One of the mysteries we may never be able to solve lol. Just curious, have you heard any dacs that have stood out to you?
No but both the DAC’s I have here are AK44XX variants, with very similar designs.
One is balanced, but given both have separate op amps for the outputs, I wouldn’t expect a significant difference.
I was going to pick something up with an ESS based chip, I need to pick up another DAC/Amp for my living room. I’m still umming and arring over how much I want to spend and what I want.
Given I’m considering a Valve amp or a THX amp, it’s not like I’m comparing like to like, which makes the decision difficult.
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TBH, you really don’t have to spend alot to get a good dac. Really you can get something like the smsl su-8 which is pretty great and feature packed for the price (which might also be up your alley for a living room ess dac). I think for most people, something like the rme adi-2 dac or SMSL D1 is the most people should reasonably spend on a sigma delta dac, and stuff like the denafrips ares II or airist r2r are great if you want to spend on an r2r. The schiit multibit or chord fpga dacs are also options as well but might be more pricey.
You really don’t see that big of an improvement from a dac unless you have an extremely resolving system
Edit: You really don’t see that big of an improvement from a HIGH END dac unless you have an extremely resolving system
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Man I would almost jump on these for $700… but they seem seem like they might be a bit too ‘picky’ to be worth it… I don’t have any “nice” speaker amps. Just the SMSL SA-98e.
Yeah, they are pretty much the definition of a picky headphone lol. You do have some thx amps that would work well with an he5se tho
$200 a good price for the 5se? Worth it?
I absolutely am loving them, but I also wouldn’t recommend them to any sane person that doesn’t already have a pretty great speaker setup. But if you’re looking to spend a lot of money, and don’t know where to focus your spending, this is a good start.
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I think so, they are a pretty good headphone if you want a classic hfm planar sound 
It still loves power but is much more usable than a 6se imo
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SU8 was on my short list along with the topping d50s.
I’m not expecting a ton of variance, just wanted to try something different.
I’m not quite at the point where I’m ready to spend a lot of money on headphone DACs and Amps, but that’s all relative.
I’ve had to try quite hard to stop myself ordering a pair of ZMF’s.
Lol, once you fall in you can’t climb back out. I like the su-8 because of the extra features it has over the d50s, with balanced, a remote, built in volume control (not digital I think so no quality loss), different dac filters, and also some sound modes where it will adjust harmonic distortion (not a eq profile) to color the sound if you would like
“I’ve had to try quite hard to stop myself ordering a pair of ZMF’s.”
I failed at trying to stop myself. 
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I really wish the su-8 came in black, which is why I’ve held off, but I’ll probably end up getting it anyway, eventually. >_>
Dacs and how they affect sound signature has been one of the hardest things for me to grasp especially since Dacs are built into things like my CD player, computer and HT receivers.
I use a pro-ject s2 digital on the desktop, the SMSLSu8v2 in the living room or on the desktop to compare when i get in the mood and a cheap little bur-brown chip dac that came w/ one of my amps.
Then to throw more complication into the mix the project and SMSL have all these filters you can play with, the music source also affects the sound and each class of amplifier sounds different on each speaker and headphone and this is before I add buffer tubes into the mix and lets forget about the difference each particular type of tube introduces.
Lol everything in a setup makes a difference and the sound is determined by the weakest link lol
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Ding ding winner! yes it is!!! which is why when you play with budget stuff and then upgrade you need to be careful not to over do things or you will be scratching your head trying to figure out why stuff sounds off or whatever other issue you may get.
BTW, Buying one new headphone caused my stack to grow in height and my cabling to increase exponentially…
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Do you guys use an additional adapter to convert the vintage amp speaker outs into xlr, then put said xlr into the HE adapter? Ive just found this, and the size/power seems very encouraging https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Bridgeable-Systems-Protection-Circuits/dp/B07WC4GY83/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=monoprice+unity&qid=1574305049&sr=8-5
The THD is rather high, but it seems worth looking into
So you want the https://store.hifiman.com/index.php/he-adapter.html
You could go that route but IDK if it would sound that great
Wasnt sure if I needed it or not, saw a couple people were using them for putting them on speaker amps.
You pretty much want the he6 on a speaker amp all the time lol. I would say its something every he6 owner should have