To be clear, we are talking about the he560v4, not the 560s (freaking numbered headphones, am I right?).
My verdict is out on the hd800s. They do have some great qualities to them, way easier to listen to than I expected. Not sure if they are worth the investment for gaming though.
Also, I agree with the pass on the 5XX. Not nearly as enjoyable as the other Hifiman recommendations mentioned.
Yes, yes. Sorry for the confusion. HE560 v. 4 it is.
Way above my budget anyway. 
I may be a bit better off than the average person living here, but this is a low-income country. However, I seem to be bombarded with projects by my top client right now, so I’m looking at a succession of 100-hour weeks in December, which does mean massively more income than the average month, hence more cash to spend but close to zero forum/research/experimentation time. Which is I’m beginning to look at an $300 budget, perhaps more, and developing an itch for the $599 Anandas against my better judgment. Or who knows if not actually in line with better judgment, since pulling the trigger saves time and time is literally money for me this month. A month full of 16-hour business days and caffeine. The $599 is probably gonna end up being my week’s wage after taxes, bills and rent, so perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, though again, I have a ton of competing expenses anyway. You know how it is with freelancers. Microbusiness is an endless sinkhole for money. Continued education, marketing, equipment, software, and then there’s private life. Family, holidays, GPU…
Thank you, will do.
Aight. While the Ananda is sooo tempting, especially considering the uprecedented rainfalls from my clients, I guess I’ll probably have to cut it at Sundara or HE560V4 and maybe amp or amp and dac, before going up. Though easier said than done, on an emotional level.
So… with some degree of oversimplification, could 400SE → Sundara → Ananda be described as a linear upgrade path? And one where at Sundara level you will benefit more from a proper amp & DAC than from upgrading to Ananda?
If that’s the case, I’m going to grab the Sundara and think about an amp+DAC.
Argh, the $109 for the 400SE looks so much too good to skip that I’m beginning to think about getting them for a family member or friend as a gift and just reselling them if nobody wants them (which is obviously unlikely to happen unless they’re dead into closed cans). Or even about trying them first before Sundaras because a $299 Sundara is way easier to find than a $109 400SE.
So, what’s left to decide is Sundara vs HE560V4 and maybe just maybe the 400SE simply because of the insane value for money. And to purge Ananda from my head.
I’d say get the 400se and try it and see what you think. Great value.
Allow me to cast another vote on the HE400se.
You really need to hear the magic of open backed plannars. I’m never ever going to be without. Sure I might buy others. But I never wanna be without one to fall back upon 
I second this. The HE-400se might be the best bargain on Earth among audiophile headphones. The sound quality-to-price equation is insane.
Gentlemen, I know this is gonna be hard to believe (and doubtless you must all be feeling like shrink faculty at med school holding a council over a hopeless case), but I’ve actually just bought a pair. The TYGRs it is, for the grand total of €115 shipped. To freaking Italy because they don’t ship to Poland despite sharing a friggen’ border with us. Luckily, I have a sister living in the Eternal City, who will be visiting for Christmas.
I didn’t luck out so much with Hifiman in the end. First, the 560 v. 4 is back to we-no-have-it land. If @MrAyrit comes back saying it beats both Tygr and Sundara, I’ll have to take it like a man and swallow the bitter pill of my own pathological tardiness and indecision.
Worse, the open-box HE400SE for $109 is gone, leaving $129 closed-boxes on the table. I’m not gonna weep for the twenty bucks, but Hifiman being Hifiman outlet = premium QA, which is doubly important to a n00b like me who has never heard a planar (or even a mid-fi dynamic) just might get a bad pair and fail to spot the defects.
So. I’m beginning to look at this from the perspective of a new Tygr owner on a budget and wondering if it wouldn’t actually be better to avoid listening to other headphones. What if I find the Sundara worse at soundstage and imaging but better at clarity, separation, speed and a thing or two more? Plus, my Sound Blaster Z’s dedicated headphone amp might be insufficient for the Sundaras for reasons other than impedance, while it’s bound to be sufficient for the Tygr. Meaning that sticking with the Tygr could help me avoid the amp/DAC spiral/sinkhole (which I already hear calling out my name, I’m afraid).
So. From what I read the 400SE is ~80–85% of the Sundara for way less than a half of the price, and while not exactly a problem-free ‘mobile planar’, it’s more amp-forgiving (though it does scale somewhat).
Given that $129 for closed-box 400SE is far less attractive than $109 for open, but still attractive for a freaking four-inch planar driver with super duper imba ninja magnet or two, and given that I have a pair of Tygrs flying from Germany to Poland via Italy for me (let’s take this opportunity to thank Beyer for its logistical genius), do I still want to buy them? And given the open-box Sundaras are still there for $299, which is not stellar but still $100 better than the usual NIB lottery (plus free inspection by a technician as a platinum deal from Hifiman), do I take the 400SE or skip to Sundara and hope my best that my Sound Blaster Z doesn’t crap out and gimp the SQ, making it sound to my n00b ear like the headphone isn’t all that?
