What do you want to listen to on them, what else do you currently use?
I listen to pretty much anything I guess but mostly songs that put focus on instruments rather than vocals. I have mh752, blon bl03, and dt880 thatâs been dying. Not too fond of bassy cans/iems but thatâs probably because Iâve never heard a good bass.
What do you run them off of?
just Topping NX4
then i wouldnât go for a 400SE, its is a bit too power-hungry for a portable device - you probably could reach acceptable volume lvls but it most likely wonât get 100% of the 400SE abilities.
Whatâs the budget you are looking to spend?
Around $200-250, Iâve looked at HD560s but thatâs not available here. Iâm afraid that anything below my current dt880 would be a downgrade. I mean I could go for another dt880 but I kinda want to try something else thatâs why I have my eyes on these lol.
You might want to consider a HD 6XX its right up your price range, havenât tried myself but what you are describing sounds like it
Noted on that, I might as well try buying the HE400s and see if I can power it, if not then I can return it haha.
you said about 560s not the 600, kinda of a different beast but you can also look into Grado SR125
I spent some time today with HE-X4 (sonically about same as 400se) and the DT880-600.
It is very difficult for me to choose a âwinnerâ as an all-arounder here.
Spatially, the DT880 is a wider space with better imaging â but the Hifiman offers much better instrument separation when passages get very busy - MUCH in some cases. The timbre of a lot of those instruments sounds better, more natural on DT880. Hifiman is swifter, more black background to things. When things are less busy, the strong center-image of DT880 and better vocal timbre (more â3Dâ) is a plus. I think EQ does much more to fix the peaks of DT880 than it stands to benefit the Hifiman which is pretty well tuned overall. One thing that my ears differentiate with the squiggly lines on is the bass extension of the two, where the Hifiman simply seems to dig deeper. The warmth of tuning on the DT880 is felt more in string pulls and the such, deep bass just isnât nearly as there to me. If I were to guess one was rolled off more, it would be the Beyers. Experiences tells me to expect more ability to tweak more bass shelf, if desired, into the Hifiman than the Beyers. I donât consider myself to be a basshead - but the Beyer actually lacked in one song with a heavy organic bassline, that surprised me.
Clear strengths and weaknesses, and preferences regarding individual tracks. But I struggle to make a clear rec in this case as far as an âall-arounderâ goes. The Hifiman probably creates more âwowâ moments and is more evenly tuned. The space/imaging and timbre advantages of the Beyer are probably more nuanced notices. But the fact that they ârockedâ better was of some surprise to me today. Guitar is one instrument that just sounds absolutely great to me on the affordable Hifiman models, and thereâs great synergy with a lot of tube hybrids.
I have to imagine that 400se would benefit from a bit more power/headroom than an NX4, but I would probably also think that about DT880-250. Really interested how this turns out for you. Enough useless words from me.
I power the HE 400se with the hip-dac 1, the Zen DACâs mobile brother, with Audiophile Ninja balanced 4.4 Pentaconn cables with no problem. Get ample volume with the knob at 12 oâclock in full-gain setting.
I donât use Bass Boost that often, but it works well with the HE-400se.
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Highly recommend Audiophile Ninja. Had great experience with Jeremy, the owner and manufacturer, when I bought 4.4 balanced cables for my HE-400se. Work and look great, reasonable price.
Iâm not a plant â just a happy customer!
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I have a pair of HD560s Iâm about to put up for sale. PM me if interested. Thanks.
I dearly love these Cans already and tried the oratory1990 EQ preset on them.
What can I say. An absolute beast of a Headphone. Lovely to listen to.
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Looking for my first planar over ear headphone. Considering the fostex t50rp or the hifiman he400se. Is the detail retrieval improved on the hifiman?
Compared to what? The HE-400se is still in its first generation.
Nevermind, i bought another dynamic driver headphone.
Donât sleep on the HE-400se as an introductory planar in the future. Itâs a magnificent headphone for the price, punches far above its weight.
And there really is something about that âplanar sound.â Itâs different than dynamics. Hard to describe. But I think everyone should own at least one planar in their collection, and the HE-400se is a perfect place to start.
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I saw your brave advocacy of these resourceful little babies, and I thought Iâd ask you, since you mention modding them, and I thought, what the heck, at twelve hundred bucks I could take a knife to them and have some fun. Since youâve obviously given so much thought to modding them for gaming â what would you suggest for games like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, The Witcher, Dragon Age, Kingdom Come and so on, or those isometric RPGs, RTSs and economic sims (Civ, Tropico, Starcraft, Baldurâs Gate, Icewind Dale, Dune, Warcraft, Command & Conquer, etc.)?
Obviously, typical competitive improvements would still have their uses, but the goal would be to make them (A) fun, immersive, engaging, suckin you in, energizing you and generally going well with your RPG night, some sort of cognitive enhancement, certainly looking at increased detail and clarity, timbre, separation and all that jazz plus more of a general âhi-resâ feel; (B) (not necessarily the same pair) non-fatiguing pleasant listeners with an optimistic mood (like running your own little tropical paradise in Tropico or listening to some upbeat motivational music for some design or marketing work or playing some sort of strategic game for the 157th time without really wanting to experience soul-piercing emotion or overly high levels of intellectual stimulation but more like walling off emotion from real life in order to destress, hence largely the opposite of variant A).
I was thinking grilles and oakum out, microsuedes in, better cable?
Any change after burning-in? Stage especially?
Out of curiosity (total n00b, no planar, no cable swap before, trying to learn what a cable swap does), how much changed when you swapped the cable?
For immersion, add bass to them. It gives a lot of tactile feel to them as theyâre a bit bass light. They take EQ pretty well and maybe a 3-5db bump at like 1750hz for a little bit more neutral midrange. As for burn in they do have some advantage with some burn in that basically is mostly just overall smoothing out and stage accuracy. Nothing crazy but they do settle in after a while. If you have an amp with a balanced output that gives more power, definitely get a balanced cable as they scale pretty well with more power. Whatâs your source chain?