Wmcmanus

Ken, have you listened to the HE90 or HE60 at any of the meets you've attended? If so, if only by vague memory, how did you think they did/would compare to the HD800?

At times like this, you've got to stand up as a man and defend your rights to freedom of speech, listening, and thought.

Well put.

For you, Doug, any response is possible! If I could have listed 100 Senn headphones, I would have, just for you -- because I know you've tried nearly every one of them!

Lots of headphones become "meh" after you've put them through their paces. Most often, for me anyway, it's the ones that don't call undue attention to themselves in any way. The HP-2, for example. About as neutral and neutral can be and great for studio monitoring, but where is the spunk I'm looking for? Same with the K701. At first, I thought it had all sorts of promise but now it leaves me feeling bland. HD600 for that matter. Maybe that's what is happening with the HD800. Too technical and not musical enough? Lacking in character, as in no coloration, nothing that grabs you on an emotional level and makes you want to listen for hours on end? The HE5's have this fail potential as well.

Another fine thread starting with the versatile word "Fucking"; nicely paired in this case with the word snow. I agree. I hate snow except for light and crunchy Colorado snow in the thin mountain air with a warm afternoon sun beating down on me, fooling me for maybe an hour or two that it's not as cold as the thermometer suggests it is, while I'm busy checking out a trail that looked totally different in the summer. But otherwise, ya, I hate fucking snow.

Again, no love for the 800? I find them to be leagues better, or at least leagues different, than the 650 or 600. In many ways (to my ears), they're not even recognizable as being produced by the same company.

It seems that rationality has returned on the HD800 thing. When they first came out, everyone loved them and they were universally praised. Even the few folks who weren't convinced didn't seem to post any strong negative impressions. Maybe they were afraid to saying anything for fear of mob retaliation? The list now grows in the HD800 "don't get it" or "don't like it" camp: aerius, Duggeh, Dusty. This might be the same sort of thing that happened with the Qualia 010, except there it seemed apparent from day one that it would forever be a love or hate headphone, without much in between. I wonder if that will be the way the HD800 is perceived (on a wider scale) in years to come? Not that it really matters, I just find this sort of thing interesting.

Actually, you and I agree on pretty much everything as far as headphones go and always have. As I mentioned, there are pros and cons in the HE90 versus HD800 comparison (for me) but I'm also a fan of the HE90 coloration and it is noticeably more moving than the HD800. My guess is that I'd also have a hard time deciding between the HD800 and HE60 if I had them side by side. I didn't like the HE60 as much as the HE90 but much preferred them over the O2 when I heard them all in the same room. I prefer the HD800 over the O2 as well (sorry Doug), although the O2's are excellent in many ways. It's funny how different people react. They're all top notch headphones in my mind but from any given "Top 10 headphones of all time" list that any one of us might put together, nearly everyone else who reads that list would almost want to puke at at least one such selection.

I like thread titles that start with "Fucking..." both here and at other sites I frequent. This one has been a particularly interesting read. I've never really used my Mac as a source, although I have Matt and Jeff and a number of other DanJam vets to thank for loads of music now resident on my laptop. I should check out this Amarra business.

Afraid it's going to get damaged and you'll have an expensive items on your hands that you can't find replacements parts for and nobody can repair?

If only I were a moderator, I'd move your vote from "Don't piss off Vicki" to HE60.

Most amazing! Well, not really, but based on your own ears you've managed to buck the system that would have guided you differently. Makes me want to spend more time (beyond the quick meet opportunities) with the HE60. Do you have other stats as well?

Wow! Thanks for that, and thankfully not a reaction I've ever had with them. Thanks also, for the Vicki vote, given what I'm really trying to poll here.

I think you should vote then. What I'm interested in is whether there are many folks out there who have heard the HD800 and either the HE90 or HE60 and prefer the HD800. What I'd prefer to avoid is a vote for the HD800 from someone who hasn't heard either of the stats, and is just speculating that the HD800 must be better (because its so filled with goodness that it can't possibly be bested). This way, your vote can be interpreted as a nod for the HE90/HE60 team. It still represents a win over the HD800-led team of dynamics. In any case, my guess is that you would also prefer the HE90 over the HD800 for much the same reasons as you prefer the HE60.

Funny post! I hear what you're saying. You can only buy so many cheap T-shirts at the Dells. But it seems to me that the way she did it wouldn't require her ever-presence on the job. It wasn't like a lapping or kiting scheme where you had to continually cover your tracks. You just send out large sums of money every so often to settle up monstrous invoices that you've racked up at bridal boutiques and such. So I'm sure she had plenty of time to travel and live it up. What gets me is the fact that nobody at her workplace seemed to notice that she was wearing new designer clothes every day of the week (presumably). She was probably surrounded by men who don't know the first thing about women's clothing and never once looked at her feet (and thus wouldn't see the constant parade of new shoes).

What I'm most interested in is how people think the HD800 stacks up against the likes of the HE90/HE60 (depending on what you have the most experience with). This is why I started the poll here. I figured the results would get less noise pollution than at HF where many people would vote for either the HE90 or HD800 without having heard both (based on whatever it is that makes them do such things).

