Dan at MrSpeakers is definitely a wonderful story. He's taken a hobby of his as means to successfully grow a brand through smart business decisions and a strong, almost personal relationship, with his target audience, and he's done so in such a short amount of time to boot. My first experience with one of his products was the Mad Dog 3.2. At the time of hearing the Mad Dogs my headphone was the HE-400, and I was impressed with the Mad Dog enough to consider it the best overall package one could buy at its price point. Fast forward several years...

I was fortunate enough to be able to audition the HE-X for multiple days thanks to Hifiman's loaner program.  Having been a great fan of the HE-400 and HE-560, and with the recent success of the HE-1000, the HE-X was one of the few headphones I was interested in as a possible upgrade or sidegrade to my current HE800.  Before I get into the meat of the impressions, first let me give a quick blurb about my preferences so readers can have a better understanding of the review.  Hifiman is perhaps the house sound I favor the most when it comes to high-end...

The 500 dollar HE-400i is the entry level headphone that is part of Hifiman's latest line of single-sided planar magnetic.  Its purpose was to replace the hugely successful HE-400, while providing a sound quality closer to that of the venerated HE-500.   Having had extensive experience with the HE-400 for over 2 years, and my current goto headphone is the HE-560.  Sadly I have no experience with the HE-500, but it seems that from popular impression, the HE-400i is very, very close to it in terms of sound quality and presentation.      To begin...

  The Denon D2000 is a result of a rather short, but extensive search spanning multiple audiophile grade headphones to find my personal ‘perfect sound’ while retaining an extremely high amount of comfort.   My journey into the hi-end headphone market ironically started with a somewhat expensive Turtle Beach headset, and if it weren’t for the extreme discomfort I found with it, I might’ve never entered the market for top dollar cans.  Since the Turtle Beach (DPX21 btw), I’ve owned, auditioned and still keep a number of cans, ranging from Audio...