HE-6 impressions:
- Equipment: Plinius CD-101 (CDP) and Ayre QB-9 (USB DAC), B22 headphone amp
Caveat: due to atypical circumstances last week I was not able to put in much listening on the HE-6 while I had it, only about 2 nights' worth of listening plus about 10-15 minutes at a local meet that I organized. Hence, these are incomplete impressions.
I will start first by stating that I got interested in the HE-6 to find out if it might be a headphone worth adding to my collection to hopefully replace two or more of my other headphones. Even despite the limited amount of listening time, I can still conclude that the HE-6 is not for me and I will not be buying one for a few reasons: (1) I could not get a good fit even at the smallest setting (as my head is on the small side), (2) adding an integrated or power amp to my headphone system would complicate things too much, and (3) the sound wasn't what I was hoping for.
I did not get to listen to all the music types (let alone CDs) that I usually go through for any kind of serious listening, and even at the aforementioned local meet where I was able to quickly access different music selections (with all of it stored on my laptop PC in FLAC), I was only able to hear short sections of tracks due to time.
That said, I came away from the HE-6 thinking that it's overall a fine-sounding headphone, and there are probably plenty of people who would like it, but ultimately I did not. The one headphone it reminded me of was the HE-5 which I previously owned (as it probably should). The impulse response was acceptably fast, it had a nice deep bass, and clean/clear treble. However I found too much emphasis in the treble for it to sound ideal for classical music - violins specifically, as there was too much sheening on the string sound and this did NOT sound like it was part of the recording, it sounded imposed. In comparison, the only headphones I've heard that render violins with a realistically natural sound are the Senn HD600, Grado HP1000, and Stax OII MKI (and the JH Audio JH13, to include IEMs). The treble also did not have quite the same balance as the Qualia 010 - the Qualia was actually "brighter" with more tilt towards the treble but did not have the kind of sheening I was getting with the HE-6.
I thought prog rock and metal (Porcupine Tree, A Perfect Circle, In Flames, Megadeth, Symphony X, Dissection) played to the HE-6's strengths more, as this treble wasn't as distracting with either genre.
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Who has the west coast loner pair right now? It feels like this program is moving at the speed of a snail and people are hanging onto them much longer than originally stated by Fang
How about you develop a sense of time before you make another statement about feeling like the loaner program is moving at the speed of a snail and accusing people of holding onto the HE-6 longer than 7 days. I posted in this thread on 8/9 (exactly 7 days ago) stating I got the headphones that day, and I just sent them out today.
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Hopefully using the Beta 22 did not damage the planar.
To set the record straight on my B22, the malfunction had nothing to do with the HE-6. I used the HE-6 with the B22 before the meet and at the meet and the amp was working just fine. At the point in time when I noticed the B22 had died, the listener wasn't even using the HE-6 (rather, the Beyerdynamic T1). No one needs to comment further on this subject, as I'm looking to get the amp fixed with the help of another forum.
