[SBranson]

My 560 shipped out 2 hours ago so hopefully by the weekend I will hear for myself.

 
 
Mine too! It wasn't showing up on Canadapost's site yet so I checked USPS...  Looks like they'll be just in time for my birthday!  

 

[hoth]

I received my HE-560's today. I had the box corner and scratched gimbal (all four) issues. Not ideal and HifiMan should do better at this price point but I can forgive that. I'm playing these from an X5 into an E18. Music is all over the place including very high quality 192/24 tracks. These headphones sound beautiful and huge. I would not call them bass light either. I agree with people that said that these aren't the most detailed headphones in the treble area but for planars the treble sounds very much there but not spikey at all. I was a little worried about people's comments regarding the pads but they fit me perfectly. To give people my reference for comparison, I own an LCDX-CB, HD580, Grado GS1000, Grado RS1 (and others...).

All-in-all I these are a pretty close to homerun headphones that do just about everything extremely well.

 

[Sonic Defender]

   
 
Mine too! It wasn't showing up on Canadapost's site yet so I checked USPS...  Looks like they'll be just in time for my birthday!  

When is your birthday, mine is on the 10th so I doubt I will have them then, but a few days late will still feel like a birthday present from me to me!

 

[d4nim4l]

It will be interesting to see if the he560 has a similar positive response to more power, as the he-6 and most all planars do..
Can't wait to get my balanced xlr cable's

 
Which cables did you get?

 

[AgentXXL]

Well, another day and a half and I've now got about 50 hrs of total listening time on my HE-560s. For the last 5 hrs I've been using my Fiio X3, and I must say that the combo works very well together. I've debated with updating to the X5 but I'm holding out as I just spent a ton of money contributing to the Light Harmonics crowdsourcing campaigns for the Pulse desktop DAC and the Wave portable DAP. I may break down and upgrade to the Fiio X7 when it comes out, but for now the combination of the X3 and my 560s will do quite well. Of course it really depends on the music you're listening to.
 
My FLAC, DSD and other hi-resolution audio sound great for the most part. There are a few duds that claim to be 96/24 or higher in resolution but appear to come from lower end provenance, i.e. 44.1KHz 16 bit CD masters that have been upsampled. I do find that I need to drive the 560s at close to full volume on high gain to really appreciate the X3, but it's still an amazing soundstage from the combo. I prefer the soundstage from my balanced Cypher Labs Algorthym Solo -dB and the RSA Intruder amp, fed from Amarra on my Macbook Pro, but it's nice to know I can take just the X3 and my 560s on the road if I don't want to bring the laptop and other goodies.
 
As for my earlier comments about the signature, I still find the 560s slightly lacking in bass quantity, but certainly not in quality. It is very precise, accurate, tight - the best way to describe it IMO. As for the 4KHz issue that was shown in earlier measurements of the production pads, I'm certainly not experiencing it. Could be just my hearing but I never found my HD800s as bright as others claim them to be. Overall the 560s are very good competition to the HD800, even at the $900 US MSRP. For those of you that got them for $720 from Headroom, congrats! You'll most likely be extremely happy.
 
Dale

 

[TMRaven]

Might be worth it to order yourself a pair of focus-a pads just to see if it makes them sound a little bassier.  It could be that 4khz peak is distracting your hearing a little bit without knowing it.  Might be the signature of the Fiios too though, I've only heard an old E7, though admittedly it was a tad warm.

 

[conquerator2]

I'll scrutinize this headphone to death ^_^
Including Focus Pads & Focus Pads A *…^

 

[kkcc]

Which able to scale better?
I bet they both able to scale better, and it will be a matter of preference, as they will have different strengths..
Like was posted before, this may be more of a "side-grade" than anything. .

I A/B them with my Hugo direct and Hugo via EF6 and to me HE6 sounded better in both setup but the gap increased when amped by the EF6 and hence my comment HE6 will scale better with more power. They are more similar sounding than different to me so it's not really a preference of say preferring LCD3 over HE6 or vice versa but to me HE6 is superior in sound while HE560 is easier to drive and have better comfort. For those who have the upstream to amp the HE6, it would be a downgrade to move to HE560. But for others HE560 make a lot of sense.

My 2 cents...

 

[Clemmaster]

Indeed @kkcc!
I might add that there's still a little bit of preference into play between clean/transparent (560) and ever-so-slightly lush (6).
The 6s has more weight to the sound while the 560 is more light and clean.

 

[manizkrishnan]

You are a lucky guy.
You won't have to pay restocking fee when you can sell it in forums easily more than you paid.

Anyway I doubt you will go back to an AlphaDog as it is far superior. .

Thank You I am using Little Dot MK III with PeachTree DAC ITx. Hopefully everything works great.

 

[tin427]

uh oh I fear getting sucked back into Lyr2 land now, after having sold off original Lyr moons ago.    


will try to hold off Lyr2 by using the iFi micro iDSD arriving soon, and a Pulse Xfi at some random 2014 date.
both should have enough power to make HE-560 sing, although tube-less. ha!

Thats what i'm deciding..Lyr2 or micro idsd.
Waiting for your review!

 

[tigon_ridge]

  Agree.
A properly amped set of HE-6 are tough to beat along the HifiMAN line.
HE-500 were a disappointment for me.  [I easily preferred the HE-5LE, and strongly preferred the HE-6, to the HE-500.]
Don't feel like I am missing out on anything, then, by foregoing the HE-560.
 
Disagree.  
The Oppo PM-1 take a different sonic approach/direction and, IMHO, are a quality product and a uniquely enjoyable listen in their own right.  They can, for example, achieve a level of dynamic and tonal nuance that even the HE-6 [IMHO] cannot.

Sounds like fancy audiophile words for "colored." I can also EQ my HE-400 to achieve all sorts of "dynamic and tonal nuance."

 

[LaPierre]

http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare.php?graphType=6&graphID%5B%5D=4163&graphID%5B%5D=3241&scale=30 the graphs seem to think otherwise. *edit* I say that in response to someone who said he heard the K712 has more bass than the HE-500. I should've quoted his comment, I can't seem to find it now. 

 

[tigon_ridge]

  http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare.php?graphType=6&graphID%5B%5D=4163&graphID%5B%5D=3241&scale=30 the graphs seem to think otherwise. *edit* I say that in response to someone who said he heard the K712 has more bass than the HE-500. I should've quoted his comment, I can't seem to find it now. 

Those are funky looking graphs. Why the wobbliness in the bass-and-mids? Anywho, it does show the k712 as having more bass. You have to look at its bass quantity, as relative to the non-bass frequencies. The graphs show the k712 has having a greater bass-to-mids/treble proportion than the HE-500.

 

[jerg]

  http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare.php?graphType=6&graphID%5B%5D=4163&graphID%5B%5D=3241&scale=30 the graphs seem to think otherwise. *edit* I say that in response to someone who said he heard the K712 has more bass than the HE-500. I should've quoted his comment, I can't seem to find it now. 

Well it should be pretty obvious that K712 is substantially more bassy than HE500 based on those plots. K712's 20-500 Hz region is much more elevated relative to 500 Hz+, compared to HE500 which has a lot more relative midrange/treble.
 
Edit: roflmao