I bent the headband back towards my ears so the front of the earpads make less contact with my head (with pads in stock position).
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Ive had 3 different version and they all were problematic for me. It is a preference thing. I donāt mind a treble boost, but the 400i has a narrow band peak between 7 and 9 K, regardless of the model. It was just a no for me. Way too distracting to the rest of the signature.
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Thatās pretty much how I wear the 1266, find a comfortable pad position them toe then out just enough to break the seal, of course on the 1266 you donāt have to bend anything.
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Aaah I see. I guess I compare them to the ATH-MSR7b which are way more v shaped - their treble can be painful on some tracks - more so than the DT 880 Iāve just got. Which I should also have mentioned. Iām liking them for pretty much anything at the moment but classic metal has been a stand out on them.
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The DT880 600 ohm I had no problem with at all. The 250 ohm though was a different story.
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I second this. HP-2 is a fun metal set. Fun dynamics and slam with natural timbre and good tonal balance. For more bass quantity the Gjallarhorns also do an admirable job with metal.
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I know this isnt super helpful given how hard it is to find, but I am fully convinced that a current drive amp would put these up at the top of Tier 2 if not into your Tier 1 for metal. It gives them a very solid bass boost and increases impact as well all while giving actual stage dynamics and maintaining the crazy levels of precision and texture the 800S is capable of. Truly a very very sweet combo.
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Examples of current drive amps that do this to a 800s like one for each price point if possible? under a 1000$ - under 2000$ etc?
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There are super few current drive amps ever made and even fewer that run headphones without crazy noise floors. Your best bets are to keep an eye on the used market for
- Bakoon HPA-21
- Bakoon HPA-01
- Bakoon HPA-01M
All there of these come up so seldomly they are kinda all over the place price wise. You can pretty well guarantee the 01 and 01M are sub 1k and the 21 is sub 2k when they do pop up, but they can be all over 5he place under those numbers. I paid $650 for my 01M and $1700 for my 21 but know someone else who paid 1k for their 01M and only 1200 for their 21 just because they happened to fine one (that i missedā¦) that had been listed for like 3 years and the dude didnāt care what he got for it.
Note: the bakoon amp-13R and new enleum 23R are not current drive.
New/imported from Japan you have the releaf stuff (e1re, e3, and e5) but those are either skirting up against or over your price range. I also havenāt heard them to vouche specifically myself but I own the bakoon 21 and 01m and can happily vouche for those. We have a current drive discussion thread in the source gear forum as well if you have more specific questions.
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So I recently got a Bakoon HPA-01M and got to listen to it for a fair amount of time with my HD800S out of the current drive and I must say, itās not my thing.
Iāve listened to a few artits but those are the ones that I know best and 9/10 times I prefer my Pathos Aurium to the Bakoon with metal. (also will throw in a couple of comparisons with the Feliks Echo)
Starting from the bass and lower frequency region, it gets this boost which is nice, but it also gains some sort of veil and sounds kinda hazy? I donāt really know how to describe it. The drums are not slow, they donāt get muddy. The guitars (albeit to different degrees, depends on the artist) are grittier, but, on some albums, it just soundsā¦overwhelming, itās not that itās not controlled, itās like there is a filter on it that just makes everything sound kinda blurry? Congested even? Claustrophobic? All of the above? Again, donāt really know how to put it to words since itās pretty peculiar, but I hope I made at least some sense.
The upper frequencies I would describe them as not consistant. On some albums, they are a bit smoothed over, almost pushed back, on others the difference is so small (compared to the Pathos) that it doesnāt really bothers me, it could may as well be that on particular albums the bass is āāāoverpoweringā"" the other frequencies. Generally though, the highs seem to be a bit more subdued compared to the Pathos.
For technicalities, going off from memory itās better than my Feliks Echo, but worse than my Pathos Aurium. The Pathos has just better separation, speed, and detail retrival.
Against the Feliks the Bakoon is more detailed I feel, although it may not be so evident because of the smoothed out highs and the thing going on with the lower frequencies.
There is something going on with the Bakoon that just makes the highs sound sometimes almost on the darker, more subdued side of things, more polite if one wants to put it that way.
If I had to visualize the presence of bass, mids and highs of the Pathos VS the Bakoon I would describe the Pathos as a square: everything sounds balanced to me and I am satisfied in how it perfmors, while the Bakoon is almost like a trapezoid: you get this big presence of the lower region (which actually works well for like Jazz or some more traditional acoustic stuff), the mids are mostly unaltered and the highs just sound pushed back a little on some albums and are not as present as the bass, really depends on the source material. It does seem like that with some worse sounding albums, because the mastering isnāt great from the beginning, the Bakoon itās just accentuating those flaws, maybe itās just more of a revealing amp and what I am hearing would explain that. On things that I consider better mastered the bass is not that overpowering and the highs still sound acceptable at the very least, itās just that I think the Pathos is more balanced and does a better job.
