After picking up a pair of Audeze LCD-X, I wanted a neutral amp to drive them with. I looked around in the $200-$500 range and came away with a few choices, and I ended up going with the THX AAA 789 from Drop. If you’ve read prior reviews of mine, you may already know that I primarily work on music with my headphones, so while a pleasant experience is a nice bonus for me, a brutally honest presentation of my music is most important. If my listening chain is making my music sound better than it actually is, I risk stopping work on it when there could be more for me to do in terms of balancing it for playback on other systems. So, with THX’s stunningly low noise and distortion numbers, and the relatively flat sound compared to most of the competition in the price range (according to the research I did, at least), I decided this was the right amp for me. I have to say that I got more than I bargained for.

My first impression of the amp was that it was “fine”. I liked the multiple gain settings for precise volume control. I monitor really quietly, so I use single-ended ins and outs and I’m still around 1/3 volume on gain level one. I liked that it had a nice volume knob with well-matched channels from top to bottom, but the sound didn’t blow me away. I've had the amp almost a year now, and I've added a Schiit Modius as my DAC since getting this amp. And still the thing that I think whenever I sit down and listen to this system is that the sound of this amp and dac, never, ever, wows me. The system really gets out of the way and lets me listen to music, to a fault for most people. If you listen to anything that isn't well recorded and mixed, you may want to look elsewhere. But there is a reason I love this amp...

So, underwhelming first impression out of the way, I kept listening to it in the background as I worked for an afternoon, and then, after a few hours, I took the headphones off and it hit me: I’d been listening for HOURS straight, and my ears didn’t feel it at all. It felt more like I’d been listening for 45 minutes than a few hours. The thing I didn’t hear, but could absolutely feel, was how little distortion there was in the chain now.

I should explain: in pro audio, one of the things that is accepted to determine how much a monitoring system is going to fatigue the listener is how much distortion there is, especially between 1 and 3khz, where the ear is most sensitive. This is such a big deal that, even though 3-way speaker designs are significantly more expensive and don’t offer much, if any, more bandwidth than 2-way designs (since bandwidth is limited more by size than by driver count), they are highly prized over 2-way monitors. Because 3-way setups, even with an extra crossover and more complicated amps, have much lower distortion in that critical frequency range. It comes up in 3-way monitor discussions over and over, and everyone says you have to hear it to believe it. And time after time, people who doubt the cost will be justified use these things and are blown away by how much better their ears feel at the end of a day. Well, I was just blindsided in the same way by a headphone amp. This is the real WOW factor in this amp for me.

So, in summary, the amp sounds fine. It doesn’t make the same difference that a great set of headphones makes, absolutely get your drivers sorted first. And, I wouldn’t expect this to make a huge difference for most people even if you do already have headphones you love. I think if you want a specific sound to your amp, the Drop THX AAA 789 really doesn’t bring any character to the table. But, what it did do for me is take a headphone that already is easy on the ears in long sessions and make it even gentler on my ears, and give me the slightest bit more detail while it was at it. For my purposes, that’s A-OK.

I’m writing my second headphone review this month. The first was for the Audeze LCD-1, which impressed me enough to pick up an older pair of Audeze LCD-X. I will attempt to make some comparison of the two, as well as pit the LCD-X against my longtime daily use Hifiman HE-400i. I had the LCD-1 for a week on a loaner tour recently, but still those comparisons will have to come from memory alone. Further, to get to know the LCD-X as fast as I can so that I can trust them to make critical mastering decisions (more about why I use headphones for that later), I re-mastered a key album for me that I know inside and out, and I was able to take away a few key points about this headphone from that, so of course I’ll cover that experience as well.

First, let’s talk build, presentation, and packaging. For me, the Audeze LCD-X are everything I want in a headphone in terms of packaging and accessories. They come in a ruggedized carrying case in which I would have no problem transporting the headphones. They also come with two long sets of cables with sturdy connectors at both ends (balanced and single-ended). The headphones themselves are very solidly built. Especially impressive is anywhere these headphones move, it feels fantastic. The headphone height adjustment is very solid and can even be locked in place, while the swivel and tilt of the earpieces is at the exact opposite end of the spectrum, entirely smooth and effortless. Don’t worry, the earpieces, even left hanging in air, are too heavy to move around much. I have similarly priced synthesizers, and the materials choice and build quality of these headphones resemble what I’ve come to expect from road-worthy instruments. The relatively simple construction of a few high quality parts also means these can be maintained for years to come, which is something I like to see in anything I buy, and is something I’d expect for studio-grade equipment.

