**Hifiman HE-400 Impressions and Discussion Thread** - Page 20

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattTCG 

 

For me, a cable change on the he400 made a significant difference. It definitely changed the sound signature. I happen to like the change. Both my cables (he400&d2k) are just to thick, heavy and inflexible. I bought a cable made by Chris_himself and I'm really appreciating the physical differences. Chris's cables are featherlite and very flexible. Also I made mine shorter for convenience.  Just makes for a more enjoyable experience all around IMO.

 

Well, yours was the jump from copper to silver, so, yes, that would make a huge sound signature change.  I'm not sure I want to change the signature quite so severely as Silver.  The Silver was more under consideration for HD650. 

At first you thought you lost bass with the velour.  What made you change your mind?

Just got my HE-400s and first thing I noticed is wow! these are solid! they are a good deal heavier than I expected (not that I knew what to expect). 

So far they sound great. I would definitely agree that the bass is only present in called for amounts. I was trying out my friend's beats the day before and the he400s bass sounds so much cleaner.  I did swap the velour pads on quite early on, so I didn't get a good comparison between the pleather and velour. Jon Schmidt's "All of Me" on piano sounds amazing on these. I'm still getting used to having such a nice soundstage!

I really have to listen to the HE-400 some day to see what everyone is talking about. 

Their bass is clearly heard and vaguely felt even before putting them on your head, so I could see the velour pads not affecting bass much.  Deeper cups are always a plus for me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TMRaven 

Their bass is clearly heard and vaguely felt even before putting them on your head, so I could see the velour pads not affecting bass much.  Deeper cups are always a plus for me.

Yeah it's quite amazing, physically a very different bass compared to dynamic driver headphones.

Makes me really want to have an LCD-2.  Eventually I'll get one whenever they give it an aluminum frame-- if they ever do.

In case no one has read it in the other thread, Tyll posted the measurements for the HE-400 on his site, the chart pretty much is what I expected spare some high THD+N at 100db, but I never listen that loud so not really my concern.

http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/HiFiMANHE400.pdf

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattTCG 

 

Wait, I thought that cable was silver...no?

Blue Dragon IS "a high purity copper conductor using the Ohno Continuous Casting Process. It has the same geometry structure as the Silver Dragon Version 3 only it uses UP-OCC pure copper"

Black Dragon IS "a 4 x 21.5AWG Teflon insulated stranded conductors using pure single crystallized UP-OCC pure copper with 7N purity 99.99998%."

Silver Dragon IS "4 x 99.99998% UP-OCC Stranded Silver 24AWG Teflon insulated stranded conductors"

I never heard Black or Silver Dragon but read a review (can't remember where since it all happened more than a year ago) where reviewer  had all three cables and tried them with HD650, HD800 and some other headphones and said at the end that he prefers Blue Dragon for HD650 so when someone posted in for sale forum that he selling barely used (about 30 hours) Blue Dragon cable 30% cheaper than directly from Moon Audio i immediatelly pulled the trigger and never regret it.I'm also thinking about recabling my D7000 but didn't find yet any comparison between stock, Lawton Audio or any other cable.

As i already said in previous post i have NO external AMP so my experience is different but as soon as i connected it i noticed some improvement in bass depth and about after extra 20 hours i noticed that treble distortin i had on some recordings was gone plus overall sound over entire frequency range was smooth and refined so i'm considering to contact Drew and ask if they deal with Denons.

I've got the Black Dragon on my HD650's and really enjoy it. It opened them up a bit across the range but they've ben on for so long that I really don't remember what the stock cable was like.  I did have the HD25's with the Silver Dragon IEM v1 and it was really nice.  Tried the silver on the HD650's and it was awful. Lost all bass impact and sounded very hollow.

For the HE-400, I wanted to go a different route and went with the Q cable.  This cable is so light you don't even know it's there.  I really disliked the feel of the stock HE-400 cable.  Again, it opened the HE-400 up across the range and made the sound fuller.  Just my opinion.  Is it worth the $$, probably not.  If I were to do it again, I'd probably go Toxic for half the price.  All in all, I'm pleased with the cables but its a lot of bucks for a bit of improvement.

I'm liking what I've bee reading about the Lyr in driving both the HD650 & HE400. That will probably be my next purchase.

BTW.. between this thread (thanks for the great review Matt!) and hearing the LCD-2, I decided to sell off my HD25 & Silver Dragon to get the HE400. No looking back, I love the HE400.

Edit: just ordered the velour pads.. looking forwards to trying them.