Sennheiser HD 800 S - Open Back Dynamic Headphone - Official Thread

Not rush? What do you mean not rush? How else do you litter your house with impulse purchases that turn out to be mistakes?

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Folks, I suspect my HD800S is changing the sound depending on the position in the head. Reason is simple, the cup is much bigger than my ears.

After a couple of weeks getting used to its sound I guess I was finally able to find the best position in my head.:fireworks: :white_check_mark:

Question though is, have you ever made this exercise yourselves? For me, the main change was in the upper mids and lower treble regions. Let me know if a picture may help others understand what I mean.

Cheers. :beers:

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Interesting. For me, it’s been the opposite. I’ve found the sound stays the same as I adjust the earcup position on my head.

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Since I failed to provide evidence for that I actually edited my previous post to a “suspicious” state.

Hope I can provide more evidence down the road.

Cheers.

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For me the HD800s was a complete preference and choice after several long listening and auditioning sessions. I enjoyed its signature and found it preferable over the Stellia, Utopia, Empyreans, PS3000, LCD-4, LCD24, and a few even less memorable units. It’s all a preference and personal taste thing. Anyway, i added a ATH-AWAS as a complimentary unit for the warm sound and i could not be happier with the pair. I’m not a heavy EQ user but i do own them and apply as necessary when in the mood, yep very pleased. Tubes and an old extremely musical Sugden headmaster Round out the combo. I use A small battery of DACs for the final flavor touches as necessary. Happy listening to all, happy to be in this club too🤗

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Yes, Metal571 commented on that, the sound changes depending on where the headphone is in relation to your ear.

But that is with every headphone… if you change the driver to be farther away, or closer… or more to the left and etc
there will be sonic changes, thing is that the cups of the HD800 are massive in comparison to other headphones, that is why it is something more noticeable on it.
I wouldn’t call this an issue or anything… just the way things are

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On another topic, have you guys modded your HD800 or HD800s in any way?

Farther away or closer from the drivers is always evident. My point was moving across ear axis.

Anyway, I was owing this picture to the thread for some time now. Here’s some context on my favorite positioning with the HD800S. Pardon my lack of GIMP skills and lack of scaling/rotation/etc.

The key is the red line where that part of my ear is touching the pad on that specific position. This is what I found to be my favorite sound, tonal-wise. Loudness-wise, one can always adjust in the volume/gain knob.

image

Cheers.

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Heck I just put them on my head and listen to music. Never paid any attention to the position each time they were on. All I know the sound pretty darn good with my SS amp.

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This was never a question.

My thing is how to make they sound even better to my ears. Allow me to continue – as I type and listen to Billie Jean with these cans. That positioning, added to the HD800S Sonarworks profile with custom settings down below, are certainly increasing my dopamine levels tonight. :relaxed:

Add a Bluemoon to equation above and it becomes a multiplying factor. :wink:

Cheers.

Well I don’t use EQ as my system is not connected to a laptop or a Desktop computer. Just a streamer and /or a CD Transport with my DAC (S) and amp taking a led on sound characteristics. But I always wanted to try EQ just to see.

I agreed 100% with your review and with @Resolve’s review last year . . . and then I listened through a ZMF Pendant. The bass comes alive and everything else remains intact with a touch of added warmth - anything but “boring” now. At 300 ohms, the impedance of the HD 800 S is the same as ZMF headphones for which the Pendant was specifically matched, and as others have pointed out the Pendant really has tremendous synergy with high-impedance headphones. Now I can’t keep these off my head, and I’ve got work to do.

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Pretty awesome what high end tube amps can do hey? I loved the Pendant.

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Good to know that the Pendant could do double duty for my HD 800 SDR and, somewhere down the line, a Vérité, if pennies permit. Thanks!

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Definitely. I love my Utopia’s too, but at 80 ohms the Pendant just doesn’t have the same wow impact with them that it does with the high-impedance Sennheisers.

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Try it with the high Z out. Utopia should slam pretty hard.

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Ahem… Starlett, cough, cough…

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you’re a bad influence!

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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.

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ZMF Verite, sorry if this is an old post, however ZMF cans, perfection IMO.