The only concern I’ve had with my pair is that the small triangular piece where the cable attaches to the right earpiece has come loose once since I got these, and come a few millimeters out of the shell. I just pushed it back in and make sure not to strain the cable on that side of my head. It hasn’t caused any issues that I’m aware of and has not come loose again. I don’t hold this against Audeze as this is a used headphone, and it was shipped across most of North America to get to me, so perhaps temperature change played a part in moving some parts a bit (I believe these are aluminum, and aluminum can expand and contract substantially with relatively minor temperature changes). So they’re almost perfect in terms of build quality, but not 100%.

And then there’s the matter of comfort. I’ve rushed the process as much as I can, but I’m still getting used to the LCD-Xs and the biggest thing I need to adjust to is the weight. These are far and away the heaviest headphone I have ever worn, and the old headband design puts a lot of that weight on the center of my head. I’ve worn worse, but the LCD-X are really fighting physics trying to make a pound of extra weight over your head and neck comfortable. I find I need to adjust them every half hour or so and take them off every few hours. This isn’t terrible for me as that’s just good hearing protection anyways. If I worked in a studio, they’d recommend 10 minutes not working with sound every hour to maintain good hearing all day, and I find that I can only work for about an hour to 90 minutes and make accurate decisions anyways. Still, if you enjoy marathon listening sessions, you may need to make some adjustments or try the newer headband (at $200, I’m seriously considering it).

So, after a page about the headphones, I can finally begin to describe their sound. In a word, these headphones are wildly flat for a hugely broad range of frequencies. I thought my Hifiman HE-400i were pretty flat, but the LCD-X just go so much deeper (roughly an extra octave and a half in musical terms), lose any trace of midrange color, and go flat right out of my hearing range. By comparison, the Hifimans sound positively sweet and syrupy. The soundstage is very precise, but not extremely large (the Hifimans are noticeably larger, but nowhere near as precise). It is large enough to make mix decisions on, and precise enough to make them well. That flat frequency response and lack of color is brutally revealing of any deficiencies in my work that slipped through on the Hifimans. Going back and listening to my work that has been done since starting with the Hifimans, I only heard about 25% that I wouldn’t go back and change something on now if I could. So after a pretty gut-wrenching reality check of my work as a first impression of the LCD-X, I left them alone for a couple of days.

When I picked them back up it was to watch some youtube from a presenter who’s voice I’m pretty familiar with. I’ve watched videos of his off and on for about 8 years, and on every audio system I’ve had (which I wasn’t thinking about at the time, but it happens to mean it would make a good test to suss out differences in gear). Until the first time I used Hifimans (my first planars), I only ever heard the voice coming from in front of his face, but the 400i let me hear the words forming inside his mouth, if that makes any sense. The Audeze LCD-X took me even deeper and I felt like I could hear all the way into his lungs, through the vocal tract, and out of his mouth. And the LCD-X is like that with everything. I’ve heard articulation on guitar strings on this level from Grados, I’ve heard drums like this in the Hifiman Ananda, and I’m sure with more experience I could find other headphones this detailed at their specific instrument. But again, the Audeze LCD-X is like that, for everything, all the time.

Another thing that I mentioned briefly earlier is how broad these headphones go, and I feel the best way to explain that is with a listening experience I had while playing background music during work today (from home, these aren’t an office headphone for me!). I have a playlist of motown, funk, and soul songs that stretches from the 60s to the 80s, and this is a great way to hear the evolution of studio tape. Normally, a jump of a few decades (say from the Four Tops in the 60s to Earth Wind and Fire in the 80s) is mostly audible in terms of noise level and distortion on every other headphone I’ve ever heard (LCD-1 included). With the LCD-X, the first thing you notice is the bandwidth of the tape. How much top and bottom are rolled off? Even the noise that sneaks through gives you an indication of this, and I think that it’s only possible for that to be the most jarring part of the transition because of how flat these headphones are over the full human hearing range.

