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Eh screw the high-end line; why even bother worrying about them in a comparative review if the people reading it aren't worried about spending the money for those in the first place (at least not yet)?
As for possible driver tweaks, one possibility is to email or PM Dr Fang Bian and ask if his engineers did in fact do something like that; if even he says no, then obviously nothing changed and all the nitpickings in the other thread about how there are "versions" are all just psychological.
As for D5000s, why not, I mean, Denon made and sold a metric ton of em (so lots of second-hand availability long after this discontinuation), and probably there are still a lot of them left in stock in different retailers. Also just the fact that a lot of people have bought these means it gives many who are looking for a complementary mid-fi can such as HE400s or HD650s a good reference point.
And lastly, you are the only one here who regularly writes published journals for each response
Well you said to make it objective..and to be objective it seems unfair not to have an objective comparison to better and worse tiers, only as a reference point for their attributes.
As for asking Fang. Sure. Because Sennheiser never changed the sound of HD650, and AKG never changed the sound of Q701, and Denon never changed the sound of D5k. I can guess the answer already: Fang never changed the sound of HE-400
LOL, you may be right, I may have to do it. But not yet, I haven't spent enough time with the Denons yet to be truly objective about them. I probably will shortly, I've put them on reserve until my Lawton pads come in. Which should have shipped a week ago, but didn't. May have shipped today, but doesn't look like they will, so they'll probably ship next week or the week after. Ugh! Seems like the order of them got held up somewhere in production from the initial 3 week expectation.
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Thank you Oderi and IEMCrazy.
Dear Oderi, If you and some of other users think that D5000 is a better choice for bass-oriented electronic music, so I think I don't need them. Because I don't listen to these kinds of music & bass quality is more important to me than bass impact.
Dear IEMCrazy, you really amaze me with your highly detailed answers. Merci for your time. I think I'll go with O2 because of its neutrality (and also its great price), but the more important factor is headphone. HD 600 is good and HE-400 is good too. I didn't like HD600 treble, as I remember it hadn't that amount of detail and impact that I'm longing for but from your words (and others) I got a feeling that it is a better choice if I am longing for an accurate and detailed headphone. Can I do something with its treble to be more impactful?
+1
Thanks!
One thing to remember is that all headphones, all speakers for that matter, are a series of tradeoffs. If debating between these two, you have to pick your tradeoff. HD600 is without question the more accurate one, and when well appointed (at the risk of drawing ire from some, I'll say a cable stands a chance of being helpful
. HE-400 comes with a half decent, if ungainly, cable in the box. HE600's cable is famously awful in construction and sound. Some buy an HD650 cable for it (while some feel that HE600's cable sounds better on HD650 than HD650's). I'm personally not fond of either of them....and a vast market exists for that. ) It was designed for mixing in the studio. It was designed to be accurate.
Disliking Senns treble is a mixed thing. HD600 does
not roll off the treble in any way close to the way HD650 does. It's pretty linear. However Senns sound was (back then) to have a softer treble. The idea being, if it's used for long hours in the studio, and treble is what induces the fatigue, a bit of FR compression toward the center keeps the headphone from ever fatiguing, while still presenting all the detail in a less sparkly way. Beyer on the other hand believes in accenting the sparkle to showcase the fine detail that usually takes place in the treble, important for final-mixing work. AKG takes the "flat across the board, EQ your own tone" approach. And the new Senn flagships seem to have tried to compensate....or rather over-compensate their former fame for not presenting treble sparkle in a forward way.
HD600 is detailed and accurate. Some would call it boring as a result. HD650 was a more colored, corrected for human voice and additional midbass variant of it. HE-400 is colored, but with fairly netural mids. HiFiMan has the distinction of being one of the few brands making high end headphones with end-listening, not studio work, in mind. So its tuned in a way its designer believes should be satisfying. It's probably not ideal for production work in the way Audeze, Sennheiser, etc. are. I don't mean to say it's an overwhelmingly "fun" or "over-colored" headphone. But the coloration is there, and it has a habit of presenting "big sound" in a live way. Very few people actively dislike the sound. But if you're looking for neutrality and fine detail, while still being very pleasant to listen to, Senn is probably your winner. It would be extremely hard to
dislike either headphone. But between the two, HD600 would be the more accurate one. Though HE-400 becomes notably more accurate on the O2 than on my tubes. HD650 seems to remain accurate both on tubes and on the O2, and that would no doubt go for HD600 as well.
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I know they are great, but what makes me worried about them is that I, sometimes create music too and I don't have monitors. So I want to use new pair of headphones as my monitor too. So, I need something with as much as accuracy that I can get with my money. Now I have only two choices, HD600 and HE-400.
about HD600, what makes me worry is that some people say If you listen to the harshest song in the world, that songs sounds like a relaxing music. They mean its treble is not fatiguing. But IMO there is a huge difference between being non-fatigue and being non-real. I don't know what they really mean and I can't remember HD600 sound very good.
I know my words are confusing (contradicting?) but I can't explain it better than this.