I donāt really know how to write a review or anything, those are just my thoughts on it, although itās more of a stream of consciousness really. I still have a lot to learn.
I think I am more in the minority since I could see a lot of people like this amp overall. I listened briefly to some Colin Stetson and I think it sounded not just good, but GREAT and I had a pretty good time listening to it, but with metal (for me at least) more often than not I just go back to the Pathos. It really does seem like itās heavily dependant on which genre one listens to. Still, I could see someone who listens to metal wanting more oomph and more bass presence in itās HD800S and finding exactly what he was looking for with the current out of the Bakoon, itās just not what for me.
I didnāt want to sound too overly critical of the Bakoon, donāt get me wrong, itās a great amp, itās just that the current out is not for me on HD800S. I actually liked quite a bit with my KPH30i and my Reecho and Peacock Spring. Because I mainly listen to metal I am going to judge the Bakoon based off of my impression with that specific genre of music, but I can see it being a better match than my Pathos if you have different tastes/listen to different music.
Oh and one more thing, with the voltage out things get better and I think it sounds better under every aspect compared the Echo and gets closer to the Pathos, but still I prefer the latter and since I got the Pathos for basically the same price as the Bakoon, Iām keepeing it and selling the Bakoon.
Overall it was a good experience, it got me a taste of what current drive can do and even if I didnāt like it now I know that current may not be my thing, and that I should just stick to tubes. Although, in the future, if I get the occasion to try a HPA-21, I would like to try how a fully desktop amp with current out performs as opposed to a portable one like the Bakoon. I still have a long way ahead of me and need to learn more.
I have no idea of how long this will be, uni exams are in 2 weeks and between it, attending classes in uni, having slept like barely 3 hours and everything else I am pretty tired at the moment, so apologies for grammatical errors and sentences that are not that well written, also this might just sound like a incoherent rambling, but I just wanted to share my thoughts in this pretty interesting amp.
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This was really informative and was well written. 
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Called it.
And yah, current drive on hd800s is such a wild change it takes some real adjustment. The bakoon certainly isnt the most technical amp, it realy has this magic to it thats quite hard to descibe. The HPA-21 has the same magic. Now onto the important question here. Are you going to be the first one outside or M0N to hunt down a releaf now? 
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Well, I would like to find first a HPA-21, but one of my dadās colleague will be working in Japan for a couple of years, soā¦yeah, time to save up I guess lol.
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Not a huge metal fan but I can imagine the ZMF Verite (probably both open and close) can do quite well for fast dynamics and punch and slam. So would the LCD-5 but will require EQ for sure.
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This is the first time i am reading someone else other than myself saying this, fully agree.
I have once started a thread in the Oratory1990 reddit about bass boosting headphones and at one point he asked my if i had ever listened to live music because live instruments are not that bass heavy. Well there is live music and there is live music, a live orchestra will sound different than a live rock band. Man, my first concert was a Metallica + Sepultura back in Brazil when i was 14 years old, i have attended to easily more than 100 rock concerts and they all had absurd amounts of bass (Megadeth, Dream Theater, Slayer, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Linkin Park, Stone Temple Pilots, you name it). In some of those the bass was so loud i could feel my throat vibrating, usually i can only feel the bass on my chest.
This is why i donāt agree with the āthe way the artist want it to soundā, all of those artists present a very different sound live than on CD, i donāt think they disapprove the bass boost on their concerts otherwise they would ask the sound engineer to change it. IMHO it is more of a mood thing, if i want to pay attention to every single detail in a track i disable my EQ which always includes a small bass boost, but mostly i have my EQ on because it is a more fun experience.
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Unless somebody was there in the studio listening for themself, how would they even know it is what the artist intended? Totally agree and that statement is one of the ones in the hobby I hate the most. It is ignorance at a very high level.
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I couldnāt tell you what the tonal balance of most of the Heavy Rock/Metal bands Iāve seen live are they were mostly just insanely loud, sure there was a lot of Bass, but there was a lot of everything. But TBH Iāve never really been trying to reproduce a live metal concert with Hifi, if I was Iād be deaf by now.
But none of that really matters, you donāt have to justify how you want to listen, there is no right and wrong here.
When I got into stereo there was no such thing as a hifi sub, and I used Bookshelf speakers, so it adjusts your expectations for Bass, I donāt really listen for the visceral impact, and volume, to me itās more about texture. If you grew up with big subs in cars youāll likely have different expectations.
For example from the original post I like the Susvara for Heavy Rock and most Metal, the original post ranks it very low, that doesnāt make it or me wrong, weāre just prioritizing different parts of the presentation.
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100% agree 
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How does classic rock and metal do on the Susvara? Some classic rock recordings just have different emphasis as you mentioned. Perfect Strangers by Deep Purple and Stargazer by Rainbow both have an emphasis on guitar and vocals (and rightfully so).
I enjoy classic rock on the Susvara, definitely with my more punchier/āheavierā ampsā¦ also works really well on the Atrium which resembles the susvara a bit but punches more on the lower notes
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