**Hifiman HE-400 Impressions and Discussion Thread** - Page 385

Okay, so I've had these for a couple of days and I have pretty much listened to stuff on them continuously for these past days. If there's anything I could say about them, if I were to kind of make up descriptive words as I go along to describe what I'm hearing, I would say that the sounds are kind of dark. Indeed I do hear things very clearly, and different sounds really seem to stand out on their own, where as with my old headphones perhaps they would meld together with all of the sounds, and for lack of better words not creating as immersive an experience. With these headphones I think I am starting to feel a burn in, of my mind if you will. Back peddling to what I said about "Dark sound." It's not a completely lush and colorful sound. If there's a song with guitar and bass, I don't hear how they would otherwise be audible. I kind of feel like I'm almost having to strain myself sometimes to hear these instruments when they are lower in the mix. However I try to be completely honest and open minded, I am still learning and more or less picking up more noticeable differences between these headphones and my old ones. One thing that is more audible than the acoustics are the percussions. I'm wondering if this is because of my lack of an amplifier. I am using nothing but a DAC (I hooked the headphones in through an RCA adapter), and I have been told that when I plug it into an amplifier the sound will "come alive." Yet some have told me it won't make much of a difference at all. I guess I'll have to wait and see. I'd still like some inputs though. Thanks.

I think we have the same experience and i have same feelings.

I'm using a Aune T1 Tube DAC/AMP  ( Like RMac http://www.head-fi.org/t/604583/hifiman-he-400-impressions-and-discussion-thread/5700#post_9077560)  and fortunately, it seems I found a tube which does a good job to tame these sibilant , sparkly trebles . IMO the problem is not only with trebles but with recessed mids. A bit lack of mids gives the focus on trebles ant that's hurting me. I tried to EQ my he-400 and the results is +2 for midrange and -2 from  8 KhZ to highest frequencies. Then I change the tube for a 6DJ8 instead of my 6N23p-EB .. and it made a kind of miracle.

Forwarder mids and a bit tamed trebles tend to eliminate sibilance in most cases. I listened to very different music yesterday and  I think I could now keep my he-400 . Not sure yet but I think I can  :)

I should be honest and say that it could only be a "brain and ears"  burn but he-400 stays quite hard to listen from another source (my living room gear) 

Yes, most of the times I experience sibilance on the HE-400 is with pop music and over-processed vocals.  Usually those tend to be bad recordings too.  The spike is still something I rather not have though.

I understand EQing to user preference, but to fix a considerable problem I'm not sure.  I have seen a few mention that they have found EQ settings that have improved sibilance, but there does not seem to be a silver bullet for those who are reporting it.  I have no experience with Foobar or other equalization software.  I'm under the assumption that they actually assuming control of the computer's audio properties, so is it correct that I could use with MOG and youtube?

I know I think I've mentioned this before with you, but the 6khz region is the area where HE-400 is recessed the most.  

I know I think I've mentioned this before with you, but the 6khz region is the area where HE-400 is recessed the most.  

I have personally given up on Foobar as of a few days ago.  I had some contention using it with the Wasapi driver as I was switching DACs in an out.  I've moved over to Winamp, and as a preference, I'm happier, and my issues have gone away.  

I basically drop the 6 KHz frequency down a bit and problems are solved.  I don't feel that the EQ masks anything, it just controls the response, so that frequency is "tamed."  You can control the amount of reduction that you want.  Usually, just a few dB does it.  Plus, when reducing that frequency down, it only eliminated the sibilants for me, but doesn't remove any of the other sound qualities that I enjoy.

I just think Winamp is an ugly, counter-intuitive player. I'm shallow.

It looks nice with the Winampple skin. That's the only nice looking skin I could find for it, most are really bad IMO.

It still has two separate windows though which I hate... at least it's better than the default 4.

It's at about 9KHz according to headphones.com and innerfidelity.

Sibilance is around ~4KHz-10KHz

I detected the highest peaks using sinegen on 7.7 khz and 11khz with mine. So sibilance is being caused in one of those two frequencies, for me at least.

9khz is pretty fine. Maybe it differs from ear to ear, or maybe from headhphone to headphone.

Same here, to my ears there seems to be a major dip around 9kHz or so, bracketed by two treble peaks. Could be an artifact of the amp or a ringing peak in disguise though.