Audiophilepure

While the smooth midrange synergizes nicely with instrumentals like chamber music and jazz, it favors powerful vocals and high-res masters, sounding meatier across the mids.

The treble is defined and energetic yet controlled in the sibilance zone, so there is no brittleness even with high-pitched virtuosos.

Even for intense orchestra works, the DX4000 CL maintains its resolving power, allowing vocals to cut through, and could sound pretty vivid and engaging with overtones boosted on tube setups.

Testing heavy metal and bass-heavy synth tracks revealed satisfactory layering; the sub-bass provides enough rumble to feel the depth without masking the distinct bass lines.

The driver’s speed is particularly evident with high-BPM tracks, where it maintains dynamic range and texture in string overtones without fatigue.

Ultimately, the DX4000 CL suits both fast and slow tempos, blending authoritative control with satisfactory musicality.

The Pass XS Pre does its job so effortlessly and so well if it doesn’t hit you on the head with the first track you play, just take it out of your system for about 90 sec. It’s like someone put the valet key in your Dodge Challenger Hellcat and the horsepower is gone. This is one of the purest hifi experiences I’ve had in over 15 years of reviewing components. Long term, I have even more enthusiasm for the XS Pre – every day it convinces me how special it is.

The designers at Sennheiser have also gone to great lengths to ensure that the HD 800S is comfortable to wear. They have employed ultra-soft microfibre padding and very light composite materials to reduce weight. They have also taken into consideration that no two end-user heads are exactly the same and so they have designed earcups with dual-axis articulation which adjust to the unique structure of every end user head and result in a very comfortable fit that reduces the fatigue of having the headphones on for very long periods of time.

The HD 800S also comes with a choice of ultra-low capacitance 9.8 feet/3-meter-long cables which are impedance-matched. You get a ¼-inch/6.3mm stereo connector for use with headphone amps, DACs and A/V receivers and a balanced, 4.4mm connector for use with the newer generation, balanced output devices.

The ear cups of the HD 800S are not perfectly round. Rather the rear of the ear cup is flatter than the front side. I found this to be a distinct advantage when listening to these headphones while resting my head on the headrest of my Eames chair. The flatness of the ear cup’s back mean that they did not touch the headrest of the chair, making it a lot more comfortable, listening to these headphones in this seated, leaning back position.

For the audition, I plugged the HD 800S into my Bryston BP19 preamp connected to my Calyx Femto DAC, fed by the ROON Nucleus Plus server which manages my library of over quarter of a million digital tracks, most of them in high resolution formats. The ROON software is very intuitive and allows me to store, organize and access my library in a more convenient manner than another other audio playback software I have tried. Also, the up-sampling engine on the Nucleus Plus is the best that I have encountered to date.