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.

Thanks, the sanding with the belt sander smoothed them out and gave us an almost perfect match to the original. We had to flatten the cardinal directions slightly because our mesh is thicker than stock, which allowed us room for the snaps to reach the cups. I've noticed this when comparing to...

Unfortunately, doing that with the stuff I'm majoring in comes with side effects including but not limited to headache, dizziness, and prison.... we live in a cruel world! hah X-D

Yeah, the panel that had the pattern I wanted was $19 bucks but it has much more than I really need so I want it to go to good use. I could probably whip up a couple pairs of finished ones for like $20 bucks each plus a couple bucks to ship them. The problem is they took me somewhere between...

If there's one thing I learned from my DT880s, its that those screens provide as good as a place to trap hairs and particles as they do repelling dust. I disassemble my cans periodically regardless of what state of modification I have them in so for me its worth it.  I could see it as a reason...

I wanted to post my experiences with regrilling these cans. If you haven't tried it, carefully take off the plastic rings and grills and see just how much wider the soundstage is and how much clearer the cans are.   I decided to use this desktop file organizer instead of a trash can so that...

I think that is a common theme among the he-400 owners.  They don't have the buttery smoothness of higher end dynamics.  Some people find the clarity worth it and some don't.

I've been logging quite a few hours on mine and I've been noticing them smooth out a bit as I keep listening. I wonder what the life of the drivers is, 20,000 hours or something like that?

  I hooked mine up to a set of logitech speakers and the sound was much less than ideal.  It was actually surprisingly loud, but the kind of speakers that are small enough to be powered by this amp are the same kind of speakers that you don't really want to listen to.  Plug in a pair of HD600s...

did you replace the foam ring after adding your damping holes?

I hope my ears hear the same thing yours did because everything else about them is awesome. HE400s with these weird pads/mids are like a supermodel with a giant zit in the middle of her forehead. :)