[FullRangeMan]

Wow I have no interest in this hp that did not even know it, it may be a upsampler.
Its really bad news along w/the price.

[charmerci]

Just received a HifiMan newletter informing a sale:
HE500 $349 Factory Refurbished
HE400 $149 Factory Refurbished
HE300 $99   Factory Refurbished
HE400i $299 Open Box Return

All out. Too late now.

[FullRangeMan]

All out. Too late now.

If interest there is my HE400 for $250 +ship with:
-Original manual and box
-Original Canare 3M cable
-Silver 1.5M cable from HeadDirect
-original leather pads
-velour pads(installed)
-90 hours use
-no blemishes, grade 10/10
-no Paypal fee offer

[Armaegis]

The flagship headphones have certainly jumped up in pricing by several orders of magnitude. A decade ago the top dogs (not counting Stax) were the Sennheiser HD580/600, Beyerdynamic DT880, and AKG K601 (or was it the 501? I forget). Grado sort of sat on the side in their odd little pocket niche carved out from name recognition, sort of like Bose.

Nowadays, the old school trio are considered mid-fi as new headphones have literally added a zero onto their pricetags. I haven't heard all of the new toys, but I've gone through quite a few of them.

Beyer's offerings have not particularly improved in my opinion from the 880. The tesla drivers certainly seem capable, but they seriously need to put someone in charge of quality control and driver matching or all that tech is wasted.

AKG just keeps rehashing the same design with minor tweaks here and there (we're just gonna pretend the K812 doesn't exist). To their credit though, they're the only company that hasn't gone loony with price hikes. As far as "flagship" status here, I honestly think the K612 is the best of the bunch.

Sennheiser has done well with the HD800 and in my opinion is the only one of the original trio that has produced a worthy "flagship" successor. Innerfidelity has released a very interesting article on the new HD800S that's worth a read.

The planar revolution gained huge momentum within the modding community, but new flagships each year push into ridiculousness. Audeze's LCD-2 is a fine headphone, but the 3 and X/XC do not justify the price bump (I haven't heard the 4, but I have my doubts). Hifiman hit their peak with the HE-6, and the newest 400s and 560 strike a decent trade of resolution for significantly higher sensitivity, but the HE-1000 and HE-X are expensive bling pieces that are a step down in sound quality. The Abyss is... ok I'll admit sonically the Abyss is fantastic. Too bad it fits like a medieval torture device; I'm not paying $4k for that.

[dB Cooper]

I was thinking more or less the same thing. Especially in regard to the Beyer T1- I've heard them and liked them, but the form factor is essentially the same as the other Beyers but it costs five times what you can find the 880's in your example for. Are the Tesla drivers that much more expensive? Or is the pricing because Beyer sees Senn getting it for their flagship (which was a radical redesign and quite expensive to manufacture due to the materials used)?

As I've said before, diminishing returns definitely come into play. Because I have to be careful with my audio dollar, I try to figure out where a particular thing sits on the value curve. It's not just cost- there's some really expensive utter crap out there in all categories, and some low priced gems. Among the latter I would classify the Apple In-Ear headphones which are two way balanced armature designs and waaaay outperform their price point (at least if you replace the stock silicone gel tips with Comply foam tips). They have little to no audiophile "cred" (possibly because their el cheapo earbuds are so bad) but these are a great value, the kind the headphone market can use more of. I'm continually impressed with how well they hold their own vs my more expensive IEMs.

[FullRangeMan]

If they do, it certainly wouldn't be an obvious electronic tuned circuit like Bose incorporates into their QC-25 (but does not use in their SoundTrue around-ear model).  Whatever Sennheiser does is probably not even in that tube amp, so whatever they do I have no idea.  Stax has been producing ES headphones for years that are very neutral, and I presume Sennheiser would be using the same kind of technology.

Thanks Dale.
About the new HD800S, is a old technology in a new cloth.
How they manage to sold it is beyond my comprehension.
The current situation is this>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkZPj9F0y18
Looks funny but its not.

[steve in jersey]

I can't agree that I need 2 or more headphones for the *many* genres of music I listen to.  A headphone that's properly tuned, by manufacture and then by astute user EQ, should play everything at quality ranging from excellent to "pretty good", and if not, the recording was not made to be a high fidelity recording.

You might have missed the point I was getting at , as no one really needs more than 1 headphone to cover everything you listen to !

I was talking more along the lines of why headphone manufacturers are continually trying to make TOTL headphones they insist upon calling "Reference Level" . The implication here is that this level is equally this level for all musical genres the headphones are used for. When I hear the word "Reference" I take it pretty literally .

There are any number of headphones that "cover" all music genres very well. In the process of accomplishing this standard of "very well", some musical genres will be reproduced at an elavated level simply because different music has different requirements to be at the pinnacle of the best they can be reproduced. The laws of physics dictate this has to be the reality of sound reproduction.

I'm just saying take the word "Reference level" with a grain of salt. I have a minuscule interest in about 85% of all available genres of music (& if it's a non Acoustical instrument based genre, my interest is probably in the "Hehehe...Listen to What ?" column. I just think it would be convient to have a totally un compromised , use specific headphone. I think I have interest in "other" headphones simply because of all the redesign work I did to my headphones getting rid of the things that have no reason to be present for my "music of choice"
listening time.

