Sennheiser HD800S Review (Headphone)

[svenz]

But it's most important strength is the soundstage, it just doesn't sound like any other headphone because of it.

So many times I've had to check if my audio was accidentally coming out of my speakers when using HD800s, because the sound stage is so speaker like. I'm not sure how Sennheiser pulled it off!

 

[Pearljam5000]

So many times I've had to check if my audio was accidentally coming out of my speakers when using HD800s, because the sound stage is so speaker like. I'm not sure how Sennheiser pulled it off!

They've ruined every other headphone for me ( and a lot of speakers too)
My dream is to find the HD800 sound in a speaker, with that crazy instrument separation, super detailed sound and amazing soundstage, closest i found was the Genelec sound.
Another special thing that they do iz is to disappear completely, there's just sound floating in thr air, they're really unique

 

[suttondesign]

speakers with the same layering and separation are linkwitz lxmini and lx521. i am not kidding. i use hd800 too.

 

[Tks]

You seen the show The Knick? @amirm

Seems like Cinemax went to the action-series dog pile dump after this show.. What a shame, it was awesome.

 

[gorman]

Perhaps, strange as it seems, the HD800 (no S) with EQ is a budget T.O.T.L. headphone

And I'll never thank you enough for pushing me to buy it. Awesome piece of equipment.

 

[amb223]

Im loving your new headphones reviews. Keep up the good work @amirm !

Btw, Im quite into soundstage/imaging headphones, as I like to use then for gaming. I had a K712 pro paired with a Magni 3 (Which soundstage I found absent, considering what most people say about them) and now I own a Philips Fidelio X2 which I find quite funny to listen. I can't wait to have the chance to hear this HD800s soundstage or something similar without asking for a bank loan!

 

[amirm]

You seen the show The Knick? @amirm

I have not. Will seek it out to watch it.

 

[Robbo99999]

Im loving your new headphones reviews. Keep up the good work @amirm !

Btw, Im quite into soundstage/imaging headphones, as I like to use then for gaming. I had a K712 pro paired with a Magni 3 (Which soundstage I found absent, considering what most people say about them) and now I own a Philips Fidelio X2 which I find quite funny to listen. I can't wait to have the chance to hear this HD800s soundstage or something similar without asking for a bank loan!

K702 is the best soundstage headphone I've tried, but not tried the 800s, and I use the K702 for gaming too, and it's very clear to me in games like BF1 that K702 is superior for sound location than my other two headphones. I don't know if the K712 you had is supposed to have the same soundstage as the K702, but figured I should tell you about K702 considering they're not an expensive headphone in Europe, so might be a viable alternative to 800s if you can't afford it.

 

[Chagall]

This is kind of anecdotal, but people are comparing hifiman arya to HD 800s soundstage? Does anyone own or have heard both?

I would have to think that Arya being a planar should have better low end, but can't compete with HD 800's build quality.
All other things being equal, think I would lean to arya.

 

[buz]

This is kind of anecdotal, but people are comparing hifiman arya to HD 800s soundstage? Does anyone own or have heard both?

I'd be very interested in that comparison seeing that pricing is quite similar. Also comparison of comfort.

 

[The Torrent]

This is kind of anecdotal, but people are comparing hifiman arya to HD 800s soundstage? Does anyone own or have heard both?

I would have to think that Arya being a planar should have better low end, but can't compete with HD 800's build quality.
All other things being equal, think I would lean to arya.

I'd be very interested in that comparison seeing that pricing is quite similar. Also comparison of comfort.

There are many comparisons online.

Most people seem to prefer Arya especially for bass unless you crave the HD800S detail or soundstage like me.
I also couldn't buy Hifiman yet due to QC (even if its improved).

 

[buz]

I think the question is which one is better after properly eq'ing each (not to mention that many comparisons are by cable believers which is a sure sign for me to stop reading right there). I doubt I would be happy with the lack of bass on an uneq'ed HD800s...

QC on hifiman gives me pause indeed - I had two of their early FOTM IEM which did not last long (and sounded like crap to begin with).

 

[The Torrent]

I think the question is which one is better after properly eq'ing each (not to mention that many comparisons are by cable believers which is a sure sign for me to stop reading right there). I doubt I would be happy with the lack of bass on an uneq'ed HD800s...

QC on hifiman gives me pause indeed - I had two of their early FOTM IEM which did not last long (and sounded like crap to begin with).

Well I started listening to Haywyre recently on my HD800S and while I do have a substantial eq boost I do not find it lacking anymore at all, and am prepared to say its quantity is more than my LCD1s while being waaay cleaner still so it’s not like there’s loads of distortion. I am completely happy with HD800S bass and I’ve been called a bass head many times.

 

[PuX]

Since it's impossible to get a flat response purely in analogue, yes, this is the only one that works. Anyways, how is that introducing a new error, please elaborate?

EQ is the error introduced by the user.

when we are talking about tuning like room correction we rely on some scientific measurements that allow the room correction system to introduce a scientific correction - this makes sense to me. if on the other hand you EQ/tune sound by ear... most likely you are just introducing more error into the resulting sound.

One could make a good multi-purpose device if they wanted, since there's nothing against doing so. It'd cost more than a sum of parts for merely being an integrated & ready-to-use multi-purpose.

potentially sure, there is no reason why you couldn't put the same components of a DAC, power amp, preamp in one box and get a great product. it just doesn't happen often, look at receivers measurements compared to normal amps or DACs and you'll know what I mean.

