I hope you guys can help me out. I ordered this cable: cable as a balanced cable to connect my HE400SEs to the ZEN Dac v2.
Itās not working at all. If I wiggle it I sometimes get some sound out the right ear.
Stock Cable is working fine. So Is it the AMP or a faulty Cable ?
Its more likely to be the cable (either faulty or isnt deep enough to get to the drivers), if you dont have another headphone to test the port you might i suggest wiggling it and either end (the cups and the connection to the amp), if it reacts near the caps its most likely either a faulty cable or the cable isnt deep enough (also compare length to the stock cable)
Tough telling. Iād exchange the cable first.
When I wiggle at the Dac side I can get it to work sometimes so I donāt know if itās the DACs terminal or if the Cabel has an issue
You probably want to check both.
If the cable swap works, then you know the answer was the cable.
You also might want to check it on another source? If you have a computer, you could try seeing if it works plugged into that.
Probably missed its that its a 4.4 cable (dont know of any PC with a balanced output 
)
The cable being 4.4, I doubt he can try on another source.
What i would do: but another cable, by another brand, on Amazon. Maybe but a USB dac/amp too.
Test the different possible combinations and see what is the common point of failure. Send back what you donāt need and send back what is faulty. You can keep what worked or not, depending on what you plant to do next (get a replacement of the broken element).
I missed that detail, and even I would have to do some adapter madness to get there. 4.4mm to 2.5mm then 2.5mm to 3.5mm, but not everyone has a full set of adapters just sitting around their office.
I ordered a new cable from linsoul directly. Will see how that works out.
Hi guys Iām a newbie to this hifi headphones hobby. I mainly play games with my headphones/IEM. I think I got a good deal when I ordered a China version of HE400SE for around $75.
Headphones I used for the previous years; HyperX Cloud Alpha, JBL Quantum 600 and Razer Blackshark V2. So far my daily driver right now is my Tanchjim OLA. Looking forward comparing the HE400SE to my previous experience of āgamingā headphones haha!
@Monarch: Iām kind of in the same boat. You can read my experience in the gaming category.
I just switched from a G6+DT990pro to Zen DAC v2+HE400SE. I also tested the new Arctis nova pro.
I can tell to, you will have a lot of fun with the HiFiMans. Look into Equalizer APO and/or Dolby Access and enjoy immersive game audio moving forward.
Congratz, hope you enjoy them just keep in mind that these are a bit power hungry (like a lot of planar magnetic headphones) so a dac/amp combo unit something like the IFI zen Dac is a good idea
Agreed, I use a Fiio BTR5 with mine. I think the new BTR5 model is $130, and they work over Bluetooth or USB. There are tons of good options, and the Zen Dac is solid at $190, but seems pricey when he only spent $75 on the cans.
@Monarch you can try them without an amp, but they might be quiet or thin sounding. I still think the best budget option is probably the FiiO E10K, which around $70.
Thank you guys for the recommendations! The E10k will probably the one Iāll end up getting, Iām just waiting for it to go on sale. I shouldāve bought it at the same time with the HE400SE. 
So far I have a usb-c DAC and a generic DAC with this specs:
Frequency Response: 16 Bit 32k, 44.1k, 48k
Earphone Impedance/Output Power: 16ohm/281mW, 32ohm/222mW, 64ohm/144mW, 300ohm/38mW
I really donāt know how to read those but when I saw the specs of the HE400SE itās around 25ohms right?
Not sure what price you were shooting for but here it is on Amazon.
Looking up info on the E10K
219mW of output power into a 32Ī© load , but the spec sheet from Fiio says 200
Your current DAC has plenty of power then. I normally just find the closest matching resistance ( ohms ), and see what the output power is to compare. You should have plenty of power for those. The HE400se isnāt that demanding.
While I canāt run it off an Apple Dongle very well, it works on all of my laptop computers just fine. I do think that most computers have been using beefier audio hardware in recent years, but my new personal laptop is probably 5 years old.
Side note: while it wount be a night and day difference the 400SE does scale (to some degree, keep in mind its a 100$ headphone) meaning if you ever get a better amp you can hear the difference
I really appreciate all the insights bro! Well my DAC says all those in paper but Iāll see when it comes to the real thing haha! Itās just a $20 DAC so the encoder is really not the best. At most it runs 16bit @ 44khz frequency. So my mid-fi setup would most probably be the E10k just to get the reliability and encoder. Also a little future proofing for my future buys haha!
I got my HE400SEs now. Itās my first time having an open back headphone and a planar one too.
For gaming:
My USB DAC just barely powers it enough to hear enemy footsteps. I need to upgrade my setup soon to fully utilize it. Everything sounds and feels natural and no fatigue for 3 to 4 hours of competitive play. The imaging and soundstage is good enough to match my IEMs but for FPS, specially tactical shooters I wouldnāt recommend it unless you have a good DAC/amp to power this bad boys or else you would for sure miss someone due to not hearing their footsteps. For open world or any RPG, itās a nice headphone.
For music/movie:
I have not qualms about it. Layering of instruments is amazing! For movie or watching content, I was amazed the first time I put it on. I was watching LeBronās Drew League game and I felt I was there haha!
Has someone tried to fit the Sundara Headband to the HE400 ?
I bought a suspension strap off Aliexpress (its almost identical to the Sundaraās suspension strap )and took off one of the 400SEās cup to compare - just from an initial look it should fit fine, there however a small modification that you have to do on.
Unfortunately i had a work thing pop up and havent had the time to sit down it do the mod fully, but it seems rather straight forward
