cantsleep
Headphoneus Supremus
hev70
hd800 looks fine. its not as good as l3000 but still better than r10.
hd800 looks fine. its not as good as l3000 but still better than r10.
hev70
hd800 looks fine. its not as good as l3000 but still better than r10.
It's amazing people never notice that the big manufacturers aren't participating in the discussions here, let alone consider getting feedback from people here. It's not hard to see why.
That insularity is a very backwards way of community engagement in this era. I'd put Schiit at the top of my list of headphone-segment companies that know how to properly engage its audience, followed by Headamp and Hifiman in the second tier. I'm probably missing a few, since my interest is almost exclusively stats and orthos.
I hope this headphone is a great successor to the HE90, but I have a feeling they saw the SR009 and BHSE rush and are going to go to luxury pricing. I don't really see Sennheiser as a bang-for-buck company, and the Lambda will probably remain as the only affordable entry-point for most cost conscious consumers.
I wonder how much development has been done prior to Sennheiser catching wind of the Stax acquisition by Edifier. It'd be great if there's growth in the sub-$2k stat market, as I'd like to see stats competitive to the LCD2/LCD3/HE6 in price, rather than trying to unseat the SR009.
Sadly you're probably right. And remember the ESP/950.
This is what's scary - is this the result of a legitimate multi-year effort on their part to develop a new product, and it's just now being announced, or did they see the popularity of SR-009 and other high end STAXen and the recent resurgance of popularity and interest in the ESP/950 and look at their own IP portfolio and say "hey, we can get into that ring, slap something together" - that's where it's scary. It really could be either way, I mean the proof will be in the pudding, and if they're good, who cares what the motivation was (right?), but still.
I definitely need to listen to an ESP-950 someday. I've heard it compares pretty favorably to the Lambdas, so that's enough for me to be curious of its potential. Ever since hearing the HE-6 + Trends TA-10.2SE , though, the ESP-950 rig has to perform really well to be competitive against orthos. I feel the LCD-2 and HE-6 has a much more engaging signature for your average listener than a lower-end stat. It still amazes me that a used HE-6 + new Trends-10.2SE comes out to about $1k, and a few folks spoke well about the Emotiva mini-X, too.
It's always surprised me that Sennheiser's service department says they have enough parts to service the HE60 and HE90 for a lifetime, which made me wonder if they kept their stat component manufacturing channels active, or there just weren't a lot of HE60/HE90 headphones sold.
I think the criticism leveraged against Sennheiser's current high-end headphone R&D team is entirely fair. The HD600 is pretty musical when properly amped, and the HE90 was amazing. My experience hearing n3rdling's HE90 convinced me to buy a HE60 without auditioning it (in addition to all the high praise I've heard about the HE60 from HE90 owners). That said, I've found the HD800 generally unengaging, with the exception of the BA, and while I haven't heard the HD700, the negative feedback from people I trust is pretty damning. My expectations are guarded at best, but I hope Sennheiser proves me wrong. I really hope they don't come out with a $3-5k stat that tries to beat the SR009. I want something reasonably affordable and different from the 007 and 009.
After reading some of the posts on this thread I have an hypothetical question. Supposing there were two cars for sale and both were identical apart from one being amazing to look at and the other having the complete opposite in looks, which car would probably be chosen. When I'm paying out quite a large amount of money for an headphone, not only do I want it to sound amazing, but it must look and be built that way.
Please let me know thoughts about the car.
I'll take it one further - we're comparing a Ford Contour and a Jaguar X-Type. And I would tell you that I'd take the Jaguar 10 times out of 9.
I wonder how much development has been done prior to Sennheiser catching wind of the Stax acquisition by Edifier. It'd be great if there's growth in the sub-$2k stat market, as I'd like to see stats competitive to the LCD2/LCD3/HE6 in price, rather than trying to unseat the SR009.
I'd be very surprised by this. You can't simply have than kind of reactivity as a manufacturer. These products are years in the planning and development and I seriously doubt that Senn went back to the saddle at the corner of 2010, like that, out of the blue. I remember the chief acoustic designer of the HD800 claiming himself at the time of HD800 release that, while better than anything they'd put out yet, he admitted the HD800 was no HE90.
Overall, I also doubt that these high end headphones are seriously being developed with a strong ROI philosophy. You said it, the market is ridiculously small, it takes probably years to recoup on the R&D cost with the volumes of sale involved. I imagine the main reason being such development is simply making publicity for the rest of the product line and hopefully gain / regain the seat for the top of the crown. I don't think the intent is primarily to go after the 009 owners but I guess it's natural that this will get attraction from such crowd (esp. if they were to release a product with compatible polarization range).
I'd be interested if that's a public quote about the HD800 being no HE90.