Inspired by this thread: The Best Senn Below the HD800 - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio and what started out as an intentionally silly response on my part: http://www.head-fi.org/forums/6266249-post84.html, I'm now putting my theory to the test! As I mentioned in that post, I'd pick the HE90 over the HD800 if I could only keep one pair of Senns, but both are world class headphones IMO. I'd place the HE60 third, I think, but I haven't had enough time with them to know exactly how they might compare. Yet, they're probably close enough to the HE90 that they might edge out the HD800 as well, for the same sorts of reasons I suggested in the linked post above. I prefer the HD650 over the HD600 almost always, and especially when I've heard balanced HD650's at meets (really impressive with the SDS-XLR, for instance).

Oh ya, baby... I like it when you lick my... Wait a minute! Where was I again?

Nice response, Vicki. I hadn't read it before making my last post. I'll be curious to learn whether all of the clothes were in her size or if she was busy buying up all sorts of sizes (presumably as "gifts" to her family and friends, but in reality as inventory for her own store). But perhaps I'm focusing too much on cash, because that's the last thing she would ever need so long as she had an endless checkbook at Koss. About the addictive behavior, I guess she loves designer clothes as much as some of us love high end headphones. Too bad she couldn't just chill out with a pair of KSC-75's every now and then and let all of her wants and needs float away.

Have you considered the possibility that she was thinking about opening her own boutique somewhere? Turning some of her ill gotten gains into hard and fast cash? Notice that she was spending money like crazy but the reports don't say anything about how much (if any) of the embezzled funds were still held in cash by her. My guess is that her bag of tricks did not include any forms of direct payments to herself or accounts held in her name. She figured she could get away with everything so long as all transactions looked like legit payments (to whichever dipshits in Koss who were rubber stamping their names as the second signature). So getting the money out of Koss was no problem, but it went directly to vendors and thus went to her as goods and services, not as cash. My guess is that she had side operations going to convert the stuff she was buying back into cash for her eventual retirement home(s). To be in the position she was in, she would have to be a highly qualified and intelligent person, not to mention a real charmer as well. She misused her position of trust for a ridiculous level of personal gain, way beyond comfort needs and such. No, she's not like the bus driver who takes coins into his hand and slips some of them into his pocket to help pay for his sick child's hospital care because his company refuses to provide adequate medical coverage. She's a white collar criminal who deserves to rot in a filthy jail.

Interesting. I've got a Kindle and quite like it. I've been using it more than I thought I would at home. I knew that I would use it when traveling and that's where it's really great, but I've found that one book leads to another when you have an inventory of them stored. Not so true with real books. It's much easier then to put one book down and not pick up the next one for a while. About the Slashdot report: I wonder if perhaps the Kindle just happened to make the perfect Christmas gift this year? It has now been around for long enough for nearly everyone who likes buying "special" and "trendy" gifts to know that it exists because everyone has a friend or two who swears by it. It is likewise priced just about right for conspicuous consumption without going completely overboard. So it was the perfect gift for urbanites this year, and Amazon helped their own cause by pimping it endlessly. Every time you logged on, you had to look at a Kindle in a pretty bow and read about how it was their #1 best selling gift of the season. That would drive anyone who was trying to keep up with the Joneses completely mad until they added it their shopping cart! My guess is that it will settle down a bit now that Christmas is over, and that "normal" books will outsell ebooks again for a while. But there is no stopping the overall trend. Soon nearly everyone who has a cell phone will have an ereader, until they come out with an all-in-one device that adds an ereader feature to some other multi-function gadget.

Major egg on the face of Grant Thornton, the auditing firm. My guess is that there has been a long standing relationship between them and Koss, and the audit program was extremely predictable and thus easy to elude. There is now a mandatory 5 year limit for the partner in charge on any given engagement, then they need to rotate partners. No doubt they did this, but GT is not exactly a huge accounting firm and Milwaukee isn't a huge market either so no matter what they might do there would still be a high level of familiarity. Plus (assuming that it was a long standing audit relationship), no doubt the Koss business was a cash cow for GT in much the same way as Enron was for Arthur Andersen (albeit on a smaller scale). Familiarity breeds contempt. They need to realize that when you least expect fraud is when you really need to expect it. This sort of thing is always a huge embarrassment on the accounting profession. It's frustrating to me that public accounting firms still seem to do everything in their power to mould their junior staff members into little efficiency machines and never allow them the luxury of the time that it often takes to actually think (as opposed to ticking and totaling). Their entire orientation is on completing the audit program within tight time budgets to maintain profitability. Makes me sick that they make machines out of fully capable people who are probably more aware of what audit risk and business risk means after taking their first auditing course than they are after "serving" a two year sentence in public accounting. Sometimes "experience" beats the sense out of people.

Happy birthday, Ken. Hope you have a blast in Vegas!

Not having heard them yet, I can honestly say they're the best sounding $1k I've ever flushed down the toilet.