Hello again everyone, Bringing some news regarding my little project. This may be a good thing because I see a lot of used and B-stock deals, probably because some sites are advertising this as a CD player and getting a ton of returns after customers realize there are no analog outputs. I did forget to mention: The Audiolab 6000CDT appears purely a dedicated transport. The 6000CDT doesn't offer AES or BNC outputs, only Toslink and SPDIF coax. The included remote is nice, not a cheap Topping job where it looks like they repurposed an OG Amazon Fire TV remote (although this remote has too many extraneous buttons for companion components such as receivers from Audiolab). It's a slot loader, but I found the loading mechanism to confidently grab the CDs and swallow them, unlike my typical experiences with CD slot loaders in car audio systems. Tapping on the chassis returns thuds instead of resonant pings. The unit isn't like the entry level Marantz CD players with flimsy tops and lightweight chassis, which require additional mass damping to sound decent. The Audiolab 6000CDT is no joke - despite it being sold by online retailers such as Crutchfield and Audio Advisor, where in my experience stuff being pushed by them is often garbage or poor value. Today I still have my JAR600, but it's always with a Grado next to it. After so many years without Grados, I had realized that I missed Grados' punchy mid-bass, snappy transients, lively reactivity, crunchy mids, and woodie reverb/decay. I myself gave up on Grados in favor of Sennheiser after a period time only to come back. The entry level Grados were (and still are) cheap, accessible, and didn't need an amp. Most veterans today who wield Sennheisers, Audezes, HFMs, will admit that they had owned a higher-end Grado in the past or at the very least started with a Grado. If we could corner Tyll, we may get him to admit that he didn't care much for Grados. Tyll of Innerfidelity** was known for not saying much about Grados. Many readers may be too young to know that during the infancy of headphone audio, before the start of Head-Fi, and even for many years after, there were two big camps in headphones: Sennheiser vs. Grados elicit strong reactions from the headphone community. It's like trying to convert someone who is gay into being straight. Trying to make the HD800S into sounding like an LCD-2 is plain wrong. If you like the romantic smoothed-over-to-shit kind of sound, best to seek advice somewhere else. Personally, I think you are much better off with an HD650 and LCD-2 with a very technically and musically capable amp. They do cure the HD800s dry sound, but at too high of a price in terms of clarity, transient response, microdetail, microdynamics, etc. Capable of slam (the HD800S can hit like a truck with the right gear)Īlso, tube amps which are overly warm, syrupy, slow, or romantic (cathode follower OTL designs, OPT with cheap output transformers, Chi-Fi push-pull cathode bias, etc.) will not be mentioned.Commits few sins of omission, capable of rendering microdynamics and microdynamics (the HD800S is super resolving, subpar gear and subpar recordings won't make the HD800S any more special than lesser headphones).Smooth highs (to counter the hot and grainy HD800S highs). Wetness or bloom (the HD800S can be on the dry side).What we are looking for is one or more of the following traits: This guide should still be applicable to those with the OG HD800 with mods ( BTA, Sandevistan, Superdupont, etc.)Īs far as amping, tube amps are recommended, but solid-state amps are definitely getting there. The treble is hot, the mids are recessed, and the lows are a bit cloudy (the HD800S took a slight step back in the lows), especially compared to the awesome low-distortion planars available today. I find that EQ doesn’t work well for the HD800S because its screwy frequency response is caused by super early reflections from how the driver is suspended and angled in front of the ear and by the large ribs and mounting structures of the cups. The frequency response of the HD800S, despite the Armin Zola resonator (that lessens the 6kHz peak) is still bit too screwy for my tastes. I only like the HD800S under certain conditions.
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