Hey now, Koss have some decent budget headphones that get people into this hobby.

if you like it - no problem. as for me, as a low-cost option I'd get AKG K240, the price shouldn't be too far off. checked, normally both are sold at ~$50, but you can get a $25 deal on Porta Pro at the moment, maybe at that price it makes more sense.

 

[The Torrent]

EQ is the error introduced by the user.

when we are talking about tuning like room correction we rely on some scientific measurements that allow the room correction system to introduce a scientific correction - this makes sense to me. if on the other hand you EQ/tune sound by ear... most likely you are just introducing more error into the resulting sound.

I don’t believe you can call it error at all.

by calling it error you are assuming that not only the producer, but every producer had the exact same tuning as whatever headphone you are wearing without eq which is obviously false.

so the only thing we can do is tune a headphone to make it sound more pleasurable to us.

 

[The Torrent]

No EQ. The most accurate sound from headphones. However, they needed very good headphone preamp, with close to zero output impedance and high current capability.

can you please elaborate I’m so confused by this comment? Why close to zero? And how close is 1 ohm too much? And why high current? These are not high current?

 

[TheTalbotHound]

Yeah, to call it error is to redefine the purpose of a headphone from sounding good to sounding 'correct', however one may define correct. I do think equalization ought to be guided by measurements, but not to the point of renouncing one's own experiences.

 

[Feelas]

when we are talking about tuning like room correction we rely on some scientific measurements that allow the room correction system to introduce a scientific correction - this makes sense to me. if on the other hand you EQ/tune sound by ear... most likely you are just introducing more error into the resulting sound.

Quite possibly not, since I've personally (and I really don't have a lot of experience!) had done corrections which afterwards proved to work when measured w/o them and checked. Some people use various noise types for EQ-ing properly and then prove it using measurements - I think it's just a matter of experience to hear where the setup is lacking. I'd even go further: the bigger problem lies in using insufficient equipment, like using GEQs instead of parametric EQs and so on.

I'd actually disagree that it's not scientific to do corrections by hand - scientific method is after doing reproducible, well reasoned out & well-defined stuff - if doing subjective corrections w/ proper way of thinking & reasoning about it, it's all right. We're sinking into objective vs subjective box here - despite that, one might subjectively tune EQ & afterwards prove it correct with in-ear mics. Doing consistent empirical experiments is also scientific, thus I don't know where's the point in that.

potentially sure, there is no reason why you couldn't put the same components of a DAC, power amp, preamp in one box and get a great product. it just doesn't happen often, look at receivers measurements compared to normal amps or DACs and you'll know what I mean.

You're just looking at a wrong price point; since doing a composite device is possible, but more expensive, it's for sure less common to see all-in-one boxes being sold for same asking price as combined devices, much more likely a double or even more. Furthermore, I think that people strive to buy modular setups, thus AIO boxes just don't get that much attraction. Receivers OTOH pretty often are intended to do completely something else than a standard box - pretty much tearing the gear out of it's expected usage (and thus losing the context) makes no sense, maybe is a good exercise in pulling punches on what measures better - but there's a ceiling to the good performance, anyways.

 

[PuX]

We're sinking into objective vs subjective box here - despite that, one might subjectively tune EQ & afterwards prove it correct with in-ear mics.

might is the key word here. let's be realistic, people just EQ however they want. there's nothing scientific about that.

You're just looking at a wrong price point

no, I am not. most of these combo units measure badly or not to the level you'd expect at the price.
it's not limited to amps/receivers, if you look at measurements of streamers with integrated DACs, the story will be the same. or amp + DAC. or amp + phono.
high price doesn't guarantee anything btw.
in most cases at the same price, low or high, you would be better off with separate components. especially now since you can get a great DAC at $100-200.

 

[srsxmi]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Sennheiser HD 800 S. A very kind member sent these months ago and has been patiently waiting for their review. The HD 800 S costs US $1,700 but I see it on Amazon for US $1,323 including Prime shipping.

......

As with speakers, let's also look at distortion level as opposed to percentage:


Sennheiser HD800S Listening Tests
As I noted, the best way to know if our preference curve is correct is to try to approach and see if the subjective results are better. So let's do that:

View attachment 99391

I have eliminated the headroom allowance to make the graph easier to read. In reality I had to dial in 6 or more dBs depending on what I was playing to avoid digital clipping. You have a trade off between how much you boost the bass and the headroom you need to allow. I love the clean presentation of deep bass from headphones so dialed in what the preference graph said and results were excellent. My "speaker killer" tracks with their sub bass sounded wonderful. Despite the sharp rise in the distortion graphs, there was no penalty that I could detect in that department despite the high level of boost.

Next job was to fill the gap between 1 and 4 kHz. That is a complex shape to fill in but I approximating it by putting in the conjugate filter to knock off the resonance peak at 5.4 kHz. Once there, I thought the result was a bit bright. A quick shelving filter of 10 kHz solved that problem nicely.

The overall tonality was still "light on its feet" for lack of a better phrase to describe it. There was this lack of congestion and ease to everything I played. What was remarkable and uncanny was separation of instruments. It was as if this headphone would take every element in the music, pull it apart, and then position it in different spatial locations in a 6 inch space around each ear. I wouldn't call it "soundstage" as much was it was this fun and captivating effect.

I made a comparison against the HD650 which sounded far more balanced and nicer than HD800S without EQ. With EQ, the HD800S sounded a lot more competitive and that had the above layering that the HD650 did not have. ...
/

My HD800S's never sounded so good.... Thank you Amir!

Now for my HD650's