by Chris Schaaf on April 18, 2012 at 2:58 pm
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Sennheiser, whose roots lie in the professional audio world, has announced the HDVD 800 digital headphone amplifier. Despite the puzzling model number, which evokes thoughts of red laser vs. blue laser, this looks like a pretty sweet piece of gear. The Germans like their products to be well-built and look good, and it looks like this offering fits both bills. It’s encased in aluminum, with a slick glass panel embedded on top so you can admire the inner workings. There’s a big knob for volume and a small rotary switch to select your input (both made of anodized aluminum). The rotary source knob is a nice throwback to amps and preamps of days gone by.
Digital sources connect to the HDVD 800 via optical or coaxial S/PDIF or USB, as well as AES/EBU. The latter piece is huge for the professional market, as any digital mixing console worth its faders has AES/EBU outputs. For the home crowd, the USB 2.0 audio standard allows 24-bit/192KHz audio. (USB support is driver-free on Mac OS X 10.5 or later; drivers are supplied for Windows XP and up.) Analog sources can connect via balanced XLR or standard RCA cables. Digital-to-analog conversion is handled by a high-quality Burr-Brown DAC. The headphone output jack is exactly as it should be on a professional device: 1/4″/6.3mm — not the 1/8″/3.5mm found on seemingly everything else in the world. A rotary gain switch on the rear allows you to adapt the amplifier output to the audio input voltage, ensuring that the full dynamic range can be utilized.
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