You can’t go wrong starting with the HE-400se and then letting the rabbit hole deepen from there. But I suspect you may hang on to the HE-400se for a while, even as your audiophile journey reaches higher price points.
Yep, the HE-400se punch that well above their weight. Can’t recommend them enough, although you’ll need an amp. I power mine with a hip-dac pretty well, so you don’t need a nuclear power plant of an amp to get volume and good fidelity.
TechPowerUp claims ‘The gain is almost too high for normal headsets like the ASUS Vulcan Pro ANC and headphones like the Sennheiser PX-200 IIs. Even with a set of HiFiMAN HE-500s, the gain is more than adequate. The gain is just way too high for normal in-ears, making the noise painful. Its sound quality in music playback is really good for a $99 sound card - comparable to the ASUS Xonar STX, although it lacks quite a few features.’ So I guess in terms of impedance and sensitivity this will suffice, but I wonder about the impact on quality, especially for Sundara.
There’s often a big difference between the gain needed to drive an IEM and that needed to drive a planar-magnetic over-ear.
Indeed. But what about the 500s, for which the reviewer says the gain was more than adequate?
(So far thinking about Atom. Used ones tend to cost ~$130-ish here. I’ve read it tends to help Sundara’s soundstage.)
Sorry, don’t own the 500s.
I get them confused at times as well…
I sure dont think so lol. After like $500 the returns are very minimal imo. To many very good choices
Absolutely
Yes but a hard maybe on ananda… not as much quality gain as the first two.
At sundaras level it’s more power hungry and synergy required ananda is the same… 400se is recommended as not only do you gain a ton per dollar value but it’s very low power requirements make it easy to fit into a starting setup
Lol
Youd avoid the rabbit hole, good luck lol
I’d say about 75% but I like pad swaps for 400se more since it’s also the cheaper can too
Agreed… but I’d say take your time from there…
Tygr and 400se can definitely compliment each other
Certain amps of the sort will yea, I prefer schiit or lake people due to that personally… monoprice isn’t too bad there either but that’s more warmth and depth rather than space
Yeah the jump from Sundara to Ananda is euh… Minimal imo. Better stick with that Sundara a few more years and save up for that Arya 
Looks like the 400SE would be awful to never experience, but at the same time avoiding it and going straight for the Sundara looks like a reasonable thing to do considering I would be upgrading to the $300 range anyway. This almost makes me regret buying the Tygrs, but never mind that, at worst it’s gonna be a small loss on resale or a 60-day return to Beyer or a gift for a family member.
So… having already invested in the Tygr makes me want to hold my horses with the Sundara because the likely outcome is a medium-to-big win for the Tygr on stage and imaging and small-to-medium loss on everything else (tonality, separation, speed, etc.) in such unequal contest between $130 and $299 headphones. It would also be awful to have to choose between slightly better stage/imaging/out-of-head experience vs better tonality, clarity, precision, speed and everything else.
And then, if don’t buy the Sundaras, then maybe it would make sense to get the 400SE for $129, for almost the exact price of the Tygrs and compare them from this perspective. That would be quite the learning experience. Quite enlightening, I’m sure. Again, pity I missed the $109 deal on the open box.
But if I buy Hifiman again, then it probably makes more sense to skip to Sundara anyway, so I’m back to the starting point and making circles.
And meanwhile eyeing up Atom.
While at it, I recall someone saying that the Sundara places characters directly to your left or right when they are like ten yards ahead of you and one yard to your side (and generally forces everything to the sides). Does this seem to be correct or more down to specific user experience/case/EQ/synergy/game?
N00b question but stage depth or deeper sound or deeper immersion?
well TYGR and Sundara have different sound signatures so might wanna keep both for different tasks? 
Well, I guess I could keep the Sundara on music duty and Tygr on game duty if it proved better than the Sundara.
What I’m ‘afraid’ of is having to make the sort of choice where you can’t have both top quality and top scene+imaging for gaming, but I’m pretty sure this will ease up as the time passes because the thirteen hundred bucks I paid for the Tygr is not the kind of sum you keep thinking about a couple of months after spending it. Compared to the hassle of selling it, I might even end up keeping it as a handy benchmark for game-testing of whatever I end up buying later.
In case I get really bored or curious, I wonder if there’s a way to make a 600 ohm mod of the Tygrs, e.g. by using a 990/600 as a donor. Moving whatever you can detach from a Tygr onto/into a 990/600 would probably be easier but probably not quite there. I hope Beyer enables 600 ohm Tygrs through the Manufaktur some day.
This thread must hold some kind of record for the longest average post length 
Skip sundara. Edition XS is new king.
I’m getting to the point where I might be inclined to agree…
can’t personally comment on that one, haven’t sat with yet
depth sounds and drives a bit deeper. Immersion is a bit more subjective imo