Sennheiser IE 800 Premium In-Ear Headphones (Black)

When you use one driver, you get a cohesion and a crispness that you just can’t achieve when you’re trying to coordinate 4 or 12 drivers; and when you use a dynamic driver you get a natural sound that is difficult to create with balanced armature drivers. That’s the story of the ie800.

First, this review is for serial number 32xxx (since Sennheiser is known to make tweaks over time to their products).

1. It has a detailed and crisp/fast sound. This driver is just excellent. It sounds like a top of the line over the ear headphone. You can’t get this sound with multiple drivers; you would have to match and time the drivers with a precision that’s practically impossible. I’ve heard every TOTL iem out there and this out-details all of them. I’m guessing the Shure KSE1500 will be as good or better than this, because that too uses a single driver (and an electrostatic at that), but that’s going to cost $3,000 and require its own dedicated amp!

2. This produces a natural sound. BA drivers have a slightly synthetic and kind of weird sound when compared to dynamic drivers. If you like the dynamic driver sound, you’ll like these.

3. These produce bass, mids, highs, and everything in between. Other iem manufacturers have to use multiple drivers and engineering tricks to get all the frequencies, and it never comes out perfect. There are always spikes and valleys, and a lot of them have treble roll-off, because they have to make compromises when tuning the drivers, cross-overs, resistors etc. But Sennheiser didn’t seem to compromise at all; they nailed it with this driver (which, by the way, is made by Sennheiser as opposed to most other iem makers, who buy their drivers from third-parties like Knowles).

4. It has a neutral sound signature. DO NOT TRUST the frequency charts on innerfidelity. Something is wrong with Tyll’s measurement of the ie800. They do not sound anything like the frequency chart on his website. His chart shows a bass boost, followed by a massive 20db roll-off above 1000hz, suggesting this is warm headphone with very weak mids and highs. But in reality, the ie800 sounds flat across the frequency range and its bass is like the hd800’s; it has the hd800’s neutral and dry-ish sound.

5. Many other reviewers complained about microphonics with these, and I have to believe them because I saw this complaint in so many reviews. I don’t know if Sennheiser fixed the problem in the latest batches? I can’t get the cable to make much microphonic sound. There’s a tiny bit of easily-ignorable cable noise if you tap it, but all iems have that. And you can get rid of that by wearing them up with the cable hooked over your ears, in which case I hear zero cable noise even when exercising.

6. You’ll need to experiment with tips and position to get the best sound. I can’t fully angle them into my ears when wearing them down, so I wear them up and hook the cable over my ears. That produced a noticeable improvement in sound for me.

7. There are tons of fake ie800s out there. Get yours from an authorized dealer. Checking the hologram on Sennheiser’s authentication website is a first step — but it’s not enough. That’s because counterfeitors have even faked the hologram sticker ( […])!!! So the only way to be sure is to call Sennheiser, give them the serial number, and ask them when they sold your particular ie800 and which retailer they sold it to (when I did this, they said they sold my ie800 to Amazon three weeks before I purchased it from Amazon, which all makes perfect sense.) I could have gotten mine for $650 from an unauthorized seller on Amazon (“sold by xxx and fulfilled by Amazon”), but I paid $800 to get it directly from Amazon because the cheaper ones are probably fakes. Not to mention that you won’t get warranty coverage from Sennheiser.

8. These sound particularly good when paired with a great dac/amp; and they really distinguish themselves at higher volumes.

Every top of the line IEM has its positives and negatives.
• The Roxannes sound warm, gooey, fun and they produce a great 3D image, but they’re colored-sounding as opposed to neutral, and they’re not quite as detailed as other TOTL iems causing them to sound “veiled” to some.
• The Laylas are a more neutral and more detailed version of the Roxanne, but they’re bulky, super expensive, they lose the Roxanne’s interesting sound, and they’re still not as precise as the ie800.
• The Shure SE846 sounds fun, and it’s highly resolving, but it has a notorious spike in the lower treble region that can sometimes be annoying.
• The Noble K10 is very good but it really can’t distinguish itself from the pack in any way.
• The ie800 has a clean, detailed and crisp sound, but it’s perhaps a little sterile sounding, it doesn’t isolate as well as the others and its treble may be tiring after a while.

So it all depends on your tastes. I personally alternate between the ie800s and the Roxannes. But at $800, the I think the ie800 is the best value in the TOTL iem field.

