Basshead looking for a decent upgrade at 1k price

Headphones Headphone Discussion / Help
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What I currently own? Cascades
what i already had/sold: Vmoda m100, lp2. DT 990, DT770

What Genres am I listening to? Hip-Hop,EDM,Rock

What is my Chain? ifi Zen Dac v2 into a Topping A30 Pro

What’s my price range ? Under 1000 would be perfect but I can go up to 1500. The clears for example are 1400 and I’ve been eyeing them.

What Sound signature am I looking for ? I need basically a scarlet mini version in full size headphone. Strong impactful bass. I want to feel every kick drum. I basically want them to Vibrate on my Ear and kick my head in if possible. The cascades do that but I’m looking for something more higher quality in the other side of the frequency spectrum And also a bit more comfortable because i cant find any XL pads for them or other Pads. Also non fatiguing treble would be good because I usually listen to a long time when I listen to music.

Headphones i have been thinking about: Argon MK3, HE6SE V2 with EQ

Any suggestions ? Hope I gave enough information of what I’m looking for.

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What is the lowest bass in a song you would actually listen to? Like give me an example of a really deep slamming song that is your go to test. I have a couple of curveballs I could throw you, but the HE6se v2 is definitely an option maybe.

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Kill Jill by Big Boi featuring Killer Mike and Jeezy is a pretty good test for Bass for me.

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The Z Review headphones just started shipping. I have a pair on the way.

As for my own experience from what I currently own. ZMF Bokeh have the nicest bass I’ve heard. Could probably emphasize it even more with a pad swap. Great decay too. If you don’t mind doing EQ, any good planar will work well too. Planar are bass kings with heavy EQ because they don’t distort very easily.

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so if you had to decide would you pick up the argon mk3 or the HE6seV2 which is obviously more expensive

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Audeze, which is what I’ve owned in the past, don’t have a lot of kick out of the box. But thing is, if you EQ them with a bass shelf, they will just keep putting out more and more air without the driver giving out. The drivers are also large, so they move a ton of air as well. Most memorable experience I’ve had, audibly, was adding a ridiculous bass shelf to an Audeze LCD 2s. They were also being driven by a solid mid-tier Schiit amp as well, Midgard, I think?

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It depends on the design. Some planars have more slam than others.

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so if you had to decide would you pick up the argon mk3 or the HE6seV2 which is obviously more expensive

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I know Kill Jill is a really sub bass heavy track that goes far lower than most songs and has a lot of rumble that honestly in most scenarios dynamics can’t hold together well enough to do anything but turn to mush with the triple drop, but if more of an impact/punch oriented that doesn’t fall apart with deep sub bass rumble is your focus you might be better off going with a planar and some EQ. I don’t necessarily think you should go for the HE6se v2 if you’re looking to drive them with the A30 Pro and EQ the bass up while listening at levels that bring in head shaking rumble. You can get a lot of the same effect out of something like an Ananda Nano, but if you’re willing to kind of adjust your whole chain to cater towards a specific headphone (and I think you should get rid of the stuff now regardless of what you go with, they’re not quite relevant anymore in the current market and things have improved drastically since their releases), I have a silly recommendation.

The Mini Shangri-La with a custom pad swap from @NtraXMod is one of the punchiest headphones with some of the clearest slamming bass out there. I have been daily driving an HE6se v2 with a pad swap, grill mod, and cup/driver bracing for years now and driving them with either a Parasound A21+ or more recently a 2023 Burson Soloist 3X GT but when I had them being driven off of a Topping A90, I almost sold them and gave up. Now I have a 4 screw, 6 screw, and 3 pairs of se v2 and I still say it’s a lot easier and cheaper to get that kind of bass performance out of the new Mini Shangri-La with pads and a fat bass shelf. I know there’s some misconceptions about estats not being able to do bass well, but reviews never include pad swaps or fat bass shelves and there’s a lot more modern electrostatic headphones that can actually slam pretty hard with much faster punch than any planar that comes off as super dynamic. There’s definitely no way for the price of adjusting your system and catering to the Mini Shangs that you’re going to get that kind of bass performance and at the same time have that TOTL level of detail and separation. I know it’s a monumental overhaul to the system and the caveat of a pad swap is irritating but it’s transfomative on those headphones.

If you were to get a cheap Topping EHA5 either used or on sale that’s under $400, and you can probably get a pair of Mini Shangri-La for around or under $1000 if you talk to some dealers. Sell off that Zen DAC, they’re incapable of real punch, speed, detail, or dynamics and it’s gimping your whole system. The xBass is easy to replicate in any real EQ software and you can dial it in much better yourself.

