The HD800 & HD800S thread

I listen mostly to acoustic pop, covers (so very poorly recorded/miked, with independent and most often non-professional gears, and mastered also very poorly), and sometimes jazz vocals, with some very rare occasions of EDM, but those are few and far between. It's about 90% vocal and 10% instrumental for me. You can see clearly I'm not really a big fan of classical (yet?).

 

I tested them with Swedish death metal, 70s prog, Popol Vuh, Emperor, and Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet. I only like them with Popol Vuh's Aguirre. I thought the HD 800 might sound cool with In the Nightside Eclipse, yet the cans were way too sibilant and the housing messed up the staging of the keyboards and guitars which share some frequencies. I just don't like the HD 800 for listening to anything with multiple instruments, any sort of staging or panning, any instruments that might be harsh, falsetto air raid vox, or women.

 

I find your musical tastes disturbing too ...

 

Panned twin guitar metal/rock and orchestras sound especially wacky to me on them. Stock HD 800 are Diana Krall core.

 

I'm just your average rock and pop guy, bro.

There's nothing refined about my taste in music, yeah. Just like I enjoy a hamburger more so than eating out at a classy restaurant.

That said, try some pop on the stock HD800, and you'll know what "bright" means. Even with super dark toobz, some songs are still absolutely unlistenable, if not downright torturous.

 

My HD800s are stock and I can happily listen to pop and or rock for hours at a time on either of my systems (one valve based and one transistor) and I have no brightness issues on either. I think this suggestion that the stock HD800 is unlistenable is a bit of an over reaction.

 

Or you know, some people can't stand chili sauce on their food while others can't eat without a generous serving of it. Doesn't change the quality of the food for better or worse though.
don't look at me, I listened to J-Pop K-Pop using Grados so my 'bright' tolerance is a bit abnormal.

 

It would be interesting to poll HD800 owners and listeners to see how they rate their liking of the HD800's trebles. Individual preferences vary but the question is how much.

 

Well, it depends on the song. Not all pop are badly recorded/mastered, I'd concede. Just like how not all rock have to be bright.

And plus if you have lived with the HD800 for a long while, I think you'd get used to it and not find it so bad at all. Come from some other headphone like, say... HD600/650 though, and the HD800 would seem way over the top.

 

Yeah, I'd agree. A HD600 can be modded to sound eerily similar to an HD800 (albeit still not as resolving), and vice versa. Save for the upper mid region. I feel like that's one area that won't be "fixable" in the HD800 without a pad change or an enclosure change.

But also to that effect, I think on the right rig (Bottlehead Crack?) the HD800 would essentially sound like a thinner HD600 rather than something that's extremely bright. I do acknowledge that I can live with stock HD800 with such systems, but they are kind of a rarity. Whereas HD600 would probably live harmoniously with the many sabre DACs and horribly designed solid-state amps on the market, the HD800 still "needs" such specialized systems for me to sound good.

 

The HD 800 is the flaw if it sounds horrible with otherwise perfectly fine recordings and adequately neutral DACs and amps. It's a seriously flawed transducer whose drivers were revolutionary. An amp is not horribly designed if the designers don't care that a bright headphone sounds bright on it. A recording is not bad or poorly mastered if the musicians and studio personnel don't care that it sounds painful on a flawed transducer.

 

Yeah, well, you know, that's just like, your opinion, man.

 

Says the guy that just bought an Ether C!!!

Haha, I keed! I'm looking forward to hearing the Ether C myself. I know Ether was pretty close to what I want tonality-wise. Just a bit of extra bass in the bottom end (or maybe a bit more rolled off on top?) and it would have been kewl.

Seriously, yeah. It's all just opinions in the end. I'm just a rarity in the world of HD800 owners. Someone who doesn't appreciate the tuning of the headphone at all... though I appreciate the technicalities.

There is no fact in any of this. Or maybe there's one: no matter what is done to it, the technicalities of the HD800 are real IMO, and in that regards, it deserves its TOTL status.

 

I'd like to dig up an old thought of mine that didn't get much following in the old place: head and ear variations.

Me and my brother albeit reasonably similar in phenotype hear HD800 (rugliner'ed) and some other phones with significant enough differences. For instance, I don't hear the suck-out at 3-4kHz that measurements show and reportedly most here hear, for me it is subjectively no more than 2-3 dB down.
He gets most annoyed by some 9.5kHz peak while to me it is something in 7kHz and 10.3kHz. It seems I get better extended sub bass than my bro as well. One of my friend's head shape is completely wrong for HD800, pads won't seal behind his head (/ ok, HD800 is wrong for him).

Really hard to fully generalize headphones as such, imo. Dacs and amps are so far as I know not in relaton to head and ear shape

 

@sorrodje: that was just what I heard from the Crack, not that it was "the best" I have ever achieved.

If you ask me about the best I have achieved compared to stock... it's basically... more body, more warmth, more bass, same soundstage, much more precise/sharp imaging. I did mention the stock HD800 sounded diffuse, and it was relative to the pair that I have now. Having no dust cover helped immensely with imaging.

Not to upsell the mod or anything else, of course. But just to say... I just didn't find the stock headphone to my taste, tonality-wise.