that but it is not possible.
 
rcmo said:
Maybe I am the only one, but I really do.
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you are not alone. it's been a long time since I had listened to it and I have still good memories, even if I am not a big fan of closed-back headphones for critical listening.
 
amirm said:
Subconscious programming? How did you disassociate yours in assessing this headphone?

I tested this headphone a couple of days ago and waited a day to have my son test it with no knowledge of the measurements. His assessment without EQ was that it was fine with nothing annoying. He found EQ helped it sound very good. The one observation he had which was different than mine and measurements was that he thought it did not have enough sub-bass. @solderdude showed that to be a fit issue.

As to price, I put zero value on that after testing countless products that do poorly at high prices. Indeed it is something I look up when I am writing the review. In this case, I actually said it is not something I would pay $2,400 for.
Click to expand...

@amirm : I was joking, you are the boss.

Your measurements and your website have changed the audio world in few years, like nothing before.
 
@amirm I have the hd820. In the box there is an use pen with the measures, if you are interested tomorrow I can pick from the basement the stick in the box and I can send you the curves. Your thoughts?
 
The curves taken by Sennheiser are completely worthless. They do not show the entire audible range (100Hz to 12kHz) and the way and they are taken (noise bands) smoothes the response, the used test fixture and correction/target curve are not compatible with Amirs measurements.

here is an example:
ebhIQne.png
 
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amirm said:
Headphones do some things that no speaker can do. Show me a speaker that goes flat down to 20 Hz and lower. With no room effects to muddy that region. They also take to EQ so well due to lack of interactions with the room and very low distortions. They can also play superbly loud and in many case block external noise. All of this work to make one enjoy them immensely on a number of fidelity factors. So it is not a puzzle that one can get an excellent performance out of many.

Speakers have a much tougher job having to move tons more air, are highly position sensitive in the room, etc. While they have their own magic that headphones can't replicate, it is easier to be critical of them than a post EQ headphone.

Finally, let's remember that objective information about headphones is approximate. So you can't just let your eye be the judge for them. As I explained in this review, I was actually stomped, not being to fully rationalize some of the response I was seeing in the frequency response. So if you are basing your opinion on how pretty a graph should be for a headphone, you will be wrong a number of times.
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How approximate? I mean why even look at the frequency response chart if there is a 10db swing in the fundamental region and it doesn't matter? Not in the bass, where sealing variability is an issue, not in the treble, where breakup and reflections create complexity. 100-200hz is +5db, 250-500hz is around -5db. Let's not even discuss the left/right variance, again in the midrange region. Other headphones do not exhibit resonances of this magnitude in this region.

I don't dispute your methods or conclusions, I just wonder what sort of graph looks bad if this sounds good.
 
tarikuz said:
@amirm I have the hd820. In the box there is an use pen with the measures, if you are interested tomorrow I can pick from the basement the stick in the box and I can send you the curves. Your thoughts?
Click to expand...
If you mean thumb drives, I have those in the box but did not know what they were! There are two in the box. Are these individualized measurements for each headphone?
 
solderdude said:
The curves taken by Sennheiser are completely worthless.
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Oh, I remember these. Can't believe they still live in stone ages with such measurements. If this is how they are driver matching, no wonder my sample was not matched as such.
 
617 said:
How approximate? I mean why even look at the frequency response chart if there is a 10db swing in the fundamental region and it doesn't matter? Not in the bass, where sealing variability is an issue, not in the treble, where breakup and reflections create complexity. 100-200hz is +5db, 250-500hz is around -5db. Let's not even discuss the left/right variance, again in the midrange region. Other headphones do not exhibit resonances of this magnitude in this region.

I don't dispute your methods or conclusions, I just wonder what sort of graph looks bad if this sounds good.
Click to expand...
It needed EQ to sound good in those regions. I did have to play with the amount though as the preference curve is not super accurate and is heavily smoothed.
 
I decided to wait to comment on this one and give it a good think over since my initial knee-jerk reaction was to think "What on earth? Not the headless panther? Not even a shrugging panther?" And I thought about it a bit. In the past, you seem to give them based on their fit on your head, so headphones like this and the AKG K371 that have largely variable bass based on fit might do better on your head than mine. I get that you don't consider price due to the wild variances when it comes to quality, but I think that is what really gave me that knee jerk reaction. I don't expect any headphone to be perfect and there aren't many headphones I've heard that can't be made a good bit better with EQ, but those didn't cost so much.

If I pay this much for a headphone, I want it to at least sound good without EQ and I don't think this one sounds very good. If I completely remove that from my mind and focus just on the comfort, workable sound with EQ, and whatnot, I can see the ranking but boy is it hard not to listen to that voice nagging at me about the price. I still think I would personally give it a shrugging panther but panthers aren't my rating system, so my opinion there doesn't matter much, lol.
 
I love Amir's reviews, but the panther rating on this one is something I cannot understand. High cost aside,
- They sound wrong to my ears without EQ
- Measurements seem to support this
- Even with EQ, Amir stated that it has flaws which cannot be corrected/is amplified with EQ instead

From the mixed subjective impressions, it is clear that Sennheiser has gotten some things very right and other things very wrong on this headphone, which offset each other to varying extents given different listeners are ore or less sensitive towards different aspects. The potential is definitely there and I eagerly await a future closed back flagship from Sennheiser, but this one is not for me. With this headphone in particular, I strongly recommend potential buyers to give it a try first before committing to it.
 
Also, human auditory memory is a fickle thing, so it may give assurance to some if there's a couple of reference pairs consistently used as comparison benchmarks in the subjective section of the reviews :)
 
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