Hey all,
Just thought I’d share some quick impressions of the Sennheiser HD800S. @taronlissimore was kind enough to send me one for demo! Please bear in mind that most of my listening background is with IEMs; I don’t have nearly as much experience with headphones, and most listening was done off of an Audio-GD 11.28 (the only amp I have on-hand, I know it’s not great).
To my ears, the HD800S follows a neutral-bright tuning. It exhibits a strong skew toward the treble frequencies with what sounds like a peak in the mid-treble, lending cymbals to excessive crash and something of a tizzy-ness in the decay. The quality of said treble is detailed and well-textured; however, I do find it somewhat fatiguing as a result. The midrange is on-point like most of the Sennheiser headphones, and I think it’s close to tonally accurate, sans slightly thin. The bass, unfortunately, is the weakest link on this headphone. I dislike using the word “blunted,” but that really does describe what I hear. Macro-details have a distinct haziness to them, and on the basis of tonality, the HD800S lacks adequate sub-bass presence. Furthermore, I’ll be frank: The overall tonality of the HD800S simply does not align very closely with my preferences.
Intangibly, the HD800S is a stellar performer. This is not something that I can force-test, admittedly, but I’ve not heard another headphone that exhibits such a grandiose sense of detail retrieval or “innate” detail. The HD800S’s macrodynamic ability is also quite good. Perhaps not to the level of the Focal Elex I heard a-ways back, particularly in snappiness of contrast, but certainly a leap coming from most of the IEMs I’ve heard. Layering and resolution, likewise, are simply on another plane from what I’m used to on even the best of IEMs. And of course, who could deny the HD800S’s staging and imaging capabilities? Image incision is more than ample, and it’s not hard to see why this is oft-dubbed the king of soundstage. I do think the HD800S would benefit from more center image diffusal, though, as it seems to image vocals (positionally) more in-the-head.
The HD800S is no doubt a terrific headphone, albeit one that I think is more geared toward “analyzing” music more so than it is actually “enjoying” it. But hey, who knows? I’m looking forward to applying some EQ and hopefully a better source as I get more time on the headphone.