05 March 2009
We had the first British showing of the new HD 800 headphones at the Bristol Sound & Vision show in February.
The headphones were connected to a Grace M902B headphone amplifier which was fed from a Nagra CD player, one of the best setups on the market.
With all all the talk on internet forums, Head-Fi in particular, there was a constant queue of people throughout the duration of the show wanting to experience the HD 800, several visitors even brought along their own CDs to listen to.
The response to the HD 800 at the show was overwhelmingly favourable with someone paying out immediately at the show for a pair; with quite a few more saying they will likely buy after hearing them in quieter surroundings at their local dealer.
Personally, I was lucky enough to take a pair home before the show and listen to them at my leisure over a weekend.
The headphones had previously been run-in with 24-hours of pink noise to settle them in, as you would with such a quality product.
I used my own Grace M902B which was connected to a professional hard disk recorder and listened to selected classical piano recitals.
As a comparison I also connected them to my Myryad hi-fi system and listened to several CDs straight out of the headphones socket on the pre-amp.
Both were a delight to listen to.
My own feeling was that they do everything right. They were neutral, very natural and superbly revealing; I was hearing things in recordings I had never heard before and I found myself so getting caught up in the music that time passed without notice.
I can well understand why so many people at the show are saying that that they are the best headphones that they have ever heard, one reviewer summing up the HD 800 with a single word . . . Flawless‘.
In my opinion, once you have heard them, you won’t want to listen on anything else.
Yes ! I too have ordered my own personal pair.
If you get the chance go and listen to the HD 800 at you local dealer, you will experience something rather special.
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Tags: Bristol Sound & Vision | Grace m902b | HD 800 | Head-Fi | headphone amplifier | Myryad | Nagra | pink noise | Sequoia
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