[mogulmaster]

  Too lazy to sell

Really? the he-400s have no advantages over the 500s? no head time for you eh

 

[Zalithian]

It's not surprising as the 500 is about twice as expensive.

 

[cheuh]

It's not surprising as the 500 is about twice as expensive.

 
X2... not to mention you need to factor in the cost of a decent/powerful amp to drive them to their full potential. Same thing goes for the HE-4. I would love try them out, but they require a powerful amp to sound their best.

 

[hemipowered007]

   
X2... not to mention you need to factor in the cost of a decent/powerful amp to drive them to their full potential. Same thing goes for the HE-4. I would love try them out, but they require a powerful amp and to sound their best.

 I bought my sx 727 for 35 dollars, spent hours with deoxit and recapping, total spent, under 80 dollars.  A little diy ends in glorious returns. I just "had" to invest another 15 in bulbs. I will forever keep this amp though. Going vintage can pay off

 

[148124]

yeah for the old ones you need to check many things like dc offset which can damage you headphones, recapping of course especially those in power supply, check rectifying bridge and transformer, deal with scratchy pots etc
 
hard to find nice unit these days for that price, that's why I was looking for something new and gave a try emotiva

 

[Modular]

 
Modular, I haven't tried the DT990's, so I can't say for sure. I wouldn't be one to call the HE-400's "V-shaped" though. They have a very flat response except for the upper mid recession, but 90+% of instruments and vocals that you'll be listening to are not going to be recessed fundamentally. As I mentioned, you're just going to lose a lot of harmonics from vocals and instruments that would normally give a more accurate timbre to the sound.

 
 
 
Thanks Thujone. My intro to "mid-fi" has been the DT880 250ohms. I'm leaning towards the HE-400's since I already have a pretty flat headphone. If the description of the HE-500's as sounding the same for all music is accurate, then I'm leaning towards the HE-400 as I already have a pretty flat headphone. 

 

[148124]

he-400 is very close to he-500 (slightly better detail retrieval and timbre), you cant compare it to he-4, completely different headphone in every area, he-400 will sound too very similar on any genre - it has its own strong sound signature that is present everywhere, it's far away from transparency
 
the most annoying thing anyway in he-400 is strange upper mids peak which causes hearing fatigue after some time and unpleasant dynamic peaks in this area of frequency - with he-4 I can listen all day long without a hint of fatigue

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

Thanks Thujone. My intro to "mid-fi" has been the DT880 250ohms. I'm leaning towards the HE I'm leaning towards the HE-400 as I already have a pretty flat headphone. 

Head direct has a black friday sale of $299 on the 400s

 

[Thujone]

It's not surprising as the 500 is about twice as expensive.

The HE-500 has the least justified price IMO. Emotiva mini for $150-$200 will power all three very well (from what I've read) which puts the HE-4 at a very low price with a very respectable amp. MSRP of just the HE-500 alone is going to hurt your wallet more than that combo.

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

I just looked into Emotivo's site and that amp is putting 50W @8ohms to each speaker/driver. Wouldn't that be overkill?

 

[Thujone]

Check out the big thread on the Emotiva mini, people are using it for a number of different headphones and they all seem to love it.

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

I'll have to research that since I was looking into getting a Lyr

 

[Thujone]

You should also consider Project Ember if you want a tube amp.

 

[Errymoose]

  he-400 is very close to he-500 (slightly better detail retrieval and timbre), you cant compare it to he-4, completely different headphone in every area, he-400 will sound too very similar on any genre - it has its own strong sound signature that is present everywhere, it's far away from transparency
 
the most annoying thing anyway in he-400 is strange upper mids peak which causes hearing fatigue after some time and unpleasant dynamic peaks in this area of frequency - with he-4 I can listen all day long without a hint of fatigue

I found the comfort more fatiguing than the sound, but those strange peaks just made everything sound wrong to me...  kind of V shaped, and weird peaks everywhere.  The bass was kinda nice, but it just made everything sound rather 'off' to my ears. 
 
HE-4 was a much more pleasant listening experience.

 

[koiloco]

@OP, thx for the review.  I always wonder how the other Hifiman cans will sound like in comparison to HE500.  I have listened to HE6 and HE400 but not HE-4.
Regardless of pricing, I didn't care too much for HE6/HE400 and ended up with HE500.  However, I do agree that HE500 tend to lush things out a touch.  This is the reason I can't use HE500 for mixing/mastering.  HE500 mask both bad and good info in the music while retaining enough of overall details nicely.  I personally prefer this trait in the HE500.  My music collection is quite vast and includes many genres.  When I listen, foobar is shuffle mode.  This works out well with HE500.  I can't do this with akg q701 or HD800.  There will be some tracks that I can't bear on the Q701 and HD800.  Also, since I got the Woo WA22, I've found out that a nice tube amp does add back quite a bit of the lost harmonic/timbre in the HE500, especially in vocal.  With bright, detailed tubes, this is even more so.