all of Hifiman’s cables are garbage TBH that said so are Focal’s
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Honestly I’d say focals cables are generally worse from my experience from an ergonomic perspective but better durability. The higher end hifiman cables are tolerable although really gross feeling lol
idk man the ambilocal cable made me lose faith 
Actually sounds pretty decent for a stock cable with things like the heks and susvara in comparison to the stock cable that comes with the utopia or even clear, but man, yeah, it’s not pleasant to use
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Having compared, heard and seen issues of all kinds in this hobby, personally I’d be hesitant to go with any of their pricier models, they’re def. not gonna win any awards in build quality, QC and service (esp. the older models were highly questionable), but they’re def. not the only ones to have issues, but I def. have more trust in Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic, Meze, DCA and Grado and in pricier segments, if there are any doubts lingering, I will buy a different model.
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Yeah I love and hate the Focal cable at the same time.
It’s shit to use - but it actually had lesser resistance than the other ones I have. Cans are a bit louder on them, so they are using great materials, just with a significant lack of ergonomic sense at that. The wires inside are real thick and robust - Hifiman def cheaps out there with the stock inclusion.
These German, Japanese, French manufacturers at least use pretty good materials and they at least sound right and look like they would last decades. Hifiman puts in a cable just to strike it off the checklist.
That’s true, I’d only partially be ok with the cable they include with the hek/susvara, but the ones on their more midrange or entry level cans is pretty garbage lol
Focal at least gives you better in their more entry level or midrange cans, although I feel like the utopia cable is part of that “strike it off the checklist” range lol
Honestly I’d be pretty comfortable going with their higher end products, build isn’t the best in the category but they’re typically well built enough, and also reasonably comfortable as well, can’t really complain too much about it given the sound. But I’m also the type of person to put all my focus on sound rather than build/fit/finish, as long as it’s not egregious (which I don’t think higher end hifiman build is). QC wise, in the higher price category, I also don’t think it’s much of an issue from my personal experience and others that I know with the cans, but can’t tell any larger issues from that of course. Although their lower end cans, the qc lottery is real (although I don’t think it’s bad enough to put me off from suggesting their lower end cans since if you buy from somewhere with a warranty, they seem pretty good with that from my experience)
Makes sense. I’ve talked to multiple people who own stuff like the HE-1 and higher end Stax models and they told me they had stuff like aluminum paint coming off on the HE1000, as snobbish as they might be, I’d be paranoid of defects all the time, but I’m not a millionaire so I need to keep reliability in mind too.
Ah yes that was a problem with the v1, I don’t know if that was corrected on the v2 or not, but I haven’t heard about that issue in awhile
HE1 build wise is pretty amazing, but sound wise for the money, kinda disappointing lol, so I guess you get what you pay for in build, but in sound, I’d seriously hesitate
Stax, their build can be pretty bad for the lamda series, and I’d say that build wise they’re about comparable to higher end hifiman with their higher end cans imo. Can’t comment to qc on stax stuff because I haven’t owned enough and seen enough to know