It's not a matter of "Needing" anything . (Unless we're talking about having the headphone sound that I only need  the best possible sound for my specific playback choices; which are not Democratic by any means)

[Armaegis]

At least with Sennheiser's HD800, you can tell there was some engineering that went into it. The earcups, pads, even the mesh material are all very specifically designed. The 800S has an interesting doohickey that tamps down a certain resonance peak, and another change that brings up 2nd order harmonic distortion in the bass.

Looking at Beyer... yeah the Tesla driver is (potentially) nice, but everything else is almost a drop-in replacement. Their driver variance and matching is iffy at best, and mismatched drivers/frequency response warps perception of sound far more than people realize. The early DT1350's were a prime example of this as early measurements from differing sites showed significant changes from batch to batch.

As for everybody cranking prices, well this is simply a matter of the headphone world finally catching up to the hifi world. Very very few people buy the ultrabucks gear, but hey there's some prestige to buying a $1k toy from a company that makes $100k statement bling.

Years ago you'd never consider spending a grand on headphones, but nowadays thanks mostly to Beats which has made it fashionably cool for kids to drop $300 on plastic necklaces, the adults need to spend 10x more to make their own statement about being better than the teens.

[dB Cooper]

Thanks Dale.
About the new HD800S, is a old technology in a new cloth.
How they manage to sold it is beyond my comprehension.
The current situation is this>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkZPj9F0y18
Looks funny but its not.

Read innerfidelity's review. There are apparently some significant differences "under the hood", mentioned briefly above by Armaegis.

Regarding "signature", IMO not every difference can be "EQ'd" out. If you EQ'd an HD800 and an LCD2 (to make just one possible comparison) to measure the same on a FR plot, they'd still sound different. They might sound more "alike", but not "the same." Transient response, driver resonances etc etc etc all come into play.

[FullRangeMan]

There is a new HifiMan: Edition S price $250
http://www.hifiman.com/articles/detail/401?preview=true
Its not a round can but rectangular.

[FullRangeMan]

Today I receive the second HifiMan newsletter mentioning the new top of the Line Shangri-La, no price info, just a photo and its follow the looking from brother HE1000, w/the wood trim around the can.

In this video at 12:30 there is more info and lots closeup images:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcuCKRxtadM&feature=youtu.be
Its a prototype model, news are not good:
It came along w/his own huge tube amp which use four expensive 300B tubes and unfortunately have a 5 pins non standard balanced cable.
This is result from the Orpheus dementia.
Some Shangri-La and his amp images:

[dB Cooper]

There is a new HifiMan: Edition S price $250
http://www.hifiman.com/articles/detail/401?preview=true
Its not a round can but rectangular.

That might be the fugliest headphone I've ever seen.

[dB Cooper]

Accidental duplicate; sorry

[FullRangeMan]

Some me too late comers to HP boat are NAD and PSB.
http://nadelectronics.com/products/headphones/

http://www.psbspeakers.com/products/headphones/M4U-2-Headphones

[Armaegis]

The NAD HP50 is an excellent can, but just doesn't do it for me comfort-wise as it puts a pressure spot right at the top of my head. I would choose the Sennheiser Momentum over it which is *slightly* lesser in sound but for me far more comfortable.

[dB Cooper]

My philosophy has always been that if a can isn't comfortable, I don't really care how it sounds.

[Guy 13]

I've tried eight different makes-models of headphones
and only the Sennheiser HD-600-650
where comfortable to wear for many hours.
Sooooo.... The comfort is the most important.
Even if the HD-800 where better sounding,
I did not found them comfortable at all.

Guy 13
 

[Nordkapp]

Beyerdynamic fit nicely. Most comfortable I've owned. I won't mention the bad ones. Sennheisers fit well too.

[wje]

Just received a HifiMan newletter informing a sale:
HE500 $349 Factory Refurbished
HE400 $149 Factory Refurbished
HE300 $99   Factory Refurbished
HE400i $299 Open Box Return
HE560 $899 New & other models

I ordered the HE-560 cups and headband from Hifiman for $80 (U.S.$) to include international shipping.  I transplanted my HE-500 driver elements into the new cups and have taken advantage of the newer and more comfortable headband.  Others have done the mod with just the headband and the existing HE-500 cups.  Still a great pair of headphones at around $450, including the mods.  One should also order the $10 ear pad rings which are a newer and thinner version for the new 560, 400s, 400i, etc. series.  These rings prevent the ear pads from spinning, which is a hassle if it's the Focus pads.

I'm quite happy with the results of my modified HE-500 headphones.  I don't see myself getting too high into the pricier market for cans at this point in the game because I'm really happy with the sound.  I'd rather spend the money on speakers and other audio gear.

[wje]

The NAD HP50 is an excellent can, but just doesn't do it for me comfort-wise as it puts a pressure spot right at the top of my head. I would choose the Sennheiser Momentum over it which is *slightly* lesser in sound but for me far more comfortable.

Initially, I opted for the Momentum 1 over-ear headphones, but the ear pads were a bit small.  The Momentum 2 has slightly larger ear pads and after buying a pair of those, I'm content with owning them as a pair of headphones I use at work.  It's great to be able to shut out all of the sounds around me and focus on work with some great music playing.