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If you want a more lively and open sound modding an Audez'e vegan earpad onto a HifiMan earpad space can give this - but it also makes the treble a bit more lively which can be addressed to a degree with earpad screening material. I think the stock velour has a very well controlled sound with good frequency balance but it can sound a little flat and soundstage can be improved also.
If you want a lot of bass though I think EQ or a coloured amplifier or DAC may be the only choices though - in my setup I consider the HE-6 balanced and with powerful bass, but still not really a bass-heavy headphone, just bass neutral IMO.
I have the Audeze pads on at the moment. I have to say they don't sound all that different (other than soundstage because the cups are angled forward now) than the stock. I think the extra room between my ear and the driver helps with the bass, but I haven't noticed "more lively treble" out of it so far. It still seems as balanced as with stock velour, however the stock velour I have were the original type, They're definitively thicker than the newer type...maybe it all comes down to driver distance? I haven't tried my modded "new velours" with the foam spacers from the pleathers inserted into them. I made them for my HE-400 but haven't tried them on HE-6 yet.
Bass response for me so far with HE-6 (now that a few hours burn-in seem to have tightened it up quite a bit...on day 2 the bass kind of popped out of nowhere, which is not unlike my HE-400 experience where bass went the other way, it was bloated and huge then refined down to clean bass in a day or two.) is quite good. It's a little less presence than HE-400, but a lot more texture and detail. More presence (at least with the warm Marantz) than K702, more extension than HD650 (but less midbass impact.) Bass neutral is a good way to describe it. Like a good, well calibrated sub.
I do think burn-in is real on HFM headphones more obviously than other headphones. Both pairs of HE-400's I've had and the HE-6 all showed significant shifts in presentation over a 2-3 day period and another smaller shift over a 2 week period (or assuming so for HE-6) but after that they stay the same. I'm not talking about running them for 300 hours to burn them in, I just mean listening to a CD or two a day over that time period. A few hours of burn-in overall. Maybe the "use/rest/use/rest pattern helps in letting the diaphragm material settle,
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I have had a very similar experience with my first pair of HE-6s.
Treble brightness coupled with excessive sibilance (SSSsss sound), were my major complaints.
...
Boy, was I in for a surprise. No brightness, no sibilance. End of story.
Finally come to the opinion that these are one of the most neutral & unforgiving cans. Sibilant recordings
will sound sibilant, but with good recordings, even female vocals will not exhibit unnecessary sibilance.
Very lively treble and without any brightness or harshness whatsoever.
Give these the juice they need and you will be rewarded.
Interesting. I don't see how a driver issue could do it...I wonder if the sibilance is a damping issue in some pairs? Mine has shown zero sibilance so far. Then again my definition of sibilance is MDR-7506, so I could have an over-emphasized definition
+1 neutral is the word of the day. Tyll measured them as bright, but I don't know what amp measured them on. They decidedly are NOT bright headphones to me. Full range, yes. No serious rolloff, yes. Not as bright as even K702 to my ears. On a hot recording I have dialed the treble back a bit, but I leave it for most recordings. Brighter than HD650 with the extreme treble rolloff, that but that's to be expected.
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Today they're sounding a bit better as well. (getting used to them?)
I don't mind bright at all, I actually like bright...just the damn sibilance! lol
Thanks again everyone, you guys are very helpful and just awesome!
If your prior headphone was HD650, these would sound quite bright. HD650 is much darker than most headphones....only 3 headphones I can think of fit in that range of darkness, HD650, HE-400, and from what I've heard, LCD2/LCD3 are very HD650-like in presentation, but I haven't auditioned them myself.
If you try them next to K702, Beyer, or D5k, they're actually not bright to my ears.
They don't fatigue me at all unless I crank the volume higher than I should. K702 fatigues me unless I pin the volume to the lowest possible level. D5k fatigues me after about 40 min to an hour. HE-6 so far, 2 hours straight, no real fatigue other than realizing I had volume creeping up
They're so smooth it's really too easy to do that.