I wouldn’t normally recommend Topping products for punch and slam, but the new Topping D50 III is one of their newer lines with their new volume control that is just vastly superior to basically any volume control out there and maintains drastically more dynamic range than literally any other volume control on the planet. That means you can leave your energizer/amp at max volume and control the volume with the D50 III and keep a lot more dynamics and on top of that all, it has built in parametric EQ that you can use to apply your EQ to any source input. It does go over the top end budget but if you sell off the gear you have now, it barely skates by and I think it’s a far more capable setup as a whole than you can get for anywhere near the price for detail, punch, impact, and maintain all that separation. The HE6se v2 will hold together better at extremely loud volumes, but you really shouldn’t be listening at the volumes that it matters (I’m guilty of it myself but I’m trying to be better about it). At normal volumes that aren’t hearing damage levels of loud, I think the Mini Shang has definitely more punch. The HE6se v2 also have a complete dog shit headband that even on very light headphones causes a hot spot on the top of your head and it’s really annoying, but the HE6se v2 are like twice the weight of the other headphones that have that headband and imo it’s an absolute requirement to swap it for an aftermarket headband.

I think if you’re going to go for punch/impact/rumble, your best bet is toss it all out and go for the Mini Shang, or go with an Ananda Nano, same pads, and still get rid of at bare minimum the Zen DAC and swap it for the D50 III and run the A30 Pro at the lowest gain setting you can at max volume to maximize dynamic range and impact. Slap a bass shelf on and walk away. I can’t stress enough that if you aren’t willing to dump serious money into an amp and also pad swap and headband swap the HE6se v2, they are not worth owning. And for what it’s worth, the Argon Mk3 are ok, but nothing all that crazy and certainly don’t have the punch of the Mini Shang, regardless of what kind of EQ you give them and they’ll never have anywhere near the detail and separation of the Mini Shang, HE6se v2, or Ananda Nano.

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I have the Focal Clear MG Pros and they EQ well if you want to add a low bass shelf, but they’re not very bassy out of the box.

I think if you really want hard hitting kick drums with rumbly sub bass you feel in your chest, you should go with a closed back.

Have you considered the Audeze Maxwell? It’s Audeze’s Bluetooth gaming headset so if you’re using a PC as your source, you’re all set with the included USB wireless dongle. You can also pair it with your phone/tablet via Bluetooth or even use 3.5mm with your existing amp. They EQ even better than the Clear and hit harder than my ZMF Atrium Closed. You can save several EQ presets so they’re pretty versatile for any genre of music or if you want to game or watch a movie. They sound very good with the stuck tuning as well and battery life is something ridiculous like 80hrs. I only have to charge mine every few weeks.

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Yeah, a Headphone + gear upgrade would probably be the way to go. Granted that I am also not the biggest fan of Topping amps either (so take that with a grain of salt). Hifiman headphones in my experience tend to pair well with Schiit Audio amps, but It all depends on your tastes in gear.

@Pokrog do you think a Jotunheim 2 paired with his current DAC, and a Ananda nano or Edition XS would work for their use case?

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The Jot 2 is ok. It’s not the punchiest or most resolving amp, but it’s decently textured and has ok technicalities. I absolutely would never ever in a million years keep the Zen DAC out of all those pieces. The thing just straight up sucks. I really do think that D50 III is the best price to performance you can get right now around that range solely because of the volume control, it’s very important and I really think people should pay attention to things like that more than they should raw SINAD numbers and other figures that tell you nothing, and using a Jot 2 to put some color in the chain wouldn’t be a bad idea or maybe a Midgard even. I know wavetheory liked the midgard/Nano combo and with the volume control of the D50 III it could be a really solid option. I don’t think I’d go for the Edition XS with the Nano existing now for as low as like $450 on sale, even if the XS is around $240 on sale lol.

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Okay the Shangri la is definitely out of my budget since I also don’t know any resellers I would like to just order off Amazon to also be able to send back if I don’t end up liking them. Thanks for giving me the info about the D50 put an order in for that already :slight_smile:

I would also upgrade my amp to an A70 Pro in the future it has all the power anyone would need.

The Ananda Nano is definitely in my budget and looks great but it’s the first time I’m hearing it mentioned in any bass head discussions can you maybe speak some more in detail about this set ? Thanks so much for your input you helped me immensely.

And yea I know the zen dac isn’t a top end product I mainly still use it for the xbass feature.

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I generally am wary of getting Bluetooth headphones. I alsways find I can’t get them loud enough especially when EQ and putting the preamp down to combat distortion.

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I EQ the Maxwell through their Windows or Android app and there aren’t any options to lower the preamp from within the app. There’s also no clipping or distortion no matter how much I boost the lower frequencies (12dB max) so I’m not sure how their DSP magic really works. I’m usually at about 50-60% volume and I think I listen to music louder than the average person.

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The Nanos with a custom set of pads can take a bass shelf really well. Hifiman has a pad seal issue with their new pads and they just wont take a big bass shelf while maintaining the weight and slam without addressing it.

I’m not completely sold on going double Topping for planars and I think you could probably get some better benefits going to something class A, but I also haven’t personally sat and compared the A70 Pro side by side with other amps I know really well, I’ve only listened to it at a friends house, but also with a pair of Nanos and I did bring my pads to swap on them and they take a bass shelf really well and they can slam surprisingly hard if you want them to. Options for a good punchy class A amp are kind of out of budget all in, but a Topping A70 Pro as a placeholder would be fine and it’s an incredibly good preamp for speakers/monitors.

