Sennheiser HD 800 S Over-the-Ear Audiophile Reference Headphones - Ring Radiator Drivers With Open-Back Earcups, Includes Balanced Cable, 2-Year Warranty (Black)

There's a distinct law of diminishing returns when it comes to high-end audio gear. I suppose that can be said for any kind of product but weighing the pros and cons and determining the "value" of a headphone like this is purely up to the beholder since sound is so subjective and people hear things differently.I work in the musical instruments (high-end electric guitars) and music (artist/band management) industry so I'm around high-end gear and people who take sound very seriously all the time. When it comes to sound people can be very opinionated and one cannot prove or dispute that one piece of high-end gear is better or worse than the other at relatively similar price points. And as we get to higher and higher price points, we are sure to find more and more people arguing about the justification of such prices.Some new custom electric guitars can cost $5000 and up. Does that make a custom guitar from company "A" twice as good as a custom guitar from company "B" that's priced at $2500? Of course not. This also applies to amplifiers, speaker cabinets, effects pedals, cables and everything else involved in producing a good sound. Ultimately, all that matters is that the gear you choose works for you.Obviously, this applies to audiophile gear as well. I've had some good headphones from the likes of AKG, Grado and Sennheiser and I've noticed that all manufacturers have their distinctive sonic stamp. For me, the Sennheiser's character seemed to suit me best as I highly value clarity, balance and prefer "brilliance" over "mellow" and "warmth". Again, it's personal taste and I perfectly understand why some people would prefer more bass or mellowness. I, for one, do not like bass to be emphasized at all and despise boomy bass that overwhelms all the other frequency ranges.So I decided that I could afford to splurge on the one "ultimate" (for me, anyway) over-ears open-back headphone that I've always wanted. After going over various options, I settled on the HD800S and I can honestly say that I'm very pleased with what I'm hearing. I use it with Chord Electronics' Hugo and Mojo DAC/headphone amps and they match up perfectly. I only play ALAC, high-res FLAC and DSD files to listen to my favorite music with a heavy emphasis on classical music and jazz. For rock, metal and modern pop, ALAC in my iTunes library is fine but for classical and jazz that have much greater dynamic range I definitely prefer high-res FLAC and DSD.The soundstage of the HD 800S is superb - extremely broad but also with detailed depth that I have not heard from my previous headphones. There is a three-dimensional quality in where the instruments are placed in the stereo spectrum - not only left to right but front to back. It's by far the largest soundstage I've heard from a headphone but it should be noted that high-res FLAC and DSD files along with a superb DAC like the Chord Hugo have a lot to with that as well. To get the most out of a headphone like the HD800S, you do need other critical components to work in conjunction with it.As for the overall sound quality, it is what I expected out of Sennheiser - bright and super clear but not strident, firm and defined lows, rich mids that are beautifully balanced but with a tad bit more emphasis on the high-mids. I can understand why some would consider this kind of "voicing" to be too bright and prefer something more mellower and warmer but, as I said before, everyone hears things differently. I love the clarity and the definition of the HD800S but also the smoothness of the highs. I haven't heard the 800 but I can say the 800S' highs are silky smooth - especially the string sections of an orchestra which, to me, is the benchmark to check during listening tests.The lows are big and firm but play more of a "supporting" role to everything else than being out at the front which is, again, exactly the way I like to hear things. Listening to some techno-electronica kinds of stuff, the bass has more than enough punch with plenty of definition along with a nice smooth balance amongst the bass frequencies. The truly beautiful thing about the HD 800S sound is its smoothness across the entire sonic spectrum without any noticeable peaks and valleys. It's not just a matter of balance but a very musical "sheen" around the edges.The all-critical mids where the ears naturally tune into is rich but super clear with excellent separation between instruments (including voice) across the stereo field. Whether it's Beethoven's 'Eroica' symphony or Miles Davis' 'Kind of Blue' or The Rolling Stones' 'Let It Bleed', I'm hearing details that I've never heard before in all their sonic glory and every one of those little details sounds sublime.Yes, the HD 800S is certainly an expensive piece of gear but if music and sound quality matter that much to you, it's worth a shot. I certainly didn't expect a $1600 headphone to sound "three times" better than a $500 headphone (and I've had a few in that range). Anyone who expects that doesn't understand the law of diminishing returns when it comes to high-end gear. But in the end, if that last 5~10% in greater clarity, depth and detail can be experienced over the previous headphone and greatly increases your overall enjoyment of the music, then it becomes worth every extra dollar and penny.It's easy to feel a sense of "buyer's remorse" after purchasing a headphone like this. Expectations can be too high. I had very realistic expectations and in which areas I expected to hear improvements. In those areas, the HD 800S actually exceeded all my expectations and sounds even better than I thought it would. And, as expected, the sound keeps improving as I'm only now reaching the 100th hour with it. It's a great audio device - one of the best I've ever owned and heard. The industrial design and the workmanship are about as good as they get but, ultimately, it's the sound and the HD 800S really delivers like none that I had ever heard.Addendum: I believe my HD 800S now has surpassed the 150-hour mark. It really does sound so much better than the first few hours. The bit of stiffness I heard around the edges of the notes is now gone. I can sense more "elasticity" in the way the different frequencies and instruments interact with each other. The highs sound smoother, the lows have more bounce and the mids sound richer with even greater detail. The first 100~120 hours really do make a big difference. It just keeps sounding better and better and that's a mighty good thing.

