I'm definately interested a comparison by a credible source with the right pads for comparison.
All I see is shell shaped like Deva. We'd have to comepare directly to know if it's comparable to a HE500. Do wr know that is the tuning intentions or what does 5 stand for in the 5XX? Is it just marketting?
Headphones are run via fixed and interconnected electrical and audible behavior of its components).
There are a number of photos of the HE-5XX from the back and front with pads and screens off. The Deva and HE-5XX have exactly the same shape of the can (not round - but oval), same stators, same measured electrical properties (per HFM and reviewers) The 5XX and the Deva both measure very similarly in the bass (meaning gradual and then rapid decline in output from 80 Hz down), the 500 has no such trait. As one reviewer pointed out the 5XX mids are not followed by the big HFM dip in the upper mids - which includes the HE-500.
I'm quite sure the HFM engineers can make the Deva sound more like a 500, does that mean that it actually does pass our ear test? Also the 5XX is much more efficient than the 500, as is trumpeted by HFM - another indicator that they are not the same.
I agree that the best way is to compare both on reliable equipment, but the initial indicators of a far different physical appearance, and measured performance indicates clearly that they are not only not clones, they don't appear that similar at all.
The HE-6 6 screw and HE-500 have some similarities, but we both agree that they are quite different although the main difference is gold vs aluminum plating, and an added midrange tuning in the 500.
- The 560 wasn't very close to the 500 (most consider it inferior, but HFM said otherwise).
- 6se was well off from the HE-6
- the morbidly bad (my version anyway) HE5se sounds nothing like the HE-5, HE-4, HE5-LE, 500, 560, but HFM claimed it was essentially an HE-5 with updated sonics (its as different as the 5XX is to the 500 basically.
That was rubbish. Why should I believe HFM now?
- or some guy on the other site says it IS like the 500, but only mentions the 400i, 400S, and 4XX as other HFM headphones he knows. along with the 500. I don't know this fellow. Sycophants and tin ears come out of the woodwork far more than honest and golden eared folk - nothing against this guy so far, just doubt.
Very much the glass is half empty on this one at this point.