Schiit Midgard or Jot 2 could be really solid as an option and maintain some musicality that running double Topping would sacrifice.

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which pads do you recommend for the nanos ? Also can you explain a little what you mean by the volume control on the D50 iii adds more dynamics ? Do you keep your Amp at max volume on low gain and then control volume on the DAC? i was always thinking its better to feed your amp with a strong signal from the Dac so i maxed out all my dacs and controled volume on my amp only

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I’m not usually big on measurements, but there is occasionally things that pop up that matter and one of them is the newer volume control that made its way into the newer measurement focused stuff, newer SMSL products, and some other fairly measurement oriented companies like Gustard’s DACs specifically, and newer Topping stuff including the D50 III, A50 III, D70 (both variants), A70 Pro, and DX9. On every single volume control ever made, you get more dynamic range the closer you are to maximum volume on that knob. Every single volume control. No exceptions. This is what gain is for, to allow you to control the maximum output power and allow you to get closer to maximum volume on your volume knob and get more dynamic range and in a roundabout way, less distortion as well. Typically you lose quite a bit of dynamic range lowering volume on most amps and DACs but some of the newer stuff I mentioned is a LOT better at retaining that dynamic range even at minimum volume so since they retain much more dynamic range, they’re better suited to be your volume control. It’s not uncommon for amplifiers to have somewhere around 70-90db of dynamic range at their listening volume at somewhere around half on the dial, while these newer amps and DACs with the newer volume control can maintain around 115db of dynamic range at their LOWEST setting and if you take 115-70, you get 45db of lost dynamic range in that ratio, and that’s something like 30,000x the range in dynamics because of the logarithmic scale. Obviously we aren’t getting that kind of range and it does seem silly to care since music doesn’t have that kind of range anyways, but it does show up in things like dynamic swings and slam and it is a relative ratio of the input signal, so while we might not have that amount of dynamic range, we are using the range as a multiplier of the overall signal and it does matter. So in a perfect world, you want your DAC and amp at max volume but with the wide range of headphones out there, there’s almost nothing that will align properly with any random pair of amp/DAC so we use gain to fudge the difference. Not enough volume from your headphone in low gain at max on the dial? Then there’s medium gain. Just barely enough volume at max on the knob in the highest gain? Get a more powerful amp to avoid clipping. Power is a bit of a joke at this point though for literally over 99.9% of headphones/IEMs, even a decently powerful dongle DAC will get the HE6se v2 to listenable levels, but you’re hitting that top end of max gain and you get distortion because of the lack of headroom on tap. For most headphones and IEMs, you are almost going to certainly have way more power than you could ever need or even handle from even the most basic of setups and only extremely rare cases, like the HE6se v2, actually require a very powerful amplifier. You can blow your eardrums out with a good balanced dongle DAC feeding almost any headphone. Desktop solutions only ever really have an advantage when you need more gain settings for a wider range of headphones like swapping between IEMs and more difficult to drive loads. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Unless you’re going for hard to drive headphones for the sake of being hard to drive (and you shouldn’t) then there’s almost no such thing as needing more power than a run of the mill balanced dongle. The exceptions are so rare that it’s not even worth thinking about and they usually only break the rules due to physical limitations like driver diaphragm rigidity that takes significantly more current and slew rate speed to hit max excursion faster before power droop of an underpowered amplifier might kick in to gimp the power actually being delivered.

Long and short of it is that you could get better performance setting up a dongle and pair of Nanos with a negative digital preamp in an EQ program like PEACE APO and using the lowest gain setting you can to get to a listenable level that getting something absurdly powerful and not matching the gain stages properly, losing most of your dynamic range to the volume knob attenuation.

Jason Stoddard, owner of Schiit Audio, recently did a writeup explaining it all, and it’s super nice to be able to slap a link to it for people that want to understand how it all works and why the hell they should care, so here it is: Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up | Page 10356 | Headphone Reviews and Discussion - Head-Fi.org

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Thank you for this amazingly detailed write up! Which pads do you use on the Nanos ?

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I’ve got the 68 ohm and 50 ohm Hifiman HE6SE and current daily driver is an SMSL DL100 with A30Pro. You can power them with the Zen, but I’d really consider a balanced DAC if you go with the HE6SE because when you equalize to bring out the bass with a preamp reduction, they become a black hole of power requirements. Even the A70Pro/E70 9028Pro in 5 volt mode will only have about 12db left in high gain when doing a -6.9db preamp reduction and a pre-volume war recording needs more volume.
The best IEM bass I’ve heard is the Artti T10, and I’ve had two of the Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro X Limited with the new tech drivers. Those are really good, but require equalizing to get there. It’s absurdly easy since the 45ohm drivers are so easy to drive you’ll have all the headroom to do it.

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