I heard them last weekend at a friendās, and now this last weekend Iāve A/Bād them to my Sundara and my conclusion is that they sound very much like a HE400i.
-HE400se (retains the typical HE400 series downsides):
wide and airy soundstage thatās lacking center image
sounds sound big but donāt have much impact
tonality is kind of grey/dull
treble has metallic tone no matter how much you EQ it down
fast but blurry and empty sub bass
-Sundara
soundstage is slightly narrower (medium-wide) but as a bonus the center image is now extremely present; lateral imaging and instrument separation is better, period
sounds are more involving/more impactful - drums, guitars and synths are almost tangible
tonality is on entire new level - colorful and diverse
treble is very natural, similar to HD560s but even better
sub bass is well-defined and more textured
Things the HE400se is better at:
transitions and dynamics feel a bit more natural (it could be my Sundara are underperforming with Ifi Zen stack, who knows)
since they are not as involving, you could listen to them for hours and hours, while the Sundaraās hyperdetailed & textured nature makes them fatiguing after one single hour
more airiness (not to be confused with spatiality) due to the lack of a proper center image; they almost completely lack the intimacy of the Sundara, which places the singer inside your head
Itās strange how everyone has a vastly different opinion about these headphones, especially when they have to compare them to similar products in their price range.
I donāt understand how can anyone can say these are equal to or better than Sundara with a straight face though. Gavinās Gadgets on YouTube wrote in a comment on his HE400se first impression, that Sundara is about 20% better across all levels and I wholly agree.
If anything, the HE400se are a better deal than the Sundara, Iāll give them that, but if I had to choose, letās say I wouldnāt sell a Sundara to get two HE400se, while Iād definitely do the opposite.
this matches my impressions exactly. have sundaras here to test too now. i think the he400se and the he400i 2020 are absolute value monsters. but so are the sundaras. just a level above. the price to performance ratio is probably what is getting people very hyped about them. and i also think maybe people too often judge things āfrom memoryā instead of A/B testing. i really had to spend time with them side by side to really nail down the differences or even notice them. also had to listen to each one long enough to get adjusted. in the end i think it depends on what you value more i guess. detail retrieval and overall technical performance, airiness, tone etc.
EDIT: if anyone cares. in terms of tone the sundara is between the he400i 2020 and the he400se. the he400se being the most dry and lean one and the he400i being the most girthy, warm one.
I hate the Oluv guy with a burning passion. All he cares about is tonality, and nothing else. I never watch his videos, ever. As a reviewer he should either do actual reviews or quit it
By better than Sundara and Ananda do you mean in your preference or actual technicalities? Because the Ananda is a high mid fi to low hi-fi tier headphone. It can hold its own against the Lcd2c and elex and esp95x etc.
So Iām thinking that these are a little more power hungry than people think. Lower sensitivity planars need quite a bit more power to be fully powered than they do to just be loud. HE6 is the king of that department and its just understood that its the case. The he400se seem to take around 50-100% more power than my gl2000s which most people were suggesting at least 2 watts @ 60ohms. I donāt power math so idk what that equates to at 25 ohm or whatever the he400se is but its a lot more than it seems. Saying they donāt have a center image is silly and I just can not accept that, especially off of a zen dac which has just awful channel separation that ruins imaging and is also why they added that 3d sound button at one point. Sundaras have just trash soundstage depth. Itās all a wall of sound, though the direction is fine. The he400se wasnāt great with the stock grills and they had good stage but nothing mind blowing. With honeycomb grills (WHICH FOR THE LAST TIME DOESNāT JUST IMPROVE STAGING IT IMPROVES TONALITY, TOO. Iām not sure if thatās whats helping the 1.5k dip but it doesnāt bother me with the grills off and I donāt have measurement rigs. Also people afraid to pop those grills off are probably afraid to pump their own gas.) they stage with the best of them and really big soundstage has a learning curve on HOW to listen so if you arenāt used to it iām sure it seems weird. Like every bit as good as aryas but I think vertical imaging on the he400se is better. Anandas have never honestly felt all that