After more listening with the Sennheiser HD800, I’ve concluded that the HD800 is so good, that if your bank account permits, you might want to start doing some source rolling. Yes, the HD800 is transparent and it will reveal any defects in your source, but other high end phones can do that too. What makes me start thinking of doing some source rolling, is that the HD800 has so much potential that I’d really like to hook it up to some $100k CDP+Transport system, and see what kind of magic comes out!
But seriously, how good is the HD800? I am sure that most people don’t doubt that the HD800 exceeds the HD650’s technical performance. But there were questions if the $1400 tag is worth the money, if the HD800 really belongs to the level of legendary phones like the AKG K1000 and the Sony MDR-R10s. Now let me try to answer those questions.
Is the Sennheiser HD800 a great headphone?
Yes.
So the HD800 is really good, and the hype is not just another marketing phenomenon?
No. The HD800 is really good.
Just how good is the HD800 then?
The HD800 is a headphone with a lot of potential, yet at the same time it is a hard headphone to please. If you feed good signal into it, it will spit out one of the best sound you’ll ever get from a headphone. That’s why I was talking about source rolling, because I am confident that even a $100k source will not go to waste on the HD800. My CEC TL51XZ CDP falls on the really low spectrum of what’s considered a high-end source, but even then, the CEC combined with the Balanced Beta22 really brings a three dimensional music into my ears. With superb recordings, the sound this system give is scary real. For instance, with the HD800, the instruments separation is not on the level of “every instrument can be hear distinctly and are not mixed”, but rather, “every instrument seems to have their own islands with small channels separating one island from another” kind of level.
Is the HD800 worth every cents of the $1400?
Yes, it has that much potential that makes it worth every penny of the $1400. I’d consider it even better bang-for-the buck than the Grado HP1000. Now don’t start taking out your credit cards yet, because I also said that the HD800 is a hard headphone to please. As you start to move down the ladder from a great system to good systems, so will you lessen the sparkle of the HD800. Driven single ended from the Grace M902 amplifier on the same CEC source, for example, you start to feel that the star that was shining so brightly on the previous system is now starting to lose its light. Though the Grace M902 is a superb amplifier by itself, and it is more than capable of giving enough power to both a HD800 and HD650 through its two headphone outlets, I now feel that the HD800 is starting to lose the magic that I heard from the Balanced Beta22.
I happen to have a WooAudio 6 amplifier with the PDPS upgrade on loaner, and with the WooAudio 6, I also feel that the magic is not there. Although the WooAudio 6 did inject some good body and thickness into the HD800, I’d still feel that better musicality is achieved by the HD650 on the WooAudio6.
See the picture? In short, the answer to the $1400 question depends on if the rest of your system can give the reference level signal that the HD800 needs.
What about an HD800 for portable use?
Not really the most logical question, but I’m sure someone will ask it. Having an abundance of portable amplifiers laying around for reviews, I started trying everything from an ALO Rx, TTVJ Slim, RSA SR-71a, and the LISA 3 with the HD800. The source being an Ipod Classic 120Gb. The HD800 requires a little more turn on the volume knob to get to the same volume level as the HD650, but it is still drivable by a portable amp. Despite being able to get some decent volume, I assure you to not get the HD800 and plug it into a portable system, because the $1400 will just go to waste. Sure it still has a killer instrument separation and soundstage compared to cheaper headphones, but the magic is just not there. You’ll get much better, more musical results with many much cheaper headphones.
The HD800 is truly a high end headphone, and you need to give it the high end source and amplification that it deserves! If your system is still not up to it, settling with a lower end HD650 will give you better music satisfaction than the HD800. As I myself prefer the HD650 to the HD800 when amped from the Grace M902 or the WooAudio 6. But if you can afford to a world-class amplifier and a world-class source, the HD800 is not even close to the HD650. It’s like some civilization from another galaxy came and showed us how to build a proper transducer.
Stay in tune for the next HD800 journal! Click here if you haven’t read the first part of the journal.
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