Sennheiser's top of the line headphone (HE1 excluding…)
As a long standing fan of HD600/HD650, this is something that I'm seriously considering, since it's the lowest price I've seen on HD800S model since 2017.
Delivered in Nov.
BTW Addicted to Audio mentions it's a "new model", although I couldn't find if any other changes were made except an extra cable in the box.
Lol. For something that is worth probably $500, they mark the RRP as $2599.95 then mark it down half-price, then you lot think you've got yourselves a bargain 😂😂
The 'actual' rrp is $1899, so still a solid discount, last time these were discounted was years ago
Sennheisers probably work okay with the worst of audio devices like any iphone with a headphone jack port.. bleargh.. its universal lowest benchmark possible for audio and is used in every audiophile review like "if it works on that cheap fake nasty stuff it'll probably work fine on anything" sure their uncustomized unaltered unimproved on unflavoured cheapest bargain bin audio chips default output is said to be 'clean' and 'neutral' and refreshingly different from 'branded' audio (apples i mean) and sennheisers hundred year old loudspeakers for your ears famous for a 1991 model of headphones like the HD600 were great modern revisits to century old design and technology i guess? Once in a while if you spend mega bucks on sennheiser they actually really do sound great. But i mean if you buy a pair of hifiman RE400A or RE600S V2 songbird (i got mine for $20USD and about 40USD in a sale?) and use a balanced TRRS plug to TRS plug for the RE600 straight into a cheap LG V60 phone jack port for headphones with onkyo HF player purchased the unlock for maybe $13 for android app? and set the MQA hardware decoding in the LG V60 to start working by enabling onkyo HF player to DIRECT TRANSFER MODE. Then play back a store bought MQA file from like e-onkyo webstore if its in your region or maybe amazon music..
you can hear how awesome some of the cheapest hifiman headphones are, their expensive ones are worlds better but have no amplifiers to drive them as they're stolen parts or sabotaged or simply absent from the market unless you spend huge big big mega bucks on vastly more expensive less good stuff. It has to do with needing absurdly large amounts of driving power and force and output like 6W+ or more output to drive planar magnetics they're speakers for your head and need power for precision and detail or sound like a wet blanket. sennheiser do work well with cheap devices and can be very sensitive which is great, but the more expensive amplifier you plug them into they dont sound much better than an ipad or cheap android device. The planar magnetics and all hifiman stuff requires "swing voltage" and i guess something like "high slew rate" and you want to have an R2R amp unit. But im cheap and poor and just got into audiophile stuff blindly and got cheap chinese xduoo xd05 plus with burson v5id not realising it doesnt begin to drive anything and all my android phones and probably onboard soundcard sound worlds better than my about $300USD portable headphone amplifier DAC amp. Is it because sabotage? or did someone swap the internal board out on my headphone amp with a cheaper faker ebay one? i also own an xd05 non plus version that one at least lets me use windows audio enhancement for like volume management to set the normalizer to short. I can use dolby atmos for headphones in movie or music modes or whatever and it sounds okay? but i bought hifiman sundara's and upgraded the cable to about $50 USD lunashops cable gold plated or copper or silver plated. But sadly the cheaper $20 to $50 in ears from hifiman that sound worlds better in my phone "should" be powered and amped correctly by my xduoo even if my sundara arent.. but sadly they sound so much better on my quad DAC LG phone.. why?!
I can see on internets that you'd need a R2R amp like maybe Ares II or im not sure but a topping A90 or A60 might put out enough power but dont know. Might be because its not MQA certified amp but heaps of not too pricey ones are around i guess on chinese estores.. but ummm worried they cant power/drive anything. Everything looks like $500USD -1000$$ USD for a headphone amp and then about that much for a MQA DAC.. then why not just buy a hifiman R2R 2000 or 1000 or whatever portable player and pretend thats my gaming PC desktop headphone amp? but being long term unemployed and with a disability its not like i can get employed anytime soon. I get that if you spend several hundreds on hifiman headphones you can spend maybe a thousand on sennheiser for them to be noticeably audibly 'better' sounding.. but i mean its said the hifiman arya are so good sounding that with the right amp pairing you wouldnt be too fussed about the HD800 and probably not the S?
But i get why people buy sennheiser.. the same reason nobody on earth bothers buying expensive AKG (some of the hardest to drive things around). sometimes you just want a cheap nasty product with a huge price tag and quality feel that maybe isnt the best quality on earth but sounds the same with almost anything you plug it into so you dont need to learn about amplification technology and struggle for ages to find probably nothing on earth short of thousands of dollars can drive your $300 USD hifiman sundaras.. or heaven forbid your Aryas (though more sensitive i'd imagine)
What sort of amp or stack will you be driving the HD800S with? and does sennheiser make an amp they recommend or match with it? you dont wanna have to buy some eletrostatic custom amp and headphone unit to have a properly driven matched amp and headphones.
the only point of reference i have is for definitely audible bit better sound than the hifiman sundara you wanna get HD800.. not sure how they compare to an ananda or whatever.. the S version 800 might be a huge leap up in quality? i dunno.. but the arya is supposed to be better than many pricier units out there assuming you have the wisdom of the heavens to select the perfect amplifier as the hifiman store wont say what you should use it with and their amps are like 'discontinued' or dont support digital/MQA or AC3 or DSD or whatever. you know?
lots of morons spend thousands of dollars on headphones and plug them into a $10 usb soundcard or something off ebay or use a $30 USB DAC that came with their off brand gaming headset. heck even sennheiser gaming headsets have sucky USB dolby DACs and stuff till you get to their top 3 most absurdly high priced models.. which maybe sound as good as or worse than some cloud II's or something similar (though cloud II's USB stick DAC thingy is worst than the most expensive sennheiser ONE dolby USB DAC could maybe buy cloud II or that uhh other one with similar drivers and the sennheiser gaming ones and pluck the sennheiser USB thingy out and just use the cloud II with it instead?)
