Hmm.... Ideal music suggestions for listening to through your Senn HD800s ,huh ? I use these also so I'll give you a few & tell you
about some things I ended up doing to my 800s so that they aren't as easily able to impose their "sound signature" on what I decide
to listen to .
First, there is no doubt these headphones are using fantastic drivers that are tremendously capable of resolving musical information.
So far, so good , but at some point during their design (maybe due to how extended these drivers are) they decided not to completely stop the resonances of these powerful drivers in their earcup seating but to use this energy to create "spaciousness"
regardless of what actual ambient information exists on the recorded music . Depending on your choice of listening material this
isn't always an objectionable thing,but it doesn't work very well with music that has distinct natural spatial balances in it & you can
hear if a resonance is from the sound of a musical note decay or it was mechanically generated.
I guess you can tell I wasn't a big fan of the HD800s "Wall of Sound" specifically due to the fact that almost all the music I listen to
is dynamically dense (Orchestral mostly) acoustic music. It was only after several months of not even plugging in these phones & trying a few non invasive mods to them that I discovered they could be quite enjoyable. I discovered that the biggest culprit in creating that "Sennheiser soundstage" was emanating from the rings that are sitting around the outside of each driver. The protective screens that sit behind the drivers are being held in place by the 4 screws that pass through the rings & the drivers mounting screw holes. I had originally thought that the inner surface of the earcups was were the excessive resonance was originating from , it's not. The ring & the screen are working together to create a "Ring Radiator". Both the rings & screens no longer
reside on my headphones . In their current state my HD800s sound very transparent & exceptional with my entire Classical (& other)
Library. I don't know how well they might work on recording that need help, but I don't seem to have more than a handful of those
among several hundred that I have .
Getting back to Musical suggestions. . Now that I've "Natualized" my headphones, the is an awful lot of music on Naxos (the Alsop,Slatkin, etc & material recorded by Peter McGrath, John Eargle (Albert Swanson was only the assistant engineer ),Tony Faulkner & other) show up on this label. I seem to like a good bit of what is on the Lyrita,Hyperion/Helios & Dutton Epoch labels
There's a Egon Wellesz series on CPO that I love that I think is also very well recorded
about some things I ended up doing to my 800s so that they aren't as easily able to impose their "sound signature" on what I decide
to listen to .
First, there is no doubt these headphones are using fantastic drivers that are tremendously capable of resolving musical information.
So far, so good , but at some point during their design (maybe due to how extended these drivers are) they decided not to completely stop the resonances of these powerful drivers in their earcup seating but to use this energy to create "spaciousness"
regardless of what actual ambient information exists on the recorded music . Depending on your choice of listening material this
isn't always an objectionable thing,but it doesn't work very well with music that has distinct natural spatial balances in it & you can
hear if a resonance is from the sound of a musical note decay or it was mechanically generated.
I guess you can tell I wasn't a big fan of the HD800s "Wall of Sound" specifically due to the fact that almost all the music I listen to
is dynamically dense (Orchestral mostly) acoustic music. It was only after several months of not even plugging in these phones & trying a few non invasive mods to them that I discovered they could be quite enjoyable. I discovered that the biggest culprit in creating that "Sennheiser soundstage" was emanating from the rings that are sitting around the outside of each driver. The protective screens that sit behind the drivers are being held in place by the 4 screws that pass through the rings & the drivers mounting screw holes. I had originally thought that the inner surface of the earcups was were the excessive resonance was originating from , it's not. The ring & the screen are working together to create a "Ring Radiator". Both the rings & screens no longer
reside on my headphones . In their current state my HD800s sound very transparent & exceptional with my entire Classical (& other)
Library. I don't know how well they might work on recording that need help, but I don't seem to have more than a handful of those
among several hundred that I have .
Getting back to Musical suggestions. . Now that I've "Natualized" my headphones, the is an awful lot of music on Naxos (the Alsop,Slatkin, etc & material recorded by Peter McGrath, John Eargle (Albert Swanson was only the assistant engineer ),Tony Faulkner & other) show up on this label. I seem to like a good bit of what is on the Lyrita,Hyperion/Helios & Dutton Epoch labels
There's a Egon Wellesz series on CPO that I love that I think is also very well recorded
