The HD 650 is well known as having a clear, uncolored sound that comes very close to accurately representing the original sound. Sennheiser provided a selection of CDs that you could test with the headphones. I settled on a Diana Krall album.
The HD 650 sounded fine, but then I tried the HD 800. Holy cow, what a difference. The music was much clearer. The stereo separation was the best I’ve heard from a set of headphones. And the overall sense of presence was amazing. It was obvious when returning to the HD 650 that they sounded dull in comparison.
How does the HD 800 achieve such an incredible sound? It features two 56mm sound transducers, which are currently the largest available in a set of dynamic headphones. Also unusual, the vibrating part of the diaphragm is a ring rather than a circular surface area.
There are many of innovations, but the end result is a total harmonic distortion of less than 0.02 percent and a frequency response from 6 to 51,000 Hz. And as the Sennheiser representatives pointed out to me several times (they seemed particularly proud of this), the HD 800 is handmade.
You know the HD 800 headphones won’t come cheap, though the $1,399.95 list price was actually less than I expected. They won’t be available until February, so there’s still time to figure out how in the world you could possibly justify such an expenditure.