BE WARNED.
I actually am a big fan of HiFiMan products and the sound quality, however I am not impressed with the current build:
I have come across a serious problem with the HE-500's, in that the gimbal screws are placed into the metal housings of the earpieces with small gold/gold-plated interor fasteners. The second you put any torque on that connection the whole gold connector pops out of the metal on the back of the earpiece and you are then left with a really mechanically unusable/defective set of headphones. These fasteners have a striated or "knurled" surface on them, and once they come out, there is no way that you can reconnect them mechanically. These connectors are set-in at the factory, and once the knurled surface on the interior connector wiggles out of the metal housing of the earpiece, the whole gimbal pops off.
I had them for a few days, very mild use at my computer rig sitting at a desk, always on a headphone stand when not in use. The only real pressure I placed on the headphones was to stretch them over my head to put them on. I am an engineer and do alot of design work, and while the headphones seemed substantial and well-built out of the box, I started noticing some very poor design decisions within a few days of use. The internal connectors used to connect all of the headband/gimbal/earphones all will lead to mechanical failure with minimal applied torque due to their set-in design. Additionally, the pads are connected to the earpieces through the use of 4 very brittle plastic clips which line the inside of each earpiece. While these same type of pads are standard issue for headphones such as the Beyerdynamic DT series it seems strange that such a well regarded and high priced headphone would use such "cheap" parts. Finally, the cord seems to be of fairly low quality in regards to the quality of interconnect and cables I usually use.
Frankly, I am now in the process of returning them and will be buying the Audez'e LCD-2 Rev.2.