So how does it compare the LCD-1? To put it as simply as I can, the LCD-X are the LCD-1, but more. More frequencies, more dynamics, more detail, with slightly less coloration - not a night and day difference here, more something I feel than I hear, especially in the bass. Less portability and comfort too. And about 3 or 4 times the price ( when purchased new, which I don’t necessarily recommend when you’re buying studio gear that’s designed to last decades, but that’s a separate conversation). I stand by what I said in my LCD-1 review, it really is as good as you’ve heard. The LCD-X works better for me because I needed a definitive step up from a pair of headphones that was already on that level, not a sidegrade, and I couldn’t get past the presentation of dynamics in the LCD-1. There is still something to get used to in the LCD-X, but it is worth the effort for me. This is because I’m working on music, semi-seriously, out of my bedroom, and I do not have space to set up studio monitors and acoustically treat my room. Nor do I want the downtime and wild swings in quality that would come from me moving from the world of headphones I know to the world of monitors in a room that I have almost zero experience with. And I know for a fact I will be moving at least once in the next year or two, and probably again within a few years after that. So tying my ability to critically listen, mix, and master to a specific physical location doesn’t make much sense for me, and I’d rather spend quality studio monitor money on a set of headphones that can go with me wherever I go for the foreseeable future. Odds are that doesn’t make sense for most audiophiles, but it does for me.

So, at the top of this review, I mentioned that I’d re-worked some old material to get to know the sound of the headphones more quickly. This was actually a very enlightening experience, unlike when I pitted the LCD-1 against my HE-400i. This time, however, my process was different. I used the LCD-X to re-master IDMf 050, which was the third album I ever worked on. At the time, being selected to do that album was a big deal for me, as it was the first time I knew for a fact that I was chosen over someone I felt was likely more qualified to do the work because I was just a better engineer to work with, so I really pulled out all the stops to do everything I could for that album on my trusty Hifimans. People were 99% happy with that album, but a few people said it could be louder, so I wondered if I could use the LCD-X to push these songs a bit harder and trust them to tell me when to stop. I’m still waiting for feedback from the original producers and some of the artists on that album, but I feel that the extremely flat, detailed nature of the LCD-X did allow me to improve on my previous work, and I have a few specific examples of how.

About mid-way through on remastering the album, I got to a track by Jazzyspoon called “This Time”, which is one of the more technically challenging to master on the album because of an absolutely massive and complex snare sound that pushes against the limiter, which is normally what the kick is doing in other songs. In my previous time working on this album, I would have put a limiter just kissing the peaks of this snare and said that’s as loud as the track gets to be. But since last I worked on this track, I’ve gotten more comfortable pushing limiters to get tracks louder (which as distasteful as it may be to some is still pretty important for a lot of electronic music). And with the LCD-X, I could hear very clearly when I was pushing the limiter too hard. In fact, I realized something in the middle of working on that track about the LCD-X that gave me a lot of confidence and helped me finish the second half of the album twice as fast as the first
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If I can’t hear it, 99.9% of systems in the world won’t be able to play it back, and I don’t think ANY of my audience will be able to hear it.

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For the first time in my music career, I realized that I don’t have to second guess the resolution of my monitoring system and overcome that with safety margins and good metering. I can trust the LCD-X to make the tiniest practical mix and master decisions. And if there is a difference there, the LCD-X will tell me. Simple as that. And, unless someone else who has a pair of LCD-X is sitting there listening to the music I work on with an equalizer, soloing out small bands and listening to specific frequencies, they will never be physically able to hear what I hear. I can push a multiband limiter a bit, hide the artifacts this creates inside the music, and know that even if I tell people I’m doing that, there’s not many (probably 1% of 1%) who will be able to hear it. And personally, I don't think many of those people are listening to house or IDM.

The other thing that these headphones did for me while re-working this album was help me, the mastering engineer who was supposed to hear everything on the album, hear everything on the album. There were multiple instances where I heard new layers and instruments in the mixes (or realized their importance for the first time), and it changed the way I approached working on the tracks to help bring those tiny details out for everyone else. This isn’t differences of one tenth of a db between masters like when I compared the Hfiman HE-400i to the Audeze LCD-1. No, these are decisions that can utterly change how a song is perceived, like bringing out an acoustic guitar layer in “This Time” that I didn’t hear before, or finding a harmonica in the closing track “Early Morning Anthem” by Vlantis. These realizations changed what I did substantially to bring out the various elements of these mixes, and meant pushing other, more prominent layers back, rather than further emphasizing them. This is not minor stuff, and it’s why I ended up with a test group of 15 songs from different artists around the world to get to know these headphones.