These headphones are precision machines created to enable hearing exactly what is in a recording. They are Zeiss cinema lenses for audio: Smooth, precise, effortless, free of distortion...they make phenomenal recordings/productions shine like you are in the studio listening to master tapes through the board, and they expose any and all defects in a mix/recording (or repro signal chain). Owning them is a real treat.IMO, they greatly benefit from using inline EQ (preferably 10 band or more), because they instantly expose the vast differences between the eq curves used by producers on recordings (not to mention digital quality/sampling/bit rates, mastering compression modes, microphone/room choice...). Since purchasing these, I have been making and saving custom 10 band eq curves via VLC for specific favorite albums to bring out the best in recordings for MY ears which, at 60 years of age, are still excellent but certainly do not have a "flat" response. Some recordings sound great "flat" but most are engineered to compensate for terrible car/home audio systems, or were mangled in the analog to digital mastering process during the early CD era...so these re-EQs can make a MASSIVE difference.The HD 800s headphones are made by the venerable Sennheiser corp, but could easily be a pro-NAGRA product - Swiss/German absolute precision. They are open backed, which I favor b/c they breathe and do not cut the listener off from the ambient environment...VERY comfortable for long listening sessions.I am currently running them via a simple inexpensive chain: Apple Mac playing back a variety of audio formats via the VLC player/EQ, into a Dragonfly Cobalt DAC, into an Apos Duoo TA-66 tube headphone amp...only $500 or so of equipment, but phenomenal quality**. The TA-66 puts out 200mw into 300 Ohms (the impedance of the HD 800s), and with the Mac volume setting at unity, and the TA-66 at 50% (12 o'clock), I am at/beyond my tolerance for loudness (suspect this is producing spl of ~ 95db peaks at my ears). So plenty of power. At this power level there is zero noise, zero clipping/artifacting, unbelievably precise dynamics (the speed with which these headphones can transition from max loudness to absolute silence or visa versa is hard to describe), a massive soundstage, complete transparency of human vocals and all musical instruments (from softest violins, to ridiculously saturated heavy metal guitars/drums such as in Rammstein's Deutschland). Santana's Europa from an old low-rez ripped CD file of the Moonflower album brought tears to my eyes...I could "see" Carlos' fingers moving to every fret/bend, hear every nuance of his pick interacting with the strings, all while the synth strings and drums surrounded him in massive perfectly detailed layers - the mental impression/vision was that I was Carlos looking down at my hands on the guitar and the band was behind, left and right of me -a pretty unique, nearly psychedelic "staging" compared to the thousands of other times I've listened to this recording on vinyl/cd.There is no doubt owning this set of headphones will make one want to upgrade ALL favorite recordings to lossless/remastered 24/96 (minimum) versions as they become available.In conclusion, these are headphones...they DO NOT reproduce the experience of incredible speakers moving huge amounts of air in a large well tuned listening room, but for close listening of audio recordings they are truly wonderful, emotionally engaging, reference instruments in the very top strata of headphone products... There may be "different" and there are certainly more expensive, but to say "better" requires personal/subjective interpretation of extraordinarily marginal diminishing returns.** For reference, I'm a vintage Marantz tube preamp/amp owner (who has also owned a large list of other top tier tube and solid state signal chain components - Conrad Johnson, HK, Bryston, Crown, Macintosh, Audio Research...) who is used to driving LARGE speakers from the likes of B&W, JBL, Klipsch in large well proportioned listening rooms. As a musician who plays piano, guitars, drums/percussion, synths, etc., and has performed in live environments with orchestras, small ensembles, rock/fusion bands, jazz big bands) I know from experience what real instruments sound/feel like in all sorts of audio environments good/bad/ugly...