Christer
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2015
- Posts
- 1,943
- Likes
- 1,962
I found both headphones very amplification dependant. The Utopias are, to me, simply so brutally revealing of everything upstream that they could sound less than ideal even from excellent gear, making the HD800 seem highly forgiving in comparison. But they don't sound bad out of anything I used them with.
The HE1000 just seems to me only to wake up when using a serious tube amp, of the ones I tried at least.
See my review:
I did a "tape mod" covering the reflective surfaces with surgical tape, which reduce the internal reflections and improved things, though not as much the V2 did. I suspect that a certain type of acoustic foam that is used in another pair of headphones I have here, if applied in the gap between the ear pads and the driver housing, would increase the bass and stop the reflections, making for a kickass pair of headphones, but I never got around to trying it.
Interesting to read that I am not the only one who likes his HEKV2.
In comparison with HD 800 which I have owned since 2009 my HEKV2 sound clearly more resolving on complex large scale acoustic symphonic music.
I use mine mainly with my Benchmark DAC 2 HGC and HUGO for hi res downloads and with SACDs I use a Musical Fidelity HPA headphone amp.
And although I mostly listen to hi res pcm these days via headphones, but a lot of vinyl via large electrostatic speakers, I have to say that with some natively recorded DSD SACDs ,SACDs sound very nice indeed via HEKV2.
Well made DSD 64 sounds clearly better than 16/44.1.
Anybody stating that 16/44.1 sounds better than DSD 64 needs to have his or her ears cleaned and/or check their hearing imho.
With a simple switch on my SACD player I can go betwen the rbcd layer and the SACD layer . And it is almost immediately obvious that the DSD layers sound more realistic than the 16/44.1.
HEK V2 delivers very difficult instruments to reproduce like percussion and massed strings very well and does so with a realistic soundstage bigger than for example the Utopia and the equally large but less defined soundstage of the HD800.
Resolution and fine ultra low level detail is almost on par with the best of electrostats but without the dynamic and lack of really deep bass limitations of most electrostats.
The HEK V2 may no be the most suitable travelling headphones but that is how I have already used mine for two months and having become addicted to them that is how I will use them this coming winter again.