Unfortunately, I don’t want to link you before/after comparisons of these tracks because I don’t have the label’s permission to release the new versions, but you can find the old versions of the tracks here:



The album is well worth a listen if you’re into experimental electronica/IDM.

So in summary, the price is high, they leave my head sore after a few hours, and I now hate some tracks of mine that I used to love. But, in exchange for that, I get complete confidence in the work I am doing now and for the foreseeable future, regardless of where I end up working. That’s all I really wanted out of a headphone. I expected that I would end up disliking some of my prior work in a new, higher resolution light. I knew the price going in and agreed to pay it, so I can’t knock Audeze for that either. The only thing I don’t like is some aspects of the comfort in long sessions. It’s not a lack of effort on Audeze’s part to make these comfortable, it’s just a heavy headphone, and you have to get used to that. I hope I do, because other than the weight/comfort, these are a 5-star headphone for me.

Today, I’m writing a review of the new Audeze LCD-1, their entry-level (for Audeze) high sensitivity planar magnetic headphone for audiophiles and audio producers (like me) alike. My primary point of comparison is another moderately priced planar headphone from Hifiman, the HE-400i, which has been my daily driver for my production work the past few years. I was about to start saving for a pair of Audeze LCD-Xs when Todd announced this review tour. I was interested in getting a taste of the Audeze house sound before spending four figures on a pair of headphones. And I figured if they were good enough, I might buy the LCD-1 instead and save some money. Huge thanks to Todd the Vinyl Junkie for including me on this review tour. The headphones were sent to me for one week, during which I did some media consumption (Youtube), passive listening (neither of which I have much to say about except that the LCD-1 was fine for both), and put the LCD-1 head to head against my HE 400i in mastering (I mastered the same songs on both headphones, to see how, if at all, the headphones affected my work, more detail on this later in the review). I was not compensated in any way other than having that informative time with the LCD-1.

The first thing that struck me about the headphones as I pulled them out of the box was how small they were. These headphones fold (which I wasn’t aware of), and they get smaller than my Sennheiser HD 280 Pro, which is my portable headphone. Unfolding them, I thought these were supra-aural instead of circum-aural headphones, the earpieces were so small. It turns out that my ears do fit inside the pads, though it’s a smaller space than I’m used to for a circum-aural design. For point of reference, I have the aforementioned Hifimans and Sennheisers, as well as the AKG Q701in my full-size headphone stable. So, I’m used to larger headphones it seems, but as I said my ears fit in the LCD-1s as well. All this smallness also makes the headphones much lighter than what I’m used to for a planar headphone. On the whole, this thing exudes portability, from the build to the included extras (a carrying case and neat-o reversible cable terminating in 3.5mm TRS) and, as I would find later, the efficiency.

On the subject of build, then, this headphone surprised me. The LCD-1, is solidly built, but it’s a lot of plastic to keep the weight down. It’s some of the best plastic I’ve ever seen, though. Better still, this goes away the second you put them on, as no plastic was ever touching me. The center of the headband is a flexible, semi-rubbery material that moves with the metal (I assume steel) headband housed inside of it. The headband adjustment, is solid and very well hidden. The headband does a great job of clamping the earcups to your head firmly enough that they don’t move around once you have them on. Even pressing on the earcups and moving them around a bit was smoother, quieter, and felt better than my Hifimans. The build was not what I expected (in terms of so much plastic) coming from Hifimans, but it was still very good in its own way.

At last, on to sound then. My first impression of the sound coming out of the LCD-1, after plugging them in to the same Schiit Fulla 2 as my Hifimans with the same volume setting, was LOUD. They weren’t kidding when they said these were efficient. After cutting the volume setting significantly, I could make some like-for-like comparisons. The LCD-1 was much brighter (unpleasantly so for me). More detail and texture from top to bottom, but I felt I couldn’t hear as deep into a mix. The soundstage was very narrow in comparison to the 400i, but much more precise in that narrow field. I felt I couldn’t hear or feel as much dynamics, and that everything was squashed flat. In short, I respected the detail, but I didn’t like it - It was a shock and awe assault on my hearing, coming from the Hifiman HE-400i. However, for mixing purposes, liking something isn’t the arbiter of whether it’s any good, it’s the results that it gives you. I could tell there was something in all this sound, so I was very curious how they fared doing work.

