I agree with you on the sibilance and difficulties with female vocals. I do think the issue with my HE6SE is that it is more pronounced to me. My HEX V2, HE-500, and the HE-6 I have access to all have ringing issues in the 8-10 kHz areas, but none has a spike of such severity as the HE6SE centered at 3.8 kHz. Those other cans are all excellent for female vocals. For $699 brand new I shouldn't complain, just listen to music w/o female vocals - except that's about 40% of my listening.

@bagwell359 the hifiman site says the list price is 1800 USD. What is the 699 you were talking about?

Hi. In the Fall of '19. HFM through one retailer (Adorama) cut prices from $1799 to $1299 to $1099 to $899 to $699. Altogether it was over about a 10-12 week period. I almost bought at $899, and when it hit $699 - boom, I bought. It stayed there for about 10-14 days, and they sold about 300 units at that low price.

I hope next Fall the Arya will drop to about $599....

Wow! I would consider one for 700 bucks, I felt the 1800 dollar price was too high. I probably would have paid 1100 bucks in shipping and taxes to get it over here... Thanks for the info.

When HFM gets down to the end of the supply, they usually drop the price pretty well. I'd say $1199 at least when the 6SE is done and maybe under $1k. Just watch - Adorama, Audio46 in NYC, Amazon, and HFM. One of them will break in with a big sale within 8-10 months at the outside (my opinion) - maybe this summer if the economy doesn't come back strong.

When HFM gets down to the end of the supply, they usually drop the price pretty well. I'd say $1199 at least when the 6SE is done and maybe under $1k. Just watch - Adorama, Audio46 in NYC, Amazon, and HFM. One of them will break in with a big sale within 8-10 months at the outside (my opinion) - maybe this summer if the economy doesn't come back strong.