My point is they made some widely publicized missteps with the design of the HD800. The hd800S is just an update of an existing production level model. Prior to the HD800's release the last high end headphone Sennheiser released was the HD650 in 2004, I believe. That's 5+ years between model launches. Way too long. And when the HD800 came out it was universally criticized by engineers and consumers alike. The problem with the headphones spurred the more technically minded folks in the headphone community to experiment with various mods to tame the wild cavernous treble and loose bass resonances. Things you would have thought would have been addressed during those 5 years of R&D. Once these mods were formalized people felt more confident buying them. Semn then, after muuuuuch delay finally fixed the HD800 with the release of the "S" version. They could have simply absorbed these production and design changes into the current HD800 model like they did with the driver tuning and driver mesh improvements of the HD650, that btw reduced the infamous veil in the 650. But cheers if you're happy with your 800S.

Sennheiser has introduced nothing new between $500-1000 in 13 years besides the aforementioned HD700 which was a spectacular dud of insignificance. Sony, Focal, and Audeze all have superior headphones in this price bracket.