Im wondering if instead of a headphone amplifier theres a tiny speaker amplifier for desktop that would work better and be near infinitely less expensive?
You can see the graphs and tech specs and reviews how like Boston dynamics DT1990 whatever always get their butt handed to them every review of similarly priced hifiman headphones.. but people buy and recommend the 1990's? i couldnt figure out why till i realised they'd never actually heard hifiman before that arent in ears that are more sensitive.. and the truewireless hifiman ones have the true wireless or bluetooth crippled or whatever and probably the best parts stolen and swapped out maybe built into a galaxy buds live and sold for thousands on the darknet or whatever.. so i've not ever heard of them too i think maybe one phone on market has that TWS feature in the handset?
because i can hear what RE400A sounds like.. i can tell what bluetooth earbuds sounds like from cheap chinese offbrands or even lypertek tevi..
i get the feeling most earbuds we buy are crippled or sabotaged or stolen or 'unsupported by hardware' and none of our amps have swing voltage or enough precision and if they're even close they cost fortunes.. look at how much anything R2R costs.. and R2R is 90's compact disc technology do you know how cheap a CD player is these days? are you guys kidding me?
TLDR what the heck are you going to plug those HD800S into?!
Too rich for my blood, I'm still happy with my AKG K702. That is a nice chunk off RRP though.
It's odd, plenty of + here (as I think it should be) but over on expensive speciality coffee deals you get negs for not being a bargain.
Good upgrade over the old HD800?
Picked up a pair after speaking to A2A
An offer too good to refuse. They mentioned that the price drop was in response to Drops H8XX
For this price, I expect to hear the voice from God.
Lol classic, you won't know until you secure a pair of these fine headphones
Will my topping D10 and L30 do these justice?
I mainly game with headphones, is it worth getting these, or should I go with ath-r70x or AKG 612/702 instead?
Currently using the HE-4xx which I preferred to the hd58x
How good has the price been on the Drop HD8xx? Not sure if they're even out yet.
Would anyone know how these compare to the Hifiman HE500, which I have connected up to an Emotiva mini X A100 amp and custom speaker taps.
I will try and get to an A2A and have a listen. I still haven’t quite figured out if this this higher end stuff may be a little wasted on me as I’m not sure I can appreciate the step up but am keen to understand if there would be a noticeable difference for me.
Also, I can pick up an HD820 for a similar price to the HD800S and am keen to know if anyone has listened to both of those side by side?
Thanks 🎧🎶
Out of curiosity where can you get the HD820 for similar?
HD800S is better in pretty much every way, the tuning on the HD820 is a bit odd with a big dip in the mids
Thank you. David Jones in Sydney had a single HD820 on clearance , with an extra 20% off the red ticket price, which brought it down to $1037.I didn’t even know they even had them in stock until I happened to spot it in the cabinet. There was only one, fully sealed in a box in the locked cabinet, alongside a bunch of bowers and Wilkins headphones of various types.
Even for their curious tuning, that's an insane price, I would have picked them up and moved them on if I didn't like them for that price
@cille745: I just popped back in as I was in Westfield. They still had them, and also had an HDVD amp also down to $1036. I just picked both the hd820 and the hdvd800. They are both sealed boxes. $2075 in total and there is another hdvd800 on the shelf still
@apobateman: Incredible pickup, hope you enjoy them! I'm still working out whether these are worth $1500 + an appropriate amp on top of that
Mine had arrived this morning.
Got my HD800S. The frequency response that came with the headphones is interesting, the sub bass is the loudest frequency! The 5-6khz is the lowest. And to my treble sensitive ears I'm getting no annoying sibilance. I recall seeing other frequency plots of the HD800S being slightly more linear than mine, this pair seems tilted towards the "fun" side, but I'm not complaining! I was worried these would be too neutral for me, nope. I can see how purists would be disappointed with this tuning though, there is some midbass bleed into the mids which clouds it up a bit. But these are out of the box impressions, I except things to only get better from here.
And of course the soundstage, yep these are the most open sounding headphones I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Hats off to Grell.
I thought they were pretty flat from the plots too? What are you using to power them?
FYI this deal is linked as expired but from what I can see it's still on until the 15th
![[Pre Order] Sennheiser HD800S Audiophile Headphones - $1499 Delivered (RRP $2599.95) @ Addicted to Audio](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/48/657748.jpg?h=e64d7b3d)
You're not doing headphones of this caliber justice if you're using flac files.