impressive technically and they definitely straight up lose to the he400se at bass. The ananda technicalities arenāt so much better that youāll notice it in every song and again power doesnāt just give better bass it gives quicker response as a whole so maybe thatās where people are losing the detail. Iām currently using a gustard x16>a90 and Iām pretty confident theyāre being powered fully. Sundaras were hazy and one of the quickest sales Iāve ever had. They sound fancy to people that have never had good headphones but thatās it. If sundaras could remove that wire mesh grill and way too much dampening material I have no problem believing they could perform better as I think thatās what ruins their performance but just like a lot of headphones I think the driver is outperforming the housing for one reason or another. Maybe pads or something messing with it too, idk. It would be really interesting to get a reviewer with measurement rigs to turn off the smoothing and chart the frequency response with and without grills on all the hifiman cans because occasionally they make a huge difference. Iāve heard they donāt help with a lot of 400 series and 500 series but he6s have incredibly strong magnets and the steel grills actually pull on the driver and fuck with the tonality and that has been proven. I think they help the 400se for a different reason as they have the acoustically transparent drivers and once the grill is gone its almost like thereās nothing there anymore. It drastically improves what I want to say is the microdynamics and macrodynamics (iām not quite sure if thats the right word but it seems right in the moment) which is where I really had a problem with the sundara as they could be detailed but not without sacrificing something else in the frequency range at the time. Both the attack and decay of the he400se is fucking leaps better than the sundara and every bit as good as the ananda, but I doubt youāre getting the microdynamics and macrodynamics fully off of an underpowered amp. With a tube preamp to warm them up they absolutely perform extremely well for music and I will stand by what I said about them. Iām so fucking close to just buying another pair and a set of grills and sending them to someone that people actually listen to out of blind faith. The grills are the difference on these and I just donāt know how much more direct I can be with that statement. Itās not a subtle difference, itās what makes these truly good. Also brainwavz xl gaming gel pads are great on these.
I thought to compare them to Ananda is crazy enough, now you are telling me they are every bit as good as the Arya???
I canāt find myself believing it unfortunately. For reference, what sort of music do you listen to? And do you listen at a deafening volume?
If what you said is actually true, then the market is about to be shaken up majorly. Knowing Hifiman however they will milk every single last bit of money out of this, instead of selling it for 150 bucks.
Thanks for sharing your opinion anyways.
I want to strangle the person at hifiman with that cable for thinking itās acceptable but it probably wouldnāt get the job done. Also I do listen at probably louder than average levels but not crazy high.
spoilers buddy: nobody has the same thoughts, I donāt know what is wrong with this guy, but I would take his opinion with 3 ounces of salt, enough to make you vomit and say āI probably shouldnāt listen to this bs.ā, the comparisons I saw donāt put the 400se much higher than he400i, they sound a little different but neither is really better than anything more expensive besides maybe the 5XX depending on who you ask. Both can be good purchases depending on how expensive what model is where you live, but to compare them to a Sundara or an Aria and say theyāre better just IS insane.
Are you talking about the original Sundara or the revision btw, since they both measure quite differently. The 2020 Sundara is extremely neutral while the old version is shouty and bright. Also, I noticed you keep comparing a modded headphone with an unmodded headphone. Whatās up with that? If there was a way to remove the grills from my Sundaras I bet they would also sound ridiculously big, as ALL Hifimans doā¦
Iāll tell you, from my experience Sundaras sounds anything BUT like a wall of sound. Staging / instrument separation are the most important things for me, since I mostly listen to complex multi-layered electronic music (Autechre, Amon Tobin, Squarepusher) and modern classical (Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, Gyorgy Ligeti). So, basically, if the Sundaras created this wall of crammed sound as you said, Iād be essentially fucked, as my music library depends the most on these specific sonic qualities to sound the best.
