On the HE400 note though, I personally think there's a HUGE technical difference between it and a W4 although I don't know compared to the JH16. I would love to own an IEM that does all the things HE400 does for me but I haven't had the luck of finding the pair that does that yet. Are the CIEMs seriously good enough to challenge the transparency of planar cans? Lastly, regarding the $200 headphone quote, you should know that price does not equal sound quality.
See I was not impressed by the HE-400 at all. For being planar I thought it sounded...not muddy...but too coherent. Poor separation...everything just seemed to blend together. That and just the over all sound was uninspiring. No soul. The lows didn't hit as well as I'd like nor did they go as deep as I'd like. Extension was pretty bad. Mids were OK but lacked detail and were more muddy then warm. Highs were OK but didn't quite have the crispness I've grown to love from armature drivers.
Over all as a planar headphone I don't think the HE-400 is that impressive. Certainly, as I've said, no where near the level of something like the JH16 when it comes to over all sonic fidelity. Like I said, I think the only place I can say they're better is with sound stage but that's certainly something that wouldn't put them on a much higher pedestal.
I find this a lot though in my audio travels. Maybe I'm a bit more strict with my sound but I generally find I flow away from the norm. Most people say headphone "X" has too much bass. I don't think it has enough. Most people say headphone "X" has screeching and harsh highs. I see them as just being detailed and true to sound. See...those that say something has too much bass just don't like hearing stuff the way it was made, I'm convinced of this. If I'm listening to a song on my stereo and my subwoofer is rumbling then that means that sound is there, it exists in the recording, and it was put there on purpose. So why would I not want my headphone to have that same bass response? Most songs I listen to that have that true to created bass on my stereo is often non-existent in most headphones I hear. Why would I want less than there bass? Same with the highs...most people don't seem to know what cymbals and clashes ACTUALLY sound like or I think a lot of the "too harsh" people would know that's what it's supposed to sound like.
People often call me difficult or impossible to please. If that's true so be it. I just look at is me wanting ACCURATE sound. This is why IEM's blew me away. Now granted I've never heard the likes of the highest-end planars and Stax...can't comment on $2,000 headphones...but I've either heard extensively or have owned a lot of the headphones on this list (HE-400/500, HD600/650, LCD-2, etc) and none of them give me that "true to recording" feel...or at least so I realized after getting into IEM's.
So yeah...when I see someone claim the HE-400 to be the better headphone over multi-driver IEM's that just makes me wonder what they're basing that on. As I said the only thing I could see the HE-400 having is a better sound stage...and if that's worth it to the reviewer to rank something like that 10's of places higher then so be it. I just think it's unfair to put THAT much weight into that one category and basically ignore everything else. Give anyone the 400's and a pair of custom fitted JH16's for a week and see which they prefer.
I'll leave this here for you to browse:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/440126/sennheiser-hd800-vs-jh-13-pro-battle-of-the-titans/15
Go write your own battle of the flaghips then, put jh16 on top, w4 on the top 10 and the he-400 on the #50 spot.
You're missing the point. If the reviewer is going to be biased and not judge the IEM's on the same level as the headphones then why even have them? It's clear that he prefers fullsized headphones over IEM's despite the detail and accuracy of the IEM's. It's like having a Chevy fan do a review between a Corvette and a Mustang. The love for the Corvette is already there and no matter how good the Mustang is it's just simply, naturally, not looked at as being the same. Not on the same level. It's already been subconsciously knocked down a peg or two.
In the end I just think all it does for people that may find this is paint IEM's in a bad light. Being someone that stuck with, exclusively, fullsized cans for years and years I never knew how good IEM's could be. I always thought of them them as having tiny sound and that they just simply couldn't output the bass and levels of detail I would want. Now I know that the old me could not have been any more wrong if I tried! IEM's are the best sound I've heard. Headphones sound great, for sure, and I by no means have given up on them, but if I want the best sound I reach for the likes of my JH16's every time.
Again, it's all personal opinion and I have no problem seeing both sides of the coin...but just seeing where some of the headphones were in relation to some of the IEM's just gave me a gut "What?" feeling which told me that realistically something just wasn't right.