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Sennheiser’s HD800 are one of if not the best dynamic headphones at least from amongst those I know. In their case I thus far could only try to improve the signal transmission between amplifier and transducer without changing any core characteristics. After all, it was only two meters of wire, wasn’t it? Yet the  Konstantin Entreq 2010 was the first cable to change their sound in a dramatic way and clearly positive direction that fit perfectly with my idea of what these headphones ought to sound like.

Swapping the stock cable for the Entreq I got a much more energetic sound. That should be the first thing to quickly strike the ear. It’s like changing a pair of fine but slightly boring loudspeakers for my Harbeths. The improvement was vast and literally felt bodily. With headphones we do not have the effect of air pressure affecting our whole body but we can get a similar impression as though our brain remembered our loudspeakers and repeated, albeit on a smaller scale, that experience saved to our bio hard drive. This was best heard on David Sylvian’s from Sleepwalkers. Here it is one of the determinants of overall system quality. There was power, fullness and saturation. That’s important with this album where the vocals were mic'd very close to be very prominent. For these tracks to make sense that must be delivered. With the stock cable it sounded very good. I thought. No complains. Until I heard how it could really sound.

And all this came without any brightening. Brightening really ticks me off. It gets on my nerves more than anything else. The Swedish cable was much cleaner than the stock cable in the way a good amp shows lower distortion, less noise to translate into the kind of sound that can be described as warm. And so it was in this case. The top seemed to be sweeter, the bottom deeper. The midrange was warmer and had more mass. Differentiation had improved significantly. Where very low and high sounds superimposed as they do with electronica, the Entreq showed that difference more convincingly. It better isolated and described their sounds. Everything gained weight, cymbals as well as guitars as on Joe Pass’s For Django album.


This was definitely a better cable, a couple of meters better than the stock cable. As such it was the first aftermarket harness that delivered. Perhaps I’m a bit spoiled with my Harbeths M40.1 but I do go for their type of sound wherever possible – energetic, saturated, differentiated, with deep bass. The Entreq Konstantin 2010 gave me all that in one go.