I ended up mastering the same two tracks on each headphone to see if they made a difference in my results. I took two representative tracks from IDMforums release 058: Open House (available here: ). I took a track by RFJ called “Four by Afternoon” and “city at worlds end” called “neolite 21+”. The first is a very rich, full track with instruments masking each other a bit, while the second is a more laid-back house track with deep throbbing bass. I chose these two because I still have the unmastered files and they represent a good portion of the kind of songs I’d work on. Doing the RFJ track first, I used the Audeze LCD-1. I found that the bass end of that headphone pulled out much more detail than I expected. There are things I do in the bass region that I can only feel on the Hifiman HE-400i that I could hear clear as day on the LCD. However, the narrow soundstage and lack of dynamics reared their heads later in the process, and I found I was not as sure about decisions I was making when it came to compression and limiting especially. After mastering that same track on both headphones, the masters sounded very similar, but I thought this might be because I had heard the bass on the LCDs and therefore could make better decisions on the bass, even with my HE-400i. So, I decided to call it a night, and master city at worlds end’s track the next day, using the Hifiman first.

With city at worlds end’s track, I used the Hifiman first and indeed I was not as sure about what was happening in the bass. However, when I pulled out the Audeze for the same track, I found that I had landed on the setting that sounded best on the LCD-1s, even though I could barely hear it on the Hifimans. Again, I was not as sure of myself in the compression on the LCD-1s, but I found I was getting used to the soundstage and preferred them when making decisions regarding stereo width. Again though, playing back both sets of masters on both headphones, they were shockingly similar, almost like the same engineer had worked on both sets of recordings….

But I knew there were some differences, I had made both and I knew I’d made different choices with each headphone, no matter how small. I wasn’t expecting a fundamental shift in my sound - I have a sound that I like, I know how to achieve it. Really, the headphones are so similar, they were only telling me different things about to what degree I should be making changes in the sound, but not what changes. For instance, with both headphones I had similar boosts and cuts in EQ, but the Q factor and gain of the individual bands, as well as their exact center frequencies, varied slightly from headphone to headphone. Listening back again on the LCD-1 and HE400i, as well as some other headphones, if I could pick out the slightest difference in my work between the two, it would be that the LCD-1 masters seemed a bit tighter in the bass region, and a bit more open in the top end. But this is minor stuff, I doubt a client would catch the differences. It took me a week of getting to know the headphones to figure out what was different. I put all 4 of the finished tracks into Mastering the Mix Expose to get a look at their levels, and in both cases the LCD master came out .1-.3 LUFS louder, with perhaps .1 db less of dynamic range. Notice those are all changes across an entire mix, of one tenth of a db. No major differences according to the main loudness measurements I use, then.

I thought I didn’t like the Audeze house sound, my first impressions were of a detailed, but overly bright headphone for long-term use for me. However, I have to say the sound has grown on me, and I miss that detail in my Hifimans now. I was listening back to some recent work last night, and I found myself saying “Have my Hifimans always been so dark?”. I’m not convinced that the LCD-1s are the right headphone for me, because I still haven’t gotten past what I feel are slightly compressed or hyped dynamics. Probably just me not being used to smaller over-ear headphones, but not something I want to get used to either. That said, I did find what I think is a killer deal on a used set of LCD-Xs that I did purchase. They arrived today, and I intend to say something on them soon-ish, and will probably end up comparing them to the LCD-1. I have some idea of what to expect while I get used to them, and I still see a place in my lineup for the Hifimans for at least a few months (if not longer - I keep around a set of Grados that get taken out about twice a year). What I learned with the LCD-1 combined with the stellar studio reputation of the LCD-X gave me the confidence to make my biggest headphone purchase yet, and I thank Todd again for giving me the chance to find this out.

If you’re on the fence about the LCD-1, I think it’s worth a listen for more casual listeners. I imagine you will hear new detail revealed in your tracks, especially if they’re your first planars. If these are just your first Audeze, I think you’re in for a different take on the planar sound, and if you can keep an open mind for a day or two, you’ll find them an enlightening listen. To me, the mark of a really good piece of gear is if it can change the way you hear everything else. For me, my first real headphones did this, then my first open backed headphones, then my first planar headphones, and now my first Audeze. I didn’t agree at first, but now I think they might be as good as everyone seems to say.

