Sennheiser is well known for producing some of the best headphones out there, but did you know it also designs and manufactures electronics designed to extract even greater performance from its premium audiophile headphones?
One of our favourites, despite being awarded four stars, is the Sennheiser HDV 820. It's a headphone-amp-cum-desktop-DAC, which is currently discounted down to £1499 at Richer Sounds. That's a generous £600 discount on its original price.
As much as Sennheiser would love you to pair the HDV 820 with its own brand headphones, in reality, you can use any brand's cans (or in-ears) to amplify your sound. Get it all now for just under £1500.
In our four-star Sennheiser HDV 820 review, we used the amp with both the company’s HD800S headphones and the Beyerdynamic T1, a long-time favourite of ours. And our verdict?
“Regardless of headphones, the results are good. The Sennheiser has a crisp, precise delivery that sounds wonderfully refined,” is what we say in the review.
We are fans of the amp’s ability to “organise and interweave different musical strands to form a cohesive whole,” and “its pleasing dose of outright scale”. Adding to this, we say “large dynamic shifts are delivered with composure”.
It doesn’t quite have the bite or attack of the very best at the money, but it’s still a smooth and sophisticated performer – great if you like a huge dose of refinement from your headphone amp/DAC.
The Sennheiser ticks plenty of boxes in terms of connectivity. Unusually, there’s a traditional 6.3mm jack integrated into the three-pin XLR socket on the front of the unit.
You also get a four-pin XLR and a pair of 4.4mm Pentaconn jacks on the front, both of which allow a balanced connection to suitable headphones.
Another string to the HDV 820’s bow is that it can also act as a preamplifier thanks to the presence of both single-ended and balanced analogue inputs and outputs, plus a separate gain-adjustment to fine-tune the output for your power amp or active speakers.
The DAC functionality comes via a trio of USB, coaxial and optical digital inputs, with resolution limits of DSD256 and 32-bit/384kHz for PCM music files.
Add solid build quality and a great user experience to the mix, and you have a versatile amp with plenty going for it, not least a £600 discount over at Richer Sounds.
MORE:
Read our full Sennheiser HDV 820 review
Our pick of the best headphone amplifiers you can buy
And the best audiophile headphones we have tested
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
