Final D8000 Pro DC | Open-Back Planar Magnetic Headphones

I have two certified personal favorite headphones, one dynamic, one planar. This is the planar.

It is a masterwork of of transparency, nuance, richness, harmony, space, Iimpact and timing. The D8000 DC Prom builds on all the virtues of my previous favorite planar, the non-DC version. Thankfully, it maintains the infinitely extended, deeply detailed, and almost ethereal highs, which are asserted and celebrated without the barest hint of anything piercing or unbalanced.

I needn't go on much. I will say that I have compared both versions to both versions of the Susvara, and while the latter, especially the Unveiled version, has a liquid, pellucid glow to the midrange, the latter being much more midrange-centric than the OG, yielding one of several qualities which, contrary to many reviewers, I find make the two models quite different.

But all my guests chose the Final as the more communicative and beguiling, the headphone which made them sigh and get lost in the music. It is 99% of the way to the matching the supposed detail king, the OG Susvara (the Unveiled's "detail" is a strange matter, which maybe I'll write about elsewhere). But it captures the bloom (sorry, Bloom Audio guys) of the music, the barest, but meaningful, little breaths and dynamic shifts.

It seems to bring TIME alive in the music; not only does it handle a groove or heavy rock and hip-hop transients like a champ, but it has this "ethereal" quality which has something to do with the harmonic spectra of high tones being extremely well resolved and available to the ear as a passing atmosphere, even while new massed sounds and beats are being played; nothing is silenced until it is gone. Musical moments, and the barest musical elements, are given their time to say their piece, without any confusion of voices.

The Final D8000 DC Pro sounds really musical even on most bad recordings, but how it does so while being both harmonically rich and extended, but prodigiously resolving. Analytical yet ...not forgiving, exactly, but able to present disparate music in the music's own light. It is immersive, it is suitable for the most analytical and critical listening, and it conveys beauty and ineffable emotion as well almost any headphone available, IMOheard.

The Unveiled is so....saturated, is the word.... in its harmonic aliveness that it seems to combine a romantic euphony with strikingly revealing resolution. Resolution, that is, of everything except time and pace. Those two trivial criteria are so oddly handled that I find it, although beguiling,, incapable of sounding like it understands anything with pace, hard -rock/fusion transients and macrodynamics. I love chamber music and acoustic jazz, and some orchestral music. Solo acoustic guitar, piano, strings, and lute. The Unveiled shines on that sort of acoustic music. And I simply cannot use it to listen to progressive rock or the busier jazz tunes with more than six members. Images are quite clear and stable, well-defined; but unnaturally large, a violin and a piano seeming to occupy, physically, the same space. On excellent recordings, with small ensembles, it can paint a beautifully convincing image, at the highest level. But push it much, space-time seems to get swirly, images morph while remaining supremely audible. And even where it shines, it often seems like music from a planet where familiar instruments are bathed in a clarifying golden light, textural details all audible, except for the little dynamic surge in transients and groove such as with a funky bass guitar which makes some headphones (including the Final) convey a sense of agility, unflappability, doing justice to the movement of and intent in behind the music. The Unveiled is not good at that part; it is a quirky headphone. The Final gets it all right, and on my top-level Holo stack Chord TT2, and Woo WA5-LE, it is more than capable of making both beauty and truth out of anything I throw at it.

My favorite planar.