I'd like some impressions from anyone out there who owns a pair of planar magnetic, open headphones.  I own a pair of HiFiMan He400i headphones, and have always felt that they lack punch, and have a bit too much midrange.  Yes, they have a nice, open, airy sound, and bring out lots of detail, but the lack of bass bothers me.  By the way, I'm running them on a JDS Element DAC/Amp, which has plenty of power.
 
I didn't realize how much I was missing with these headphones until I bought a pair of Oppo PM-3 sealed, planar magnetic headphones.  Being a sealed headphone, they don't have that open, airy sound stage, but the bass is much more punchy on things like bass drums and orchestral hits.  I'm finding I actually prefer them to the HE400i headphones.
 
Is the lack of extremely low punch just the nature of open, planar magnetic headphones, or are the HiFiMan headphones just weak in this area?  If you own any brand of open, planar magnetic headphones, or have compared the HE400i headphones to other open, planar magnetics, I'd value your impressions.  Even some impressions of open, dynamic headphones would be interesting.

I've never listened to the HE-400i, so I can't comment on that directly.  I do have PM-3s which I also like quite as bit.  But go listen to a pair of Audeze LCD-X properly amped and I don't think you'd be concerned that open planars can't deliver punchy bass.

I'd love to own a pair of Audeze headphones, but can't begin to afford them!  I'm sure they sound amazing.

Well, going discounted price for LCD-2 is $700 (keep a watch on the Deals thread) which isn't a very big jump from PM-3 or HE-400i.  Just sayin'.  

donato said:

  Well, going discounted price for LCD-2 is $700 (keep a watch on the Deals thread) which isn't a very big jump from PM-3 or HE-400i.  Just sayin'.  

Click to expand...

I appreciate that.  Sounds like what I want is well beyond my financial reach.  Nothing new there.  It's the story of my life...

I hope you found a headphone you like. If not then I recommend the Fostex TH500RP. From what I've read about most other midrange and High-end planar magnetic headphones (the TH500RP is my first midrange/high-end planar headphone i've heard/owned) the TH500RP can compete with the best of them. Yet it costs less than $500. I've been very fascinated by it's sound, weird and wonderful yet natural is how I would describe it. Perhaps not as natural as a dynamic transducer can be though. Still, the TH500RP outperforms the most expensive open-back dynamic headphone i've ever owned, the Sennheiser HD700, by quite some margin. I suspect it would also outperform the supposed king of open-back dynamic headphones, the HD800, too! if the HD700 is anything to go by.

I just procured the closed-back of the Audeze LCD-2's and well my ears were blown away.
Granted the bass isn't mad crazy but they were solid. In fact, it took me nearly a month to get used to the less-boom-iness relative to that of Bose and especially Beats which I left at my other place permanently.