Which hifiman to get

I would like to get a pair of hifimans and dont know what to get

price is under 300

im a bass nut, so having great sub bass and bass is what i want without losing great overall sound

need a open back pair

great for gaming a positional tracking

wanted to get sundara but they are a little pricy up here in canada

what would you guys recommend

cheap, great bass, easy to drive open back

Give the HiFiMan Sundaras a try, they might be able to cater to your tastes since you’re a basshead and I have heard good things about the Sundaras especially the 2021 revision.

What’s your amp situation?

curently just a topping mx3, with a pair of dt 177x go
want to upgrade hardware to a30 pro and a better dac later

will need the open back headphones first tho as i need them, i need to hear the house

ok so this is kind of a conundrum. you have a very powerful amp. if you were to get a cable that plugs from your headphones into your speaker jacks you could run anything. for the hifimans i’d say definitely go for the he400se and get some big leather pads if you want tons of bass. you probably wont get great bass response off of that amp unless you’re using the speaker ports though. eventually the a30 pro would be great on power for them though. definitely get a balanced cable for them and definitely some new pads and i think you’ll be surprised by them.

ya do want to get that high power amp A30 pro, or maybe a 789 or something like that, kind of doing this backwards i should have the amp and dac first before i even consider headphones.

question, if i get the amp, i can take the signal from mx3 headphone out to the new amp to use the dac at least. will that work?

I’ll say right now hard skip the 789. The a30pro is 10 times the amp that thing is. And if you get higher impedance headphones eventually like 250-600ohm range the a30 pro runs class a so it delivers full power at all times above 250ohm. As for your current dac I don’t think it’ll output dac signal so I unfortunately you’d need a dac. The new topping d10b should be all you’d need and its cheap-ish, measures well, super quiet noise floor, is balanced output so you’ll get the full volume out of your a30 pro and small. I’d skip buying a new dac after that until you’re ready to drop at least $500.

honestly, non of them are easy to drive and non of them have that much bass (I think the 4xx has the most)

with a pad swap the he400se can be pretty solid bass cannons and can reach way lower into the sub bass region that almost anything anywhere near his budget.

how does the sundara compare to the he400se, should i just save some more or is the 400’s as good

really just trying to get as much info as possible, cause i wont truly know what im listening to until i get the amp later down the road to show the true colors

i think the money saved buying the he400se for $150, pads for lets say $40 max, and if you’re feeling like really clearing up some of that bass and getting everything you can get out of the headphones, some honeycomb grills for like $35 and be around $225 all in and stomp the sundara. sundaras aren’t going to do well unless they have more power than your current amp either also.

ya the sundara’s are 470 on amazon.ca

i really wanted the dt 1990 but they are over 900 lol

yeah that money saved could get the d10b bought and you’d just be an amp away from having a really solid setup.

also dont forget to shop around for used amps.

hmm never heard of that site before. NOOBY

try hifishark.com for used gear. it checks a bunch of different sites.

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cool thx, i will look around

Worried that the Hifiman in this range don’t have the bass-forward tuning that you might be seeking.
It’s good for me, but… it’s not what they’re modern tuning seems to go for. EQ may be friend.
How do you feel about your 177x go’s?

i really like the 177x, but i dont know if the mx3 is to underpowered to really show its true colors, nooby to this stuff. but to be honest they are really all i have so to compare against any other is hard