[richard51]

  Good news for me! I found a nice deal on some used HE-400s. They look flawless and come with a 3ft silver coated cable (didn't mention maker but looks like its high quality) and what looks like velour earpads. Thanks to everyone who helped me out on what to purchase! Can't wait to get them and try em out.
 
(img of the cable if someone wants to help me ID it, was supposed to be a link, but I guess headfi auto embeds images.) it) 

You are lucky.... The he 400 is an awesome piece of gear..... I had the stax basic model and i prefer the he 400 with the Ember amp + 6ns7 tube.....Half the price for a more 3d sound.....

 

[BeBop Lives]

  Good news for me! I found a nice deal on some used HE-400s. They look flawless and come with a 3ft silver coated cable (didn't mention maker but looks like its high quality) and what looks like velour earpads. Thanks to everyone who helped me out on what to purchase! Can't wait to get them and try em out.
 
(img of the cable if someone wants to help me ID it, was supposed to be a link, but I guess headfi auto embeds images.) it) 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/121176877296?lpid=82&chn=ps

 

[htr2d2]

  Good news for me! I found a nice deal on some used HE-400s. They look flawless and come with a 3ft silver coated cable (didn't mention maker but looks like its high quality) and what looks like velour earpads. Thanks to everyone who helped me out on what to purchase! Can't wait to get them and try em out.
 
(img of the cable if someone wants to help me ID it, was supposed to be a link, but I guess headfi auto embeds images.) it)

Congratulations!

 

[Sam21]

which earpad do you recommend ? Focus, velour or leather ? and why ? thanks.

 

[jimjims]

 
Congratulations!

Thanks!
 
 

  http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/121176877296?lpid=82&chn=ps

I was looking at that one earlier, but the jack + headphone twisty things aren't quite the same.
 
After asking around on another site, most people agreed it was one of the HE 500 stock cables (depending on when you bought it).
Wish it was a 3rd party cable, but I can't complain! Won't have to buy a shorter one now.
Thanks for looking into it for me though!
 
 
 

 
You are lucky.... The he 400 is an awesome piece of gear..... I had the stax basic model and i prefer the he 400 with the Ember amp + 6ns7 tube.....Half the price for a more 3d sound.....

I'm excited to try em out! Im in the market for an amp+dac but that ember amp looks too pricy for me right now unfortunately. hopefully one day I'll own a sweet tube setup, but that won't be for a while.

 

[BVOX810]

I absolutely adore my he-400s. They are by far my favorite cans I own. I absolutely love the soundstage on them. I have one small minor complaint. I really wish that if there was anything I could fix is that I wish that natural punchy tight bass was slightly more emphasized. Does anyone reccomennd perhaps an eq or maybe a specific amp to drive these bad lads. Also slightly off topic but, would some of you consider the lcd-2's to have a pretty similar soundscape compared to the 400's except a massive upgrade?

 

[money4me247]

  which earpad do you recommend ? Focus, velour or leather ? and why ? thanks.

focus or velour, strictly for comfort reasons.
 
i personally did not hear that big of a difference in sound quality with pad swapping

 

[520RanchBro]

  focus or velour, strictly for comfort reasons.
 
i personally did not hear that big of a difference in sound quality with pad swapping

I agree with this 100%
 
I use the Focus As, I'm assuming both are about the same comfort-wise. Way comfier than the pleathers though, that's for sure.
 
 
I've had my 400s for about three months now and I still love them. They perform exceedingly well for any music I'm in the mood for. From jazz to death metal. In iRiver I boost the 60 and 170 hz bands by 3 and 2db respectively, boost the mids by about 2-3db across and lower the 14 and 16khz bands by about 2 db. Sometimes I keep the treble higher, depends on what I'm listening to and how long the session is. EQ isn't super necessary for me though. Listening to vinyl still gives me enjoyable, non-fatiguing listening without any EQ.

 

[thewind32]

  I have now tried focuspads for one week, velour one week and pleather for one week, because I guess your ears take some time to adjust. Trying them for a week makes the differences much more audible than  A/B them quickly. Took me a week to realize, the focuspads are godsent for the he-400.The problem is they cost 40 bucks haha. They seem to attain the treble detail without destroying your ear like the velour.  I still like velour most for best recorded source files because of the increase in treble. 
 
Pleather
Darkest sound, romantic sound, but not so defined
Most forgiving
Least aggressive treble but very high treble peak and least sibilant of the 3
Vocals sounds ODD, sounds like singing in a cave or something
Least bass impact, but most subbass
Smallest soundstage
For some reason they sound quite addictive, but the vocals are quite odd, they have some sort of bloom to them.
This might be placebo, but I feel pleather has the most decay.
 