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ADDENDUM AFTER TWO WEEKS OF USE — Why I returned them even though I like them: For the first ten days, the tips stayed on tight. But then the left tip started to come off in my ear, forcing me to use tweezers or pinky nail to get it out. Note this only happens if you insert them completely into your ears, something you can only do if you wear them upside down. Do you know why I wear them that way? Because that gives you the best sound. If you don’t insert them deep, you will miss a TON of the clarity/detail/imaging etc .

So any way, I inspected the tip and noticed that there are four hooks that keep it on the IEM. On the problematic tip, one of the hooks had degraded over these ten days, and that’s why it kept falling off and staying in my ear. But if you look at the picture I uploaded, you’ll see that these hooks are poorly designed. They’re only 1/2 of a millimeter long (a deeper hook would cling better), made of silicone (a harder substance would cling better).

If you check the internet, this is a common complaint about the ie800. I don’t understand Sennheiser. It would be so easy to engineer a tip that stays on. Just make the hook like 1/2 mm longer or harder!!! So although I really like their sound, I will have to return these to Amazon for a full refund. Super annoyed about it too.

SECOND ADDENDUM — I purchased them again. I’ll switch to a smaller tip (will lose a little isolation that way) so hopefully that’ll help.

So the new ones came and they sounded off. They sounded kind of muddy and not as clear as I remembered in the first one. I thought it was my imagination but then I put on the Roxanne iems and the Roxannes sounded super crystal-clear. But the Roxanne is kind of a muddy headphone in the top-of-the-line category. And the old Ie 800 sounded clearer than the Roxanne so something seemed wrong. I contacted Sennheiser and they said that the iem800 with this serial number (334xx) was sold in Hong Kong in August 2013 and they cannot tell me anything more about it . I can only speculate on what happened. It could be that this is authentic and the ie800s made in 2013 just sounded different than the ones made now. Or it could be that this is a counterfeit although I do not know how it got into Amazon’s stock. But even if it is authentic , I don’t understand why Amazon is selling a headphone that was manufactured well over 2 1/2 years ago. Anyway this is going back and I guess I’ll have to buy my next one directly from Sennheiser.

THIRD EDIT — My set from Sennheiser came and they sound good. One thing I’d like to add is that these are sensitive to the dac/amp you use. They sound just OK with some, great with others. After trying it with a bunch of my portable amp/dacs, they pair exceptionally well with the Centrance dacport slim (from Massdrop for $100). Ironically the hifimediy 9018, the one I use with Roxannes, doesn’t go that great with these (it’s good though). They do best with my big desktop dac/amp but can’t carry that around.

I thought of purchasing them ,but when i saw price on the app ,i felt like buying these headphones would leave me without food and a roof for about 4.5 months i googled and checked whether i can sustain it,no….i gave up the thought.

Price is wrong.

No hay muchas formas fáciles de escribir una reseña sobre un artículo de este precio, ya que ustedes pueden encontrar muchas otras reseñas por páginas y publicaciones profesionales que entran a mucho más detalle del que uno puede proveer aquí mismo.

El problema de los artículos caros es que usualmente la “rule of diminishing returns” (regla de los rendimientos decrecientes) entra con toda fuerza y mucha gente jamás consideraría pagar casí 15,000 pesos en unos meros audífonos.

Lo que yo les puedo decir en pocas palabras es que estos audífonos son el mejor sonido que jamás haya escuchado de cualquier par de bocinas, audífonos o sistemas de sonido. La claridad es impresionante y naturalmente hay cero distorción inclusive a altos volúmenes. Estos audífonos no son difíciles de amplificar, así que siempre y cuando tengan un buen reproductor de música o celular podrán notar una exquisita cantidad de detalles en su música.

Ahora, uno de los problemas con este tipo de audífonos es que sus canciones deben estar en un formato “lossless” para poder apreciar el detalle que ofrecen: si los usan escuchando música descargada de Google Music, Spotify o iTunes se escucharán bastante bien, pero esos formatos en MP3 tienden a estar muy comprimidos y se pierde muchísimo detalle en las canciones y el rango dinámico simplemente no es lo mismo.

En pocas palabras, estos audífonos son como una comida cara en un restaurante de tres estrellas: casi nadie podrá tenerlos en toda su vida, y la experiencia definitivamente no es 100 veces mejor que una comida en la fondita de toña Toña como el precio lo sugiere, pero si tienen los medios de probarlo será una de las mejores experiencias que jamás tendrán en su vida en ese aspecto. Los recomiendo ampliamente a todos los amantes de la música.

I was looking for an earphone and then I came across this piece. I wanted to order it immediately but fell short of funds. My kidney went off in just 20k. Can I get a loan somewhere?
I’m wondering if my ears are really worth it.
Its just like your ass is worth a penny and you’re wearing a golden underwear to cover it.