I don't think there is a single answer that will be what you're looking for. Are you unhappy with your headphones, or are you looking for something 'better?'  My only piece of advice is to pick a budget and then go into an electronics store with whatever audio source you plan on using and...

Awesome. Thanks for the reply. I'm picking up 33, 120, & 300 ohm 5w resistors from digikey.     Process; -----Amp Output----Multimeter-----Resistor-----Ground----- Measure peak voltage with DMM, divide by the square root of 2 to get RMS voltage.  (RMS^2)/load impedance = Wattage   Correct?

Forgive my ignorance please, but if it only requires a single resistor, why do all the diy dummy loads look like this?

I've been looking all over for someone who has tested the total per channel output of the starving student in mW at say 32 and/or 300 ohms.  It seems that a dummy load would be required for such a test, of which I do not own.  Anyone know if this has been done and published somewhere? 

It was a good way to spend a Saturday. Thanks for hosting us!

The problem: Audio player crashes after 3-10 minutes when playing music through ASIO or WASAPI and the device becomes unresponsive until system reboot.   The Setup: Dell 1720 Win 8.1 -> Schiit Modi -> Amp   Driver: Window USB audio driver Programs tried: Foobar, jriver, mediamonkey (all...

Two words: Profit. Margin.   Is a 'premium cable' worth it? No.

  If you're handy with a digital multimeter you can find out which end the issue is on. If it is on the non-proprietary end you could fix it up in a few minutes with a soldering iron and a new jack.

  Those look sweet. Other than the SQ improvement, my favorite thing about the grill mod is being able to see the magnets an drivers because they're so unique looking.

What you are referring to is soundstage. The why, is because with accurate sound representation we can trick our brains in to a false perception. The how, is why some engineer is getting paid big bucks to design headphones. http://www.head-fi.org/t/590377/what-is-soundstage/15

Its the law of diminishing returns. To get great sound you generally need all three pieces of the puzzle. Each improvement gets smaller when you upgrade.

Make sure to avoid the Bottlehead Crack. It doesn't power these cans well. Not suited for 35 ohm headphones at all.

It seems in general that Hifiman made some awesome drivers for the 400s and stuck them in a generally poorly designed headphone. The pads are a disaster, and the grills are too impeding. Perhaps instead of testing these things they just released the headphones so we could figure it out and they...

Are you using the stock pleather pads?

  The stock grill is right about 86mm. My grill was pretty dang close to that. We just traced the grills on cardboard, cut them out, and used that as a guide. I made my cuts a little big to give me some room to sand them down and smooth out the sharp edges.