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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
Potato. Ooops, I mean, Sound Blaster Z with âdedicated 600 ohm headphone amplifierâ. Sigh. CS4398-CZZ DAC, for headphones: JRC 2114 (op-amp) / MAX97220A (125 mW @ 32 ohms). Front: JRC 4556A front. Output: Headphone (33 ohms): 1.3Vrms Headphone (600 ohms): 2Vrms. Allegedly supposed to make good pals with high-impedance low-efficiency headphones like some old 600 ohm studio headphones (sounds like the opposite of the Hifimans). Also have a PCIE Titanium (non-HD) and a 6â16 ohm stereo thatâs entitled to vote and drink and has a headphone out (for which I canât find the specs). Iâve been thinking about getting an entry-level proper amp like Atom, Zen or L50 or one of the Chinese ones but maybe replacing the internal soundcard first (as AE-5 measures stronger than G6).
These cans are pretty consistent and lovely right out of the box. I havenât detected any major changes to the sound signature after burn-in.
With a balanced cable, you get more power with less noise. I think the sound is a bit more sharp and distinct but without hot treble. The stock single-ended cable is beyond PATHETIC, so I figured I would get balanced as a replacement. Glad I did!
If you want some better sound is suggest getting something external. Internal cards can be nice but usually only when they get pretty spendy and at that point external DAC options are a lot better in most cases. The sound blaster should do a lot better than motherboard sound though.
I already own the HE4XX, K702, M570, AD900x. And I only use them for competitive FPS gaming.
Will this HE400se be an upgrade imaging wise? Is it close to the HE4XX?
i will say that the 400se IS better than the 4xx but it has kinda the same caveat as the 4xx that it has slight front imaging problems that can be remedied by deeper pads.
So can i still apply those same pads on the HE4XX to improve imaging? What pads by the way?
If you were a competitive fps gamer like me (no music) who owns a HE4XX, would you still buy the HE400se?
nah, not worth having both. i like the brainwavz XL micro suede gaming pads for the hifiman circle cans works in the same way on both headphones but the 400se is quite a bit more resolving and a little more open sounding but thatâs about it.
Those guys?
https://www.amazon.ca/Brainwavz-Earpads-Headsets-Headphones-Dimenion/dp/B07SBT93R9
I will try them on my HE4XX.
yup. youâll need some adapter rings too unless youâre willing to destroy the pads you currently have. Headphones & portable audio - HIFIMAN.com not sure how best to go about ordering them and another option is replacement pads can sometimes be found for dirt cheap that have rings in them, which might be more convenient or faster but probably more expensive.
checked back through my purchase history and forgot that moon audio sells dirt cheap pads with removable rings so you donât have to kill the pads in the process for $10