(NEW) Sennheiser HD 800 S Over-the-Ear Audiophile Reference Headphones

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...