One of the reasons why I havenāt get the HE6SE even when is on sale is because for what I have read/heard you also need to have or invest in a good quality amp (around 1K type of amp), I canāt justify that expense, headphone + amp, so we are talking almost 2K if I get the headphones on sale.
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sub $1000 short of speaker amps that I could find. The FA-10 (I put my order in 2 weeks ago and still hasnāt shippedā¦), Audio-GD stuff (kinda sketch ordering system and youād have to pay for shipping from china unless you can get it from a partner store)(I didnāt see any of the sub $1000 stuff at the NA partner store), and if you could find one the Emotiva BASX (discontinued speaker amp with a headphone out)
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The basx is a grain generator. You hear it all in the HE6.
And that is a smart move. I see many sets of these for sale and if I ask the seller why they say, āthey are nothing special and I donāt see the fuss about themā. And this is often just a few weeks after getting them. When I ask what they are driving them with they list either cheap to mid-price amps or some expensive tube amp. None of those items have the power to really open these headphones up.
I am a commited mid-fi guy but just stepped up once and bought a used (yet still very expensive for me) amp that happens to pair with these wonderfully.
If I just had the Violectric V220 amp, I would have sold them on quickly and just assumed they were over-hyped crap.
If I just had the Liquid Platinum, I would been kinda happy for a while, driving them at 3:00 with my Schiit Loki to add gain and bass. But I bet after a month or two I would have grown tired of the combo and sold them on thinking, āGood, but not greatā.
Luckily I extended myself for the used iFi Pro iCAN. This combo is musical bliss.
So, yes I second your plan. Donāt waste the time or the money going half way.
Maybe look into the new HiFiman XS?
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Iāll second that. Theyāre so so so much more forgiving to your source than the he6 and actually scale pretty well but if your source chain is up to snuff the he6 wins on technicalities but still doesnāt come close to the XS soundstage size.
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I was thinking of your glowing reviews when I said that. 
Iām thinking about maybe sending it to someone for review seeing as that nobody has them but Iāve been kinda broke since I got in a car accident recently lol. Waiting on settlements is hell.
Will you keep both of them?
Iām never getting rid of my pair of he6 (or my backup pairš) and honestly I see no reason to get rid of the XS if for no other reason than having an outstanding backup pair of oval cans for if I ever need to send my HEKse in for repairs or anything. Iāve actually been using the XS basically exclusively for the last week to get a better feel for them. Iām pretty picky and I canāt find a fault in them.
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I have been riding my new LSA HP-2ās since Monday afternoon and will go right into next week with them.
Where would we be without our hobby? 
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UGH you guys are killing me with this conversation, I donāt know whether to go after the HE6SE or XS firstā¦ 
Whatās your source chain?
Topping D90 and A90
I never heard of this XS before. In any case i got the HE6se used for an excellent price exactly from one of the people who found it to be underwhelming, i want to improve my chain as much as i can to make the most of the HE6 but if i donāt get 100% that is fine, i already think it sounds great driven by the Modius + 789 stack.
I also got the 789 used for a good price, i am making incremental steps to see where i can get and all my other cans will benefit from that.
I still feel like there may be a better amp under $1000 for me though
@Resolution has a HE6se with a Topping stack like yours and he loves it, i bet it sounds great specially if you like a more analytical sound vs a coloured one.
Itās not so much a colored vs uncolored thing with the he6 though, itās more of a control thing and the a90 absolutely does not have enough low end control to let the he6 shine. Soloist vs a90 is laughable in terms of control in that the a90 has seemingly none by comparison. That being said, I still would recommend something with a touch of warmth with the he6 being that is a bit clinical in itās tuning but if you like that I still think the a90 doesnāt do it justice. The reason people rant about the power requirements is that having too much power can always have the volume attenuated but keep the control that the power provides. With that control the sense of space skyrockets as does bass both in authority and capability to dig deeper into the sub bass. All this being said, if you have a D90, an i2s input like a douk U2 pro will drastically improve bass clarity when your pushing your amp hard when it starts to struggle and that added clarity will give the impression of more punch as well which comes from a more precise input and I just canāt stress enough that it isnāt subtle.
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Well i donāt think i will ever invest the necessary amount of money to hear the HE6ās full potential then, but what makes me doubt that the difference can be so big is the fact that it already sounds better than all the other sets i have ever listened to even with a Modius + 789 stack. That difference would probably take the HE6 (a $599 set) to a Susvara / 1266 territory, just hard to believeā¦
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With hard to drive headphones control is all you need to make them shine. I would assume the susvara and 1266 would sound mediocre on a zen DAC but most people that own them have nice source chains and I feel itās worth mentioning that the he6 is very much an $1800 headphone despite the adorama price break. If youāre ever in Washington Iād be more than happy to let you a/b them on different chains and see for yourself. I personally almost got rid of the he6 when all I had was a 789 but kept them around for the sole purpose of using them as a power and control test bench and one day I struck gold after taking advice from @M0N and they came alive like I never thought possible. Also worth mentioning that there are people out there with susvaras and he6s that prefer the he6 due to itās macro dynamics once driven well. Iāve said it before and Iāll say it again, the he6 sounds very good on most chains but nothing spectacular and once you find something that works well with them you realize why they were a TOTL headphone for 20 years. Theyāre the single pickiest headphones Iāve heard in my life and I wouldnāt recommend them to anyone not willing to accept that as their caveat.
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Okay, my HE6SE arrived today. Iām powering it off an Aiyima A07 speaker amp, which definitely sounds punchier and clearer with these than my JDS Atom.
The stock pads were a touch bright for me (not unpleasant, just not my preference). Iām rocking some Dekoni Fenestrated Sheepskin pads for Beyerdynamic now and the tonal balance is much more to my liking.
Itās still really early, but unlike a lot of meme-worthy setups, I donāt immediately feel disappointed by HE6SE + Speaker Amp 
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The A07 was my speaker amp starting point with rolling opamps and it can be pretty decent especially with a decent power supply. Donāt be afraid to dive into it and do some very slight and very easy mods! Opamps drastically increase clarity and a nice power supply pushes that noise floor down quite a bit over the stock power supply.
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