Thanks
The description of smoothing musing to sound relaxing sounds more like HD650 than HD600. HD600 is more or less flat. HD650 is the one with the warmed over mids and the "very laid back relaxing sound." Though they certainly would be close being designed on extremely similar drivers. However, in my experience, I think part of that is just because HD650 comes with a fairly warmed over cable. The bigger problem with the stock Senn cables is the unshielded common return in a simple braid which introduces a form of distortion that adds to the "veiled" or "relaxing" sound at times. The big Canare cable with the HE-400 is a 4 conductor cable for balanced microphones. The conductors are unshielded individually, but the Star Quad geometry is intended to reflect interference to begin with. But I doubt it would be hard to find a DIY-er here on H-F to build you a similar Mogami or Canare cable for a low price for Senn. I don't mean to get you deep into the cable hole this early in the game, you shouldn't. But my point is, different folks are using different cables and setups and that changes the sound significantly.
Because it's "cheap" lots of people buy an HD600/650, plug it into an ipod or soundcard, and complain that it sounds rolled off and smoothed over. Of course it does, the output impedance at the jack is awful for a 350ohm headphone, and the voltage swing is likely inconsistent at best. If you're pairing it with something with spare headroom and low, low, output impedance like an O2, you get a very different experience than that. The "laid back" HD650 for example. With my Silver Dragon cable + O2 amp it sounds good, but borders on being overwhelmingly sparkly. I love my SD cable, but I'd not pick silver if pairing it with O2 as my primary amp. I'd go with copper. Even stock maybe. Since my main amp is the hybrid Lyr with some nice warm tubes, I love the silver cable.
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Hi,
catscratch said me that HD600 has two versions and the newer version is said to be brighter.
I don't have it myself and I just quoted his words. I don't want make your choice more complicated, but it seems most people like the older version better. Though, maybe it's because most of them like HD600 with its veiled sound and with a brighter treble, they can't have the same (and "non-fatiguing") sound.
Good luck.
I've heard reports all across the board on HD600. Some people complain about the shrill treble and that at least an HD650 cable (which is the official replacement cable from Senn for HD600 for some reason) is needed to tame it. Some complain about it being laid back and boring. Some say it sounds pretty much like HD650. Maybe its due to newer versions, maybe it's due to source. Last I heard HD600 was long ago, and I still found it to be the "flat, neutral" one (with more highs) while HD650 was "the warm laid back one"
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As I recalled with my HD600 (older version, had them for just a short while though) I won't say they have rolled off treble. It's just the way they deliver it that makes it 'seem' rolled off. The treble and probably any detail in the higher frequency range is certainly there. IMO the HD600 have a thick (which people often call 'veiled'), liquid sound that tends to blend everything together in a mid-centric imaging (if that makes any sense
) which makes it difficult (but not impossible if you really want to) to pick out the treble details although their extension is quite good. I had the HD600 with the O2 amp also and while they made an ok pair, I'm not sure I'd call it great. I don't have any experience with the HE-400 though. Hope this helps.
Interesting you'd describe the mid-centric imagine (FR-DR compression) that I often describe about HD650. I never got that vibe in the same sense from HD600, but now that you describe it, I suppose the main difference is that they both do that to some extent, the key difference being HD600 does it in a linear curve, HD650 also adds a "warm" signature (midbass hump and boosted midrange, rolled off upper treble and lower bass) while HD600 doesn't bump the midbass and mids, but doesn't roll off the upper treble. But now that you mention it I supose both do have the FR-DR compression to it. "Great", is sort of a measure of preference though. That combo would be extremely accurate and neutral. Which is the very reason I dislike neutral amps, personally. However I happen to love the O2 with the very non-neutral D5k. IMO HE-400 becomes more "serious" on O2 as well. Both for Senn 6xx and HE-400, I prefer the listening pleasure on tubes, and both change characters more than some other headphones (K70x for example) when moved between SS and tubes.
HD600 is a great studio can, but like K702 wouldn't always be my first choice for personal listening. HD650 is basically the "personal listening variant" of HD600. A little less studio tilted. Probably like Q701 vs K702, though I haven't heard Q701. And many folks
do prefer HD600 to HD650 so there's nothing wrong with that preference. HE-400 on the other hand would probably not be my first choice for studio work. It's detailed, sure, it's a planar. But the presentation is more about euphonic enjoyment than analytical or even truly neutral representation.
Probably the biggest core difference other than bass extension is dynamics though. HD600/HD650 does compress the dynamic range a little. It doesn't sound flat but it keeps the swings from getting too violent and keeps things on an even keel, which is probably a good thing in a headphone, but some may call it boring. And that is the key reason I prefer HE-400 for classical for example. It has the full dynamic swing of loudspeakers. But that can also be an annoyance too depending on recording. I was listening to the Chicago Symphony rendition of Mahler 1 (classical) yesterday. The HDTracks (DVD-A) variant with extended dynamic range. I got a
nasty surprise after a long very soft section almost inaudible, 15 minutes in, with a blast from the tympany section. I was listening for rattles in the driver after that little jolt...and for ringing in the ears
For rock/metal/industrial that kind of dynamic swing wouldn't be a benefet or a hindrance, really, most of the music in those genres is either compressed at recording or played as loud as the guitar amps will permit at the beginning. The microdynamics between notes would be a bigger swing of course, and that comes to preference.
Jerg: Mea culpa.