I was selected to be on the Ananda loaner tour for North America and jumped at the chance to try them. I wanted to see whether the Ananda could replace my daily driver HE-400is or perhaps complement them in my music workflow. I’ve had a month with the headphones and was offered a discount on a new set if I wanted to purchase them after the tour in exchange for my honest opinion. Read on to find out whether I’ll be taking Hifiman up on that offer!

The Hifiman Ananda is a high-end headphone from, of course, Hifiman. I am a regular user of their HE 400i headphones. This review will examine the Ananda on some of its own listening strengths as well as comparing the sound to the HE-400i. First some background is in order so that you understand how I’m going to be judging these headphones. I’m an amateur musician, producer, and mastering engineer, and I’ve used the Hifiman HE-400i headphones as my primary monitoring solution for the past 3 years with excellent results for my own music as well as others’. I make and primarily work on electronic music and especially experimental electronic music (think Aphex Twin, Orbital, etc). Because I have a day job and most of my time spent listening to music is spent critiquing either my own work or someone similar, I do not have very much time to listen to music for pleasure anymore. We’re talking maybe once or twice a month I can set aside a few hours and break out my fun headphones or pull out my vinyl collection. When I do, my tastes range widely from classical into jazz, rock/metal/punk from the 60s to the present day (check out Amyl and the Sniffers and thank me later), with funk, soul, some early hip-hop, and of course a large variety of electronic music (including chiptunes, which I feel bears special mention). And I got a chance to play a little of all these on the Ananda. That said, though, 95% of the time I have headphones on it is to work on music, not listen passively, so I will be judging the Ananda from this view as well as from a casual listener’s view.

I’ll start with build and presentation before going into the sound. The boxes that Hifiman use for all their headphones are very nice and nearly the same, but Hifiman does up the ante a bit for their higher end models. The standard Hifiman box is a sturdy box wrapped in leather (or something like it) and with a soft top that has the Hifiman name and logo screened on it. The headphones come packed in foam cut to shape for the headphones and all their accessories. The Anandas come in a box much like my HE-400is, but the Anandas get a crushed velvet interior over the normal foam and the headphone’s name screened directly onto the box, which is enough to make you feel special. The Anandas come with plenty of cabling options with 3 sets of cables in the same reasonable size, one terminating in straight quarter inch plug, and two with straight and 90-dgree 3.5mm plugs. Everything is branded Neutrik and while they are not the prettiest cables I’ve ever seen, they are of the best quality I’ve seen included with a headphone.

I love the look of the headphones themselves. I don’t have a great description of what it is about them or why, but I think they look the part of a $1000 headphone. That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself. However, I can add that the paint is a noticeable step up over my HE-400is and they are probably much easier to keep clean as there’s no chrome finish to attract fingerprints. I have only one complaint in regards to the physical design of this headphone, and that is the unadjustable headband. I have a small head, most adjustable headbands I bring only one click out from closed, if that. Here, my ears fit in the earcups fine, but after about 20 minutes I realized that there was no clamping force on the sides of my head at all and the full weight of the headphone was resting on the top of my head. In this way, they’re similar to my AKG Q701s, but the Anandas weigh significantly more. This is a disappointment for me because these weigh around as much as the HE-400i in my hands, but I can wear the 400i for hours before my head hurts (my ears will need a break before my head does), but the Anandas were hurting my head in about half an hour. . I’m sure this isn’t a problem for most users, but I also know it isn’t a problem for me with a different product from the same company, so I can’t avoid mentioning it.

The first thing that jumped out at me in a good way when I put on the Anandas was the bass. For electronic music, these headphones are very, very good. If I hadn’t heard the HE-400i before this set of headphones, I’d call the bass a revelation. The bass doesn’t go as deep as the 400i, and it rolls off faster than the 400i too, but believe me when I say you aren’t missing out on what these headphones fail to pick up and what they do present is the best bass I’ve ever heard, full stop. Most of the sound below 40 hz is just mud that isn’t well controlled in most mixes, so by having the headphone focus less on that it brings much more clarity to the midbass, and that is where these headphones shine. In comparison, the 400i goes deeper, so you do get more frequencies, but they are never as controlled as on the Ananda and picking up frequencies so low can pick up mistakes left in the mix by an engineer working on a lesser system.

