[manbear]

 
Well I haven't heard the Q701, but going by what others say who have compared them the K712 does much better in the bass department. I personally also think the K712 has a bit smoother treble than the HE-400. But I can still see some people preferring the HE-400 over K712, the sound is very intimate and lush and the bass representation is awesome.

Yeah, I would also say the Q701 has a smoother treble than the HE-400, even though it's the brighter headphone overall. I haven't heard the K712 though. 

 

[beaver316]

 
The compromise being that they do not sound great out of the box and literally NEED to be EQ and modded, once you have done this they are probably the best headphones available for the money.
 

 
I don't particularly agree with this. Imo they do sound good out of the box, just a little harsh. Only if the treble bothers you then EQ is necessary, and as we've seen from this thread there are plenty of people who are fine with the HE-400's treble. Some people are just a little more sensitive to it than others.

 

[nicholars]

   
I don't particularly agree with this. Imo they do sound good out of the box, just a little harsh. Only if the treble bothers you then EQ is necessary, and as we've seen from this thread there are plenty of people who are fine with the HE-400's treble. Some people are just a little more sensitive to it than others.

 
Mmm well I am just giving my opinion, personally I was disappointed when I first got them, first thing I did was graphic EQ, an improvement but still somewhat sibilant and tiring on the ears after not very long, also only really good with some genres. Next up I did the pad mods, definitely an improvement to the overall sound although still a bit harsh for me. Eventually I got round to measuring them with sinegen and doing a proper EQ with electriQ - this lead to a few days of OCTD (obsessive compulsive tweaking disorder) where I kept messing with it for different genres, songs etc. Eventually I got the EQ settings sorted and have 3 presets I use now depending on genre / quality.... overall for my personal tastes I would rate them as twice as good as they were out of the box... If you like bright headphones and sibilance does not bother you then I guess all this might not be necessary... In stock form I would rate these as one the most sibilant / tiring headphones I have used, setup properly I can use them for as long as I want at any volume with no problems at all.

 

[Anaximandros]

  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.

Thanks for the Wikitutorial.
 
I think I get the hang of it. But one thing I miss is real time equalizing. I use pink noise to tune my headphones and with the EQ31 Gui I could hear the changes I make immediatley.
Is there a function in REW to do the same? I found the "Generator" to simulate the Pink Noise at full range but the "EQ" in REW doesn't affect it. I hope you get my point. My english is not that good as it is not my mother tongue :/
 
The only thing I can do is to take my APO config.txt and copy the filters to REW and smooth out things and copy them back to APO and that's not very comfortable

 

[Jien23]

  Thanks for the Wikitutorial.
 
I think I get the hang of it. But one thing I miss is real time equalizing. I use pink noise to tune my headphones and with the EQ31 Gui I could hear the changes I make immediatley.
Is there a function in REW to do the same? I found the "Generator" to simulate the Pink Noise at full range but the "EQ" in REW doesn't affect it. I hope you get my point. My english is not that good as it is not my mother tongue :/
 
The only thing I can do is to take my APO config.txt and copy the filters to REW and smooth out things and copy them back to APO and that's not very comfortable

Hey. Firstly, are you saving the equaliser settings through REW as a .req file? this can be done in the same window where you make your adjustments in REW. This should make it easy to get back your settings and make adjustments quickly to your saved EQ. However, you still need to convert it to a .txt file each time before you can apply it. I don't know any way to hear instant changes when making adjustments in REW, sorry.
 
However, this may be a blessing in disguise . You could just get it right once, and when you think its okay, just leave it. You wont be tempted to keep making small adjustments in the middle of your listening that would have little or no real effect. I really think it's a simple fix, and once you've reduced the treble slightly, just forget about the eq-ing and enjoy your music.
 
Time spent eq-ing your headphone is time that could have been better spent enjoying the music coming through them!

 

[Anaximandros]

  Hey. Firstly, are you saving the equaliser settings through REW as a .req file? this can be done in the same window where you make your adjustments in REW. This should make it easy to get back your settings and make adjustments quickly to your saved EQ. However, you still need to convert it to a .txt file each time before you can apply it. I don't know any way to hear instant changes when making adjustments in REW, sorry.
 