My opinion remains that HE400se is a weaker headphone, detail-wise, timbre-wise, and they only give the illusion of a better soundstage because the sounds are not full-bodied like on the Sundara. The Sundara has to manage both heavily textured sound and a soundstage, it will never be an ulra-wide airy headphone, but it will give you the best of both worlds.
If youāre saying my 450$ dac/amp stack is the problem then I guess Iāll have to wait years until I will afford a better opinion. Me and many other people.
Well, Bad guy good reviews and @ZeosPantera both hyped the Gl2000 up, but @DMS and Crinacle both didnāt like it. It is possible that someone out there thinks the same. By the way Pokrog loves his Gl2000
that one is a controversial headphone, this one is literally just one guy hyping it way out of proportions and saying you should switch the grills on this headphone, which is ridiculuous, and saying how this headphone is worth 3 times itās price, which itās not, whereas everyone else is saying that this is pretty close to something like the 400i or the 5XX in terms of quality, with just slight differences in the sound.
Grill swapping my he560 literally made it a different headphone as far as Iām concerned. It helps with congested staging more than anything else, but that can make or break a product. I think grill mod hifiman anything should get hypedā¦
i honestly think this discussion is a mix between different tastes and priorities and also some unnecessary overly one sided and overblown ways of putting things.
i agree to a certain degree about some things that are being said about the sundara not sounding as open and wide. they are definately more intimite and closer sounding imho. and if you value a larger more open sound the he400 ones provide that. but that is a matter of taste and the sundara only sound small in comparison. itās really a matter of reference which also hits on another point i made earlier.
pokrog said he sold the sundara quick and always speaks about them in the past tense. so what i assumed was probably right. a lot of talking about things from memory and without direct comparison. and i personally donāt put much value on that when it comes to nuances in detail and texture of the sound.
and that is where the sundara is better imho (not worlds better but still), which makes sense, if you look at the technical facts of the wider frequency range being covered and the way thinner membrane. you can tell itās a different driver just by closely listening to cymbals, string instruments and distorted guitars. the latter especially have so much more texture and fine detail.
i also think the āwall of soundā statement is pretty relative. i think the sundara just donāt have as much recessed vocals and guitars as the he400 ones. so things being more even and less spaced out sounding makes sense (hd560s sounded similar in that regard). but considering the awesome instrument seperation of the sundara at the same time, it makes no sense at all to just call that āwall of soundā. but again. in comparison?..maybe.
i think all this distracts from the great value the he400se provide. modding them and buying expensive monstrously powerful amps to make them āgoodā defeats the whole purpose of them and why they are so great.
i think itās great, if diminishing returns are proven to be a thing over and over again. but making outlandish statements is kind of annoying for people looking for info and comparison. thatās actually what got me to have the he400i, he400se and the sundara here at the same time so i could hear for myself. i donāt know, if never having heard the ananda or arya negates everything i found thoughā¦ this definately makes me want to read forums less and just keep watching and reading several reviewers who have different tastes and just extract the things they all agree on on a certain headphone. that and just getting them and A/Bing them. seems like a much more reliable source than ādude, if you take the grills off they give you x-ray vision and cure covid, donāt tell hifiman though, they triple the price for sureā.
just kidding ofc, to each their own. sound is hard to evaluate. i think pokrog just values soundstage and openess a lot. and i tend to be the similar because i think it simulates listening to music in a room better. but the more i compare things the more it seems like the quest is having that, good seperation, good tonality AND great detail at the same time.
So in the end has anyone tried the 5xx? All this drama between the sundara, 400i and 400se but they all have the same tiny earcups, I think Iāll try to resell my 400i and save for an ananda just cause of that lol
wasnāt the 5xx the one that is basically a Deva? i could swear i read that somewhere. i think they also have that thinner membrane in them compared to the he400 series.
also in terms of earcups. what pokrog said about the sundara driver being held back by the housing is something i also thought just in terms of how uncomfortable it is in comparison to the HE400 ones. my perfect headphone right now would be sundara driver inside he400 body probably. but who knows what that means for sound. next stop: trying way too many pads and comparing themā¦