Focuspads
TL;DR: It sounds straight up like hifiman combined the velour and pleather
WIll get you closest to HE-500 with velour.
Finally some decent female vocals!
Forgiving of bad source files, its between the pleather and velour
Vocals most forward, I think this is as good as vocals gets on the he-400 
You thought stock pleather bass was good? This improves on it a lot.
Least treble spike
Sibilant, but not as much a velour
Best imaging, size of the soundstage is between the pleather and velour
Combines the awesome punchy bass of the pleather and the improved mid/highs of the velour
Best mids of all 3
IMO sounds most linear of all 3
 
Velour
Most treble, sounds best of all 3 with good quality recordings
Least forgiving of bad source material
HOLY **** its so sibilant ***! 
Bass decay so damn quick
Most visceral of all 3
Biggest soundstage
Most bass impact, you feel it on your jaw bone
Least sub bass and low bass
Really fun for movie watching
Sounds most like a speaker
The velour makes the he-400 sound like the younger brother of the LCD-X and HE-6.
Best for electronic music

 

  focus or velour, strictly for comfort reasons.
 
i personally did not hear that big of a difference in sound quality with pad swapping

@Sam21
 
I quoted one (of many) comparisons between the pads for your convenience.
 
I agree totally with the comfort aspect. I recently switched (finally) from pleather to focus (non-A). While comfort wasn't really an issue for me with the pleathers, sometimes I could feel my spectacles frame digging into my head. Of course, it would vary on different types of specs and head size etc, but the focus had a clear improvement. I didn't do any blind testing between the 2 pads, and can't really tell any dramatic changes in terms of sound.
 
However, the inner diameter of the focus is smaller than the pleather. While my ears can fit in the focus pads, it has to be way more precise than when I used the pleathers, and sometimes still touches the inner edges. So you might want to take note of that.
 
Finally, here's another comparison of the pleather, velour and jergpads (which the focus pads were based on). http://cdn.head-fi.org/0/0b/0bc8d6b9_descriptiveinfograph.png

 

[Oregonian]

I absolutely adore my he-400s. They are by far my favorite cans I own. I absolutely love the soundstage on them. I have one small minor complaint. I really wish that if there was anything I could fix is that I wish that natural punchy tight bass was slightly more emphasized. Does anyone reccomennd perhaps an eq or maybe a specific amp to drive these bad lads. Also slightly off topic but, would some of you consider the lcd-2's to have a pretty similar soundscape compared to the 400's except a massive upgrade?

I ran them out of a vintage Pioneer desktop amp and with the loudness the bass was incredible. 

 

[MrMateoHead]

I absolutely adore my he-400s. They are by far my favorite cans I own. I absolutely love the soundstage on them. I have one small minor complaint. I really wish that if there was anything I could fix is that I wish that natural punchy tight bass was slightly more emphasized. Does anyone reccomennd perhaps an eq or maybe a specific amp to drive these bad lads. Also slightly off topic but, would some of you consider the lcd-2's to have a pretty similar soundscape compared to the 400's except a massive upgrade?

The EQ thing has been beaten to death in this thread . . . do some searching and you should find many discussions and images of EQ settings.
 
The best bass I've gotten from these is with modded pleather pads + a parabolic boost centered at 50hz with a very wide Q. More "weight" without losing texture or the general punchiness. Modding the pleathers is simple and Jerg provided a great guide to it. The $10 velours still sound the best overall, but made a few trade offs of their own.
 
Using an amp with these is very worthwhile. The HE-400 do scale somewhat with more power / better DACs and I did detect a slightly faster/stronger bass from having an amp (I use an O2). But I have a hard time believing you need to spend more than about $100 to get them cranking and sounding great.

 

[MrMateoHead]

BTW -
 
Has anyone looked at the mesh of the Focus-A pads and compared it to the pleathers/velours? Pretty obvious that the mesh is thicker pleather / velour. Just wondering about that.

 

[bbieringer]

HE-400 vs. Fidelio X2?

 

[Dragonmilenario]

O.k. I.m finally decided to buy a pair of FocusPad for HE-400.
 
So... ¿FocusPad-A or FocusPad? For me the most important thing is to improve the sound with this pads.

 

[ninjames]

Been away from my headphones for awhile, as I sold my HE-400 and my Magni + Modi ... now I got the HE-400 back but am wondering what amp/DAC I should get.
 
I kinda missed the Fulla talk. Is it not good? Not a good pairing for the HE-400? What about the Magni 2?