Sennheiser HD 800 aftermarket cable

I don't know if you are interested or not but I have been having a great experience wit Cardas Cables . They are so very open and  detailled and have turned my 800s into entirely different beasts and are miles better than the original cables.

Have you tried the Sennheiser CH 800 S cable?  I have the HD 800 (not S) and have not compared the Senn balanced cable to others, but certainly didn't find it lacking in any way and it's very well constructed.  I have to admit that I seem to be less sensitive to cable changes than others.

jim204, which Cardas and how do they handle bass? big_greg, I have the CH800S and the bass sounds boxy to me with my amp. Funny though, years ago I used the CH800S with the Sennheiser HDVA 600 amp and it made those headphones sound awesome.

Hi the Cardas I use are 1.5 metre four pin balanced cables at £535.00 which are rather pricy but completely blow away the CH 800 S I had previously. The bass although not all powerful is super clear and so well detailed. A lot of the sound I get is also down to my head amp the Luxman P 750-u which will drive any dynamic  phone you care to mention and to ear splitting volumes if you are stupid enough. I had Sennheiser's own head amp before and the new one just jumps all over the old one. If super detailed light and airy sound is what you love then it is a great combination but you should hear it on Mahler Symphonies. As I only use phones nowadays then I can listen to my normal rig without any compromises at 3 in the morning when I can't sleep and I don't waken the missus.

Strange, with all the SR customers, I found only 2 reviews on the Atmosphere cable. One by a customer on high-end and the other on Head-fi. That isn't very encouraging. Maybe the saving grace will be the 30 day money back policy...

No experience with the SR brand. I have the HD800 and HD820, which came with two 3m cables--a 1/4" and 4 pin XLR. I wanted a 15' cable and bought a Black Dragon Premium dual 3 pin XLR. I like how the 800's sound with the 820's stock 4 pin cable, there's a bit more detail over the 1/4". There was a better jump in performance overall (especially detail) with the Black Dragon, but even more so when used with the 820's so that's where they stay. I mostly listen to analog where I prefer the 820, the 800 with digital. The Black Dragon is stiff and a pain to coil compared to the Sennheiser cables, but that may be due to the length. It's a well constructed cable.

Meestickbuf, search "synergistic foundation" and sort by date, not relevance. Numerous mentions of Foundation series cables, although likely not in the headphone space. I developed these cables for my Sennheisers, because I love them and you likely will too after 30 days but if not, no big deal.

Yours in music,

Ted Denney III Lead Designer/CEO Synergistic Research Inc.

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bslon, I'd say most of my listening is digital. I have both the Sennheiser HD 800 RCA and XLR cables.The RCA sounds pretty good directly connected to my DAC's HP socket but I'd like to get the best SQ possible Unfortunately there's no XLR input on the DAC and I don't want to buy a headphone amp. I prefer an XLR connection but if RCA sounds very good I'll be happy. ted_denney I'd love to give your Atmosphere's a try. I looked up Foundation series cables as you instructed. There's a lot of info on IC's, digital, power and speaker cables, but I still don't see any specific to the HP cables. Seeing you have Foundations and Atmosphere HP cables, what's the difference or improvement in sound especially with an RCA connection?

Xxx

Atmosphere headphone cables were engineered prior to Foundation and is based on our Tricon geometry. As for the Foundation headphone cables, it’s a pure 6-9’s silver conductor in an air dielectric, 100% handmade geometry and terminated by hand in my Southern California factory and conditioned on our massive Tesla Coil. It has the same house sound as the rest of the Foundation Series, but in the case of the Sennheiser variant, is specifically voiced by me on Sennheiser headphones. Both are great but I’d likely go for the Foundation at this point.

Yours in music,

Ted Denney III Lead Designer/CEO Synergistic Research Inc.