No tricks. It's legit. Anax worked on some stuff and eliminated the hardness of the HD800. It's a still bright and hyper-resolving headphone. But yup, no more of the glare and hardness.

Just pulled the trigger on a new pair of HD-800. Please put me on the list to purchase this mod. Thanks. 

Quote from: jeffreyfranz on February 28, 2013, 06:25:02 PM

Just pulled the trigger on a new pair of HD-800. Please put me on the list to purchase this mod. Thanks. 

Let me know if you want me to send you some modding material to do a Rabid Dog (2.0) in the meantime... Marv sent me more than enough, and sharing is caring!


/V

Thank you, Valentine, that's so thoughtful. Before you go to that effort, however, let me do some soul searching and be sure I'm not going to cancel my order for the HD-800. I am vacillating, big time. As you are a member of this thread, you have seen my previous posts. They at least hint at some of the uncertainty I have been having about which way to go next. (I'll head off exhortations to "buy one of everything" or "just get a 009 and a BHSE" up front--I cannot afford to have everything I might like.) I don't want to highjack this thread, so I'll try to be brief. Based on the endless posting at Head-Fi re bright, ruthless, glaring, etc., problems with the HD-800, I never thought them a serious option for me. (As a young man, I suffered a puncture of the left eardrum that did not heal well. As a result, I am acutely sensitive to treble problems in transducers, to the point of physical pain if there is glare and the level is greater than 80dB peaks.) Getting a taste of Stax heaven with my SR-507/SRM-006ts rig but realizing there was more to be had, I set my sights on the SR-007 (Omega 2/Mk. 1) and either a SRM-3232S or, at most, a used SRM-727. Meanwhile, I had purchased an LCD-2R2 and loved all the fun things that phone does (sweetness, dynamics, bass) but found it hopelessly colored and developmentally challenged in the high frequencies, non-starters for my preferred music: most forms of classical. That might have been the end of my experimentation, until I encountered numerous thread-posts (+ Tyll's comments) claiming the Omega 2 was dull, unexciting, somewhat distant or lacking... whatever. Now I'm really going in circles but stumble upon numerous positive comments about the HD-800: that it has electrostatic-like clarity and detail (or almost), that it does have good bass and it doesn't have shrill highs, etc. And I start thinking, OK, this could be it, the perfect compromise HP I have been looking for that is in a sonic middle ground between my Lambdas and the recently departed Audez'e. But of course, before you know it, I can't seem to read anything but damning comments about the HD-800. "What's wrong with this picture?"

Alright, the solution is to go somewhere and listen to the various options. I almost accomplished that at the recent San Francisco meet, except the day before the meet I had an accident (broke two teeth) that put me out of commission. I welcome any input on potential choices but should hold off on accepting your kind offer. I would really like the HD-800 to be at least a partial solution for my headphone needs, however, because of the ease of amping and the great variety of candidates that are available for dynamic phones. I'm writing a book here.

Sorry everyone. Looks like I did highjack the thread after all. 

Jeff, your perception of the HD800 is very dependent on what you plug them into.  It's a serious commitment to the transducers capabilities.  If you aren't willing to go 'all in' in the neighborhood of 1-2K worth of upstream gear, I'd say avoid it or save up.  I had to live w/ the HD800 from a DACPort for 4 months while the Super 7 was being developed and built.  That is to say, I never listened to them and everytime I tried they were just like the critics say.  But I was fine with this having heard the 800 from the DACPort, Super7 and WA5 at a meet.


The 800 sounded just as bad as all the stories when I first heard them at the meet using my DACPort.  Then I met Craig and plugged them into the Super7 once the crowd dispersed and did a 'wooaahh'.  Then found a maxed out WA5 that purrin hooked his PWD into and did another 'wooaahh'!  I was in planar camp at the time w/ the T50rp and LCD2.  It was after that I did some audio calculus and felt the 800 was the best for me once I felt I had the transducer figured out based on actual experience.  It was the last thing I ever wanted to do, build a whole system around one phone.  Insane!  So I went all in and bought the HD800 and looked at them sitting there for 4 months because they were about as enjoyable as rice cakes.


Treble.  If you listen medium to low volume, you won't have a problem.  That is unless your gear fails to deliver the bass and dynamics to prevent you from cranking up the volume to flatten out the FR.  Hoe that helps.

B22 is for turning the HD800 into something more forgiving IMO, I consider it gimping the phone tbh.


I didn't pay much attention to the last bdp-105 I heard, but I did return a bdp-103 after living with it for 3 weeks based solely on it's digital output compared to other transports.