Even at the absurd pricepoint of $1400 these headphones manage to be worth it to people who want the very best sounding headphone setup. Besides that the headphones are the best sounding set of headphones I have heard to date, by far. Everything else pales in comparison and even though the finish is a bit iffy, I would love to keep these around the den, much to my other headphones' disappointment since no one in their right mind would ever want to take these things off. Sennheiser managed the cruel balancing act of making an interesting sounding headphone that is very neutral. This is achieved by a near perfect performance whether you are talking attack, tonality or timbre. What really surprises me is that you can get near perfect all around performance in one set of headphones. This is probably why I would dare call these good value for the interested audiophile, you get the best or close to of everything and what really excites me is that their revealing nature makes them scale very well. I am positive that every minute upgrade in the signal chain will provide an audible difference and therefore these should be on the short list of any audiophile with a special interest in headphones.
Would I trade in all my headphones for a set of HD800s? Probably not, because they are big and unhandy for on the move listening, however, if I had the money I would jump through hoops to get these.