Headphones

[level32]

I juts copped a pair of the audio technicas. Could not resist the deal at J&R right now.

$89.99+Shipping -$5 for using google checkout.

 

[StephenHero]

I picked up the Audio Technicas above. I really like them alot. They are massive, but extremely comfortable and I'm getting great sound. I mostly use them at home while I sit in my chair and relax. They've really improved the quality of sound over what I had before and make subtle instrumental arrangements crisp as ****.

 

[Ace Rimmer]

^^ Cool. So are you in the "love it" or "hate it" camp for the crinkle covering on the foam?

 

[Artisan Fan]

Got the latest version of the Grado 125s which are breaking in nicely-better bass and highs versus the SR-80s. Very good for monitoring strong quartets I am finding. I am trying the RA1 headphone amp out as well which makes a nice difference.

 

[Sprezzatura2010]

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

Got the latest version of the Grado 125s which are breaking in nicely-better bass and highs versus the SR-80s. Very good for monitoring strong quartets I am finding. I am trying the RA1 headphone amp out as well which makes a nice difference.
You really monitor on such cheap 'cans? And "better" as in "more in balance with the middle, as opposed to wildly out-of-whack the way the old model sounded?" Or "better" as in "BOOOOMMMMMMM-TIIZZZZZSZ" as opposed to the old one's mere "boom-tizz." Here's a set of frequency-response measurements comparing the frequency response of the old SR125 to headphones of known high quality. http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCom...phID[]=573 Interestingly, the AKG's and Senns are very close through the bass and midrange, with both of them having a bit of midbass bloom. That suggests to me I would like the 701's, but don't really have reason to try them given how similar they are to what I already have. The Grados are by far the poorest in the deep bass, but have a midbass bump to give the "boom" of their "boom-tizz" while the other three are demonstrably flatter. The Denons, no surprise to anyone who has heard them, have by far the greatest bass extension and the least bloomy midbass, but not quite the midrange performance of the Senns/AKG's. (If only there were cans with the Denon's performance below 1kHz and the Senns' above that...) (Obviously, flat, smooth, and extended frequency response isn't sufficient to ensure accurate reproduction. However, it is a necessary condition for accurate reproduction.) Then again, your fawning for the Wilson Sophias, which have one of the worst cases of audible - and measurable as confirmed by Stereophile's horizontal-plane measurements, infra - upper midrange bloom due to their wretched crossover design and flush tweeter mounting, suggests you hear price tags much more clearly than you hear frequency response aberrations....

 

[Artisan Fan]

Look at the midrange suckout on the Senns. We quit using them for that reason. You need to hear all the details on a recording session. The AKGs are terrible. You need to critically listen.

We bring several pairs of cans to the session and the Grados do the strings better than anything we have tried. The RS-1 is the best in this respect.

 

[Sprezzatura2010]

I need to critically listen, says the man who fawns that very poorly-designed (but expensive) speakers are "so true to the source" when by definition they cannot be. Amusing, that.

Are you reading the same graph I posted? The ones with the big midrange suckout (red) are the Denon AH-D2000's. The Senn's (orange) have a fairly flat midrange except for the broad peak centered at ~3.7kHz. The Grados have a similar peak, except it's larger and higher-Q. And in a more offensive register.

 

[ConcernedParent]

Bought a pair of SR80i's on the cheap and will be using them as a beater.

I don't know, they sound pretty good to me, I could just be deaf though

.

 

[montyharding]

My HD650 is on it's way out and was wondering if it was worth springing for a pair of HD800's. They look suspiciously like the Qualia 010's that I used to have and ultimately didn't like that much, but beyond that I've only got the Senn 'name' to go by since the early reviews are all glowing, as they usually are.

Any early owners not tainted by Head-Fi.org's 'Flavor of the month / $xxxx is the most I've spent on anything so I'm gonna love it no matter what' disease?

 

[Artisan Fan]

Originally Posted by ConcernedParent

Bought a pair of SR80i's on the cheap and will be using them as a beater.

I don't know, they sound pretty good to me, I could just be deaf though

.

Don't worry, they are a very good set of cans. I have a pair and it is my iPod companion for business trips and recreational flying. These cans have won numerous awards as well as the 125s.

 

[Artisan Fan]

Originally Posted by montyharding

My HD650 is on it's way out and was wondering if it was worth springing for a pair of HD800's. They look suspiciously like the Qualia 010's that I used to have and ultimately didn't like that much, but beyond that I've only got the Senn 'name' to go by since the early reviews are all glowing, as they usually are.

Any early owners not tainted by Head-Fi.org's 'Flavor of the month / $xxxx is the most I've spent on anything so I'm gonna love it no matter what' disease?

I would pass on the flagship Senns. Several friends tried them and hate them. Get the Grado RS-1s. They sound wonderful and are $1,200 or so less.

Here's Mark Lawton's review on the new Senns: http://www.lawtonaudio.com/page23.html

 

[Artisan Fan]

Expanded comments from Mark:

Sennheiser HD800 Impressions
These just arrived. They are the latest flagship phone from Sennheiser, and reputed by them to be a "major advance" in headphone technology (from them anyway). No burn-in. These views are totally biased, of course. Still, as a long-term headphone freak, I know some folks who've been along with my adventures in headphones these many years might be curious what I think.

Now I have anti-placebo at work in that I'm not 100% rooting for a winner here, but at first blush, my immediate feeling is still one of relief as a competitor, disappointment as a headphone freak. Unless these transform quite a bit with break-in, I don't think this phone will appeal that much to people who like our cans.

Test Bed: Marantz SA-7S1 CD/SACD player with $5K of additional mods/upgrades. Amp: Rudistor RP010B.

Physical
1. Me no likey where they've terminated the "Y", the junction is up too high, a little too "choke-y".