However, this may be a blessing in disguise . You could just get it right once, and when you think its okay, just leave it. You wont be tempted to keep making small adjustments in the middle of your listening that would have little or no real effect. I really think it's a simple fix, and once you've reduced the treble slightly, just forget about the eq-ing and enjoy your music.
 
Time spent eq-ing your headphone is time that could have been better spent enjoying the music coming through them!

 
Thanks for your reply. I save the settings as .req files. Normally I tweak the frequencys  to an amount where I am satisfied, but listening to pink noise is really exhausting, but it works for me
 
It takes me roughly 1 hour until I am satisfied and after that I'm done and won't touch the eq files, but I have several headphones und eqing is still a little fun to mess around with sound signatures.

 

[nicholars]

  However, this may be a blessing in disguise . You could just get it right once, and when you think its okay, just leave it. You wont be tempted to keep making small adjustments in the middle of your listening that would have little or no real effect. I really think it's a simple fix, and once you've reduced the treble slightly, just forget about the eq-ing and enjoy your music.
 
Time spent eq-ing your headphone is time that could have been better spent enjoying the music coming through them!

 
Wrong.

 

[TMRaven]

Yea getting obsessed and fiddling around with minute subtle changes and eq doesn't make sense for me either. It took me 5 seconds to roll-off the treble of the HE-400 then I never touched the eq since then.

 

[Jien23]

   
Wrong.

 
hahahah.. well.. i guess pink noise can be rather stimulating once you get it nicely balanced

 

[MrMateoHead]

 
Mmm well I am just giving my opinion, personally I was disappointed when I first got them, first thing I did was graphic EQ, an improvement but still somewhat sibilant and tiring on the ears after not very long, also only really good with some genres. Next up I did the pad mods, definitely an improvement to the overall sound although still a bit harsh for me. Eventually I got round to measuring them with sinegen and doing a proper EQ with electriQ - this lead to a few days of OCTD ...

So you used Sinegen to input frequencies. Did you actually measure response with a microphone, or did you just use your ears / other frequency response measurements as a guide? I am just curious. I downloaded a few spectrum analyzer tools for Android and played around trying to measure response / take screenshots. But so far, the scale used by the apps etc. are not ideal (I want to see logarithmic response +- 10 dB to look for peaks).
 
Obviously, measuring headphone response requires some even more dedicated equipment.

 

[nicholars]

No I did not use a microphone, although using a microphone etc. would be technically more accurate, doing it by ear works well because it is customised to your own hearing. Its not too difficult, takes a bit of experimenting but sinegen lets you record all frequencies and the relative volumes and then compare them, then you plot this into electriq, works very well with the HE400. I find that frequency sweeps are much more useful than pink noise for testing.
 
I made a short guide here when I did it but not even one person replied! Cheek of it!
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/687845/how-to-equalise-your-headphones-using-electriq-parametric-equaliser

 

[Thujone]

  No I did not use a microphone, although using a microphone etc. would be technically more accurate, doing it by ear works well because it is customised to your own hearing. Its not too difficult, takes a bit of experimenting but sinegen lets you record all frequencies and the relative volumes and then compare them, then you plot this into electriq, works very well with the HE400. I find that frequency sweeps are much more useful than pink noise for testing.
 
I made a short guide here when I did it but not even one person replied! Cheek of it!
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/687845/how-to-equalise-your-headphones-using-electriq-parametric-equaliser

I at least gave you a thumbs up!!! Haha

 

[nicholars]

lol thx You do not really have to do it as accurately as I did in that tutorial, I got a bit carried away with it lol, but definately using electriQ is a lot better than using a graphic EQ because of the frequency response of the HE400.... Some headphones you can just get away with graphic EQ or no EQ at all.

 

[manbear]

Looks like clearly the most methodical way to EQ. I might try, but alas, I never really get the feeling that I'm in the mood to listen to a bunch of test tones. I just accept that my EQ is good enough. If I wanted to make it perfect to my ears, I'd be changing it for almost every album. 

 

[Thujone]

At this point, I probably won't ever get to trying it out, as I am shipping out my HE-400's tomorrow...