[manbear]

  @Manbear do you know what the output impedance of that amp of your is? 

I'm not sure if you mean the Emotiva or the Little Dot (which I sold a few weeks ago)... David at Little Dot told me that the output impedance of the MKIII is "less than 10 ohms." I'm not positive about the Emotiva, but I think I read somewhere that it's  1-2 ohms or less, like most SS speaker amps. I might be making that up though, I can't find the spec now. 

 

[DoctaCosmos]

i was talking about the emo it was in your signature
thanks

 

[MrMateoHead]

  thanks people. I actually tried EQ-ing just like -2 db at 12khz & the issue got so much better!
 
i guess that doing that also makes kinda decreases your treble crispness/forwardness/attack/detail too though right? lol still stumbling my way thro the audiophile dictionary. kinda cool tho, I never knew what silibance was until i legit heard it for myself.
 
@manbear, ...but iwanna go tube rollingggg!!! 

The EQ issue has been beaten to death for the most part.
 
If you have a recording that is particularly sibilant, it is sometimes also helpful to cut between 800 hz - 3 khz. The very upper echelons of audible treble tame the HE-400s somewhat, but a good deal of sibilance (generally speaking) is in the midrange. No matter whose measurements you take as final, the HE-400 display a bump at around 1 khz which may be accentuating vocal sibilance in some already "hot" recordings. So, I cut 1 khz or so dramatically with some speakers I own (which suck in that region), and cut on the HE-400s when listening to some of my (bad) recordings.
 
Helps quite a bit.

 

[TMRaven]

Purrin's measurements reveal that the spacer for the pleather pads was a likely cause of the 1khz peak.  One of the first things I noticed when switching from pleathers with spacer to velours more than a year ago was the 1khz region seemed less shouty.
 
Now then, as for sibilance, I get that you've been trying to argue about sibilance being a part of the vocal midrange, but sibilants are essentially to be treated as overshoots, and not as fundamental tones or harmonics.  Their center of energy vary from around 4khz (f), 8khz (th) or even 10khz (s, t).  People tend to complain about the s and t range with the HE-400.  This is all naturally speaking as well.  Hot recordings which tend to over-emphasize the treble region for the sake of false clarity make the th and s,t region even worse.
 
HE-400 also tends to have much less upper midrange compared to a lot of more neutral headphones on the market.  They're relatively flat to around 1.5-2khz, but take a nosedive starting around 3khz.  A headphone with much more upper midrange in comparison like the LCD2 ( a good 5-6db more in the 3-5khz range) is also way less sibilant in comparison, and that's because it doesn't have a Mount Everest centered around 10-12khz.

 

[nicholars]

Some glare and harshness around 800-1200hz - Does not make that much difference to the sibilance. - Pad mods fix this more than EQ.
 
Small peak at 5khz which contributes to the sibilance a bit.
 
Big peak around 8khz Which contributes to sibilance a lot.
 
Everything over 7