Hey everyone! first post here
I got the HE-400 about two weeks ago, finally came round to posting in this thread! Some impressions after getting it: (my previous headphone was a CAL!, for reference):
First impressions: I was honestly underwhelmed the first time i put it on and listened to my favourite tracks. Could possibly be due to inflated expectations, but the leap in sound quality was not what i expected.
Gave it some more time, and slowly started to take in some of the good (and bad! more on that later) of this headphone. For one thing, the detail of the low notes through this thing is amazing.. This headphone really brings out the bass lines in music. The mids are what I expected: somewhat pushed-back vocals which i prefer.
However, after spending time with it, one thing also became glaringly obvious: the treble on this thing is far too forward. It doesn't "grate" or "tizz" much - it's just that it is way too pronounced or "hot". Voices have a sharp "sss" at the end of every sung consonant, which is distracting and takes away from the realism of vocals through this thing. Makes vocals sound more like recordings rather than real to me - you don't hear that much treble when listening to someone sing in real life, but it is something that is present through recorded vocals.
Obviously the first thing i did was to equalise in foobar (just a treble fix), which helped tremendously. However, I listen to a lot of stuff outside foobar too, and after seeing beaver316's initial post, finally decided to look for a universal eq as a better solution. After some searching i stumbled upon the same eq beaver316 was using: equaliserAPO. Learned how to set it up and it's working great for me now. This wiki was very helpful:
http://sourceforge.net/p/equalizerapo/wiki/Documentation/#configuration-tutorial
You may need to figure out some stuff on your own (mainly the interface on the REW, which is quite intimidating).
Feel free to ask if you hit a dead end or something; I will try to help, though I only just set it up and am still learning.
Now, to improve on the comfort of these things...
Sorry for the wall of text, heh.