Sennheiser HD 800

The Sennheiser HD 800 is a purists headphone.

at first audition this headphone may not seem to live up to its own hype, and indeed its price tag - it doesnt shout out about its technical abilities in listening, it doesnt seem to strike you as being fantastic in one particular area.

if it did, i would be a bit worried, as normally when this is the case, a headphone that does this is slanted to much in one way to appease and please the novice ear, and make things warm and coloured and gentle on the ears

no, rather than try and appeal to one crowd, be it bassheads, or fans of coloured reproduction it quietely and efficiently does the opposite, it garners your attention and grabs and demands your listening time, you will soon, without realizing it, realize that hours and hours have passed listening to your favourite albums and tracks, and makes it fly by, a pleasure and such an immersive and easy ride.

the sound is very accurate, and i say that as someone who is a huge fan of his pair of probably the best dynamic headphones ever created, the AKG K1000 - they are unique and a law unto themselves and am so glad that the differences, and the pros and cons of the HD800 and the K1000 still allow me to justify keeping both for different diciplines and moods

the HD800 are great all rounders, normally this is a metaphor for average, in this case, oh contrare, they do nothing badly at all, and do 99% of everything right, this is of course highly dependant on your setup, source, and amplifier - although, ironically not as dependant as many a reviewer would have you believe, these headphones scale very well, and enable you to listen from mediocre sources and amps and still enjoy their prowess, sure to a degree they will expose recording imperfctions with low rate lossless, but these are more forgiving than headphones several rungs from below, which is a great achievement

for anyone reading this who has had the privelidge to listen or indeed own the AKG K1000, let me give a brief comparison as a marker for you

the hd800 feels slightly more closed in and suffocated than the ridiculously airy and holographic K1000

the K1000 wins in absolute micro detailing and layering of background instruments and low level effects and auditory minutia, but can, because of that sometimes feel quite harsh and quite an exercise in critical listening, when perhaps all you want to do is to have your toes tap to a smooth accurate and enveloping relaxing sound - the HD800 just warm things up an iota and smooth out that detail ever so slightly and provide a more bassy 'closed-back' kind of effect

considering that the K1000 is a pig to drive and requires a juicy power amplifier to run and is now out of prouduction, then the HD800 more or less fills the gap of that type of amazing recreation of the sound spectrum

comfort wise, the HD800 have great clamping and circumaural capabilities, the ear pads totally cover the ears and are very comfortable and the clamping force is just right and will adjust to each listeners own shape and size head, the only physical attribute on the HD800 that could be improved is the adjustable headband, it is too easily adjustable, by that i mean just picking them up can cause it to drop down and change its former position, it needs to be more robust in terms of the click levels and needs more force to deliberately adjust them, rather than them doing that with the slightest touch.

to summarise, it seems, ironically, it takes someone who has clocked up many thousands of hours listening to other 'high-end' headphones to realize that when something just seems to work and do its thing and do everything right sound wise, then thats one hell of an accomplishment, its the very fact that these headphones almost seem to be average that is their secret ingredient, but it takes costly experience to realise this in my opinion and may give any new to the game, lucky, prospective owner the 'grass-is-always-greener' syndrome upon initial listening, give them a few hundred hours for them and for you to burn in to truly allow them to quitely yet seductively impress you.

if you want a bit of advise, that will save you time, tears and money, go straight to these if you have the budget and be happy with the HD800 for many years - there isnt anything currently in production that is better out there in the dynamic world that touches their all round true to life experience, whatever the cost.