From there, we’ll move up the frequency range where the Aananda has a pleasant, musical boost in the midrange that seems to bring out the attack on individual notes better and puts a bit more space around individual instruments up to around 1khz. The 400i is much flatter through here and has less space around the instruments but seems to have slightly more soundstage overall. I’d say the Ananda is a forward headphone, voiced close to the stage, where the 400i is voiced sitting middle of the hall for a more neutral presentation.

Then we come to the treble where the Ananda again has a pleasant boost and the HE 400i does not. But here, I think the Ananda goes a bit far and suffers for it (and this is the weakest part of the headphone for me). I already said this is a headphone voiced close to the music, so it lacks somewhat in soundstage, but the boost in higher frequencies adds to that, overfilling the remaining space around your head. Worse, while the boost in the midrange feels like it brings out detail and attack, the treble feels like it becomes less defined and blurs the instruments above around 3khz together. The timing accuracy remains great, though.

It’s not bad by any stretch of imagination. In fact, I didn’t find a single track where this headphone sounded bad, even tracks that I know sound harsh with the boosted treble on my Grados. I even did a good portion of my listening on YouTube, and there the compression artefacts on the audio were less noticeable and the music was more musical. I just found myself wishing it was more like the bass all the way up through the rest of the frequencies, tight, defined, and smooth. The headphone is smooth all the way from top to bottom, but not as smooth as the HE 400i because of the slight boosts in the midrange and treble. The headphone is tight from top to bottom in the timing domain, but the frequencies become looser and less defined in the treble region.

For most of the review, I drove the Anandas off my daily driver Schiit Fulla v1. I know better can be had in the world of amps and dacs, but for something that is so small and so quick and easy to hook up, has no warmup time, and that I can cheaply replace if anything happens to it, nothing beats it. I had no desire to try running the Anandas directly out of my laptop or PC as I know the direct outs on both are tuned for gaming and so aren’t much fun to listen to. The Fulla did a fine job, but I wanted to try the Ananda with tubes before I sent it on to see if that helped with my criticisms of the treble. I broke out my Schiit Vali 2 for the first time in months and warmed it up, ran it out of my Modi (I’m still rocking the original) and gave the tube sound a spin. For my Grados and AKGs, tubes take the edge off and make those headphones a lot better, and I thought that meant tubes would pull back the treble on the Ananda. Unfortunately, tubes actually made cymbals on the Ananda go from forward to outright screechy. Everything got more defined, so instrument separation in the top end was a bit better, but the mid-range and treble also developed a harsh etch or edge to them. The tubes also pulled out a bit of that bass I loved so much. This had me stopping or skipping songs that were just unlistenable for the first time with this headphone. My HE-400is don’t like tubes either, I only tried them with the Vali 2 once and that was enough. They behaved similarly to the Anandas if memory serves. My guess is that the drivers behave differently with tubes than dynamic drivers do and maybe a higher quality tube amp can give these drivers what they need, but if you like me just want the tube sound sometimes and have one cheaper tube amp to try, skip it with the Anandas. It could also be that the drivers just expose any weaknesses in amp design and reminds us of why so many manufacturers stick to similar designs, but I don’t have a large enough sampling of amps to try and determine that.

None of this is a problem if you’re looking to listen to some music for fun (the treble isn’t bad, it’s just not AS GOOD AS the amazing bass), especially anything electronic. Just don’t use tubes. For the purposes of this review (a pleasure listening headphone), it’s a 4-star headphone (one star off for the unadjustable headband). But I said my personal goal was to see if this could replace a known good headphone in a studio environment focused primarily on critical listening. On that front, I can’t use this headphone – because it’s too good. The HE-400i is a neutral headphone, but most importantly it punishes bad mixes. The Ananda was less pleasing on material I knew had mix issues, but it was always fun to listen to it on the proper equipment. If I replace my HE-400is with Anandas, I’ll probably love my music more than I ever have, but I will not be able to make it sound good for everyone who doesn’t have a pair of Anandas laying around. This doesn’t impact my rating of the headphone in the slightest because Hifiman doesn’t advertise these as studio monitors (neither do they advertise the HE-400i as such, it just happens that that headphone is tuned just right for the job). But I did say I’d let you know if I would buy them. I need something more brutally honest with me, and the Anandas are not it, as much as I may love listening to the deepest of deep house on them.