You donāt need to match the knobs with the HE-6. Just put them both on max and then use a preamp. I tried a few IEMS that were all great on it and there arenāt many headphones that are as efficient as IEMs. I tried the Tanchjim Oxygen and Moondrop Variations on it.
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cant wait to hear what you think of them with a couple mods. they taught me a lot about what physical characteristics effect sound through trial and error with modding.
you need a speaker amp to drive HE6se properly. I am using HE-adapter and old Yamaha speaker amp. CRAZY sound.
i have the he6se v2 and i did the grill mod , put some blu tack to seal , and replaced the headband with zmf ones . the headband mod alone makes this headphone a pleasure to listen to - no more hot spots .
i had the burson soloist 3xp with supercharger for a month and sold it , now im just using a smsl AO200 class d amplifier which also has some tone controls built in running it thru speaker taps .
now im moving to my next set up with the heddphones - no amp yet for it .
Iām currently running my HE6sev2 off of a smsl su-9 dac and the schiit jot 2 and I was thinking about buying a bifrost 2ā¦ Do any of you have any experience with the jot 2 and bf2 combo and do you think it will bring a better sinergy to the he6?
What pads are you running and what changes do you say they make to the sound overall vs stock to your ear?
Jot2 will not drive HE6se properly. You need a speaker amp.
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The Burson Soloist 3x has also been noted to be a good alternative under $2000.
I recall an earlier post from @Pokrog stating that the power output from the 3x is actually 15.5W at 50 ohms.
In my opinion, you do not need a speaker amp for the He-6seV2. For the OG ones then sure, but not for the revisions. The SE models have different drivers and arenāt as hard to run. My Soloist runs them better than using two speaker amps in mono.
I also have the Bifrost 2 and it worked really well with both the Soloist and Xduoo m-604, which also drives the He-6seV2 just fine, with Sylvania NOS tubes though.
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I can vouch for the Cayin IHA-6 being particularly capable (mentioned by Resolve and Wave Theory). My Singxer SA-1 has to run high gain, full tilt to drive my balanced 990 600 Ohm loud. My Master 19 runs high gain at near full volume for those cans. My Cayin though is too loud approaching 12 oāclock, high gain. Great control over the high end on that headphone. The Cayin even makes my 990 and 560s punch!
MT-604 is 2W, SA-1 is 6W. On SA-1 the HE6se sounded like a $300 headphones. On a speaker amp with HE-adapter they are $1700 headphones.
I own two pairs of He-6seV2 and I had pair I had to send back to hifiman because a driver failed. So I have tried 3 pairs across a number of amps. You can believe my experience or not, but you do not need a speaker amp for these headphones. You need current not watts to drive them well.
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I donāt have the MT-604 any more to compare. 
I am thinking maybe to get Oor or AHB2 for HE6se.
Honestly I think the jot 2 powers them just fineā¦ Ik there is better headphone amps out there but a speaker amp with taps is not the answer sound like a bunch of distortion waiting to happenā¦
Speaker amps <$1K is very hit-or-miss with the HE6seV2. Some might work, most are probably not great. I briefly had my HE6seV2 plugged into my Adcom GFA-555ii, which is a monster of an amp. It sounded just ok. It could work, but the Cayin HA-1Amk2 and my Vio HPA-V281 made it sound a lot better.
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The He-6seV2 love current. A high current Amp will drive them much better than one that just outputs a lot of watts. Plus when you do the math for 45, 90, or 100w stereo amps, they are rated normally for 4 or 8 ohm, so when you take it to 50ohm then you get between 12 to 20 watts. Which is a lot but not as much as someone posting about 90w mono amps would make you believe.
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Manā¦when it rains, it pours. After finding a combo that works well with the HE6se v2 quite a while back, I ordered a backup pair in case anything happened to my pair and ordered another pair as a gift for someone but didnāt end up giving it to them because they went another route with amps so I had two backups, both of which didnāt have stuck drivers and sounded flawless so back in their boxes they went to stay protected.
Last night out of nowhere, disaster struck in the worst way possible and my daily driver pair had the left side die. Super disappointing, but not the end of the world, I have two backups. Swapped the pads and grills over to the second pair and threw them on my noggin and died a little inside. Instantly noticed a channel imbalance and looked inside and of fucking course the driver on the right cup is stuck even though it was fine months ago when I last checkedā¦so I popped the grills off of my other backup pair and found them to be stuck as well.
Iām fucking livid.
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Wow! So sorry to hear that, and that is the reason I am staying clear of those headphones, and not having the right amp for them.
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So, you have three defective pairs? Wow! Do you/did you send all three pairs back?
Good luck!
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