CES 2009: Hands-On with Sennheiser's Flagship HD800 Headphones

The HD800 is the new flagship headphone from Sennheiser announced at CES.  It's an open-backed, over-ear headphone and has some design changes over its predecessor, the HD650, that catapults it into a higher price bracket.  The HD800 features 56mm drivers and a 40mm voice coil--the largest of both in a headphone to date.  A lightweight ring transducer design reduces the damaging oscillations that cause distortion.  The earpads are made of Japanese Alcantara, and the headband is made of "Leona", a high-density plastic that prevents the headphone itself from reverberating under load.

A special design feature of the HD800 are the 60-degree angled drivers.  The principle is that because of the way our ears are designed, most sound typically enters the ear canal at roughly a 60-degree angle.  Most earphones direct sound at a 90-degree angle (perpindicular) to the head, but the oversized earcups of the HD800 allow its drivers to angle the sound directly to the outer ear, the way it occurs naturally in the environment. 

The HD800 is extremely lightweight, and except for the slight awkwardness of the enormous earcups at first, I found them to be perfectly comfortable.  The first sample track I listened to through the headphones showed strong imaging with vocals right near the ear and instrumentation showing real spatialization: Norah Jones' "Don't Know Why".  (Jones should start charging special trade show royalties, since that album seems to be in every audio demo ever these days.)  The imaging was strong, but I wanted to push the headphones a little bit; I've found that some headphones deliver certain kinds of music better than others and what works in a demo doesn't always pan out in every experience.  I popped in Living Color's "Cult of Personality" and was pleased by the breadth of the soundstage and the complete ease with which it handled a cranked volume.  The angled drivers gave the impression of the music coming from whatever direction you were looking, while retaining good Z-line imaging instead of putting everything "right up front" on the soundstage, which can make the music seem a little flat.  The sound pressure levels stayed comfortable at high volume and I got the distinct feeling that even the better amps out there would clip long before the HD800s would distort.

The Sennheiser HD800s have a retail of $1399 and are available now. 

--Aric A.