2. Cord is fairly flexible (not as flexible as Jena) and except for the Y junction, mostly unobtrusive.

3. Box is nothing special, certainly no better than the D7000 box I have already mocked in the past as a pretty weak try at "luxury". Not a lot of your $1400 went into this box.

4. These phones have acres of real estate inside the ear pads. This means positioning is everything. I expect it will take a LOT of experimenting before you find the right position for you.

5. Nice "grippy" feel, and quite comfortable overall (though some will find it too tight, I tend to prefer a more snug fit than most). Foam pads are a little scratchy but not at all awful. It is starting on summer though, and these foam pads are going to be WARM and soak up a lot of persperation I predict. They will start to smell before long I think. I hope Senn plans on providing cheap replacements, regular listeners are going want to change them every year or so.


Sound
Real-time musings on what I'm hearing as I hear it.

1. 1st impression, slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwww ww as molasses. Weird, everything is e l o n g a t e d and stretched out like a silly putty newspaper cartoon you pull apart. (Reference may be too old-school for some younger members. ). It sounds like vocalists are over-enunciating their words.

2. Large soundstage (not as huge and enveloping as we've heard), but with typical headphone gap in the middle of the image. Our phones don't have this. The HD800 is much better at reproducing left-to-right, much weaker at front-to-back, not enough depth to the image.

3. Tone is on the dry, cold, mechanical, analytical side. Not nearly enough warmth or richness, or body. I suspect especially tube-y tube amps will be required to offset this to restore decent tonality.

4. Cymbals are "white" and splashy, more tinny than brassy. Highs are bit brittle and yes, sibilant. It has that astringent quality that tweaks the ears sort of like rubbing alcohol on the skin that tingles a bit then quickly evaporates after the fact.

5. Mids seem a tad recessed, and lack the substantiality or fullness of a good closed can. Upper mids/lower highs have a slight peaky-ness that dominates the proceedings, that's definitely where these cans center of gravity is, everthing else recedes back from that point. We used to have a "Sennheiser veil" (I still contend I coined this term :tongue_smile: ), these are bit too active in the upper mids/lower treble. This makes them sound sort of thin, yet I don't think it will cause too much listening fatigue, as the edges of sounds are soft and somewhat indistinct.

6. Single-note bass, no mid-to-upper bass warmth. This is typical of un-broken-in phones, though. There is a hollow-ness and "tubby" sound to the bass I don't think any amount of break-in will cure, though. Still bass not quite as weak as reported by some (but not as solid or defined as on the Denons). I chalk that up to my having a bruiser of a solid state amp in the RP010B, where other impressions were formed on weaker amps.

7. By far, the phones these most resemble at first blush is the K701, a phone that sounded horrible out of the box but once broken in became... merely adequate.

8. There's a haziness to the image, foggy soundstage with a white background where everything sort of bleeds in together into a sort of soup, typical of open cans. I focus a lot on the singer, and on these cans, there is an indistinctness to the position of vocalists with a blurry edges around the image that bleeds into surrounding instrumentation. This is also related to slight midrange suck-out and gap in the middle of the image I noted above.

9. A Jena cable on these puppies is going to be the *perfect* way to help offset many of its weaknesses; it's precisely strong where these phones are weak. Richer, fuller tone, better definition around images, a fuller, thicker, more substantial sound. As soon as we figure out the connectors, we'll have a high-quality solution for you guys. God help anyone who puts a silver cable on these cans, YUCK! Multiply it's weaknesses by a thousand. In fact this observation is worth a whole separate point.

10. These phones tonally sound exactly like a typical silver cable-- brittle, thin, cold tone, hashy, insubstantial, white background. If you fancy typical silver cables, the tone of the HD800 will likely appeal more to you.

11. Impact, tactile response is a bit on the soft side, again typical of open phones. If you are looking for subwoofer-like tactile repsonse and great slam and punch, these won't deliver that. They are very well-behaved, possibly a bit "wimpy" to some ears. The assembly/frame of these phones disappears quite well all in all.

 

[montyharding]

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

I would pass on the flagship Senns. Several friends tried them and hate them. Get the Grado RS-1s. They sound wonderful and are $1,200 or so less. Here's Mark Lawton's review on the new Senns: http://www.lawtonaudio.com/page23.html
I had the RS-1's. 19th-century biomechanics, high-school project construction quality, prat-centric (mostly by dint of drivers being closer to ear than any other headphone) preferences for most positive users. The most laughable high-end headphones (bar the PS-1 and to a slightly lesser extent, the GS1000) I've owned for a long time. Let's just say I'm not a Grado fan.

 

[A Y]

Originally Posted by montyharding

My HD650 is on it's way out and was wondering if it was worth springing for a pair of HD800's. They look suspiciously like the Qualia 010's that I used to have and ultimately didn't like that much, but beyond that I've only got the Senn 'name' to go by since the early reviews are all glowing, as they usually are.

Any early owners not tainted by Head-Fi.org's 'Flavor of the month / $xxxx is the most I've spent on anything so I'm gonna love it no matter what' disease?

With their astronomical price and headphones being such a personal choice, I'd wait until you can put them on your ears before deciding. Hasn't the production date of the 800s been pushed back a few times already?

As for Lawton's review, I'd be skeptical (like AF-style global warming skeptical) of any review that attributes major sound differences to cable choice.

--Andre

 

[montyharding]

Originally Posted by A Y

As for Lawton's review, I'd be skeptical (like AF-style global warming skeptical) of any review that attributes major sound differences to cable choice. --Andre
I get you. He's probably bitter since there's nowhere to put wood on it. And - I was under the impression they were in production? Amazon has them in stock - although I'm trying to track down a UK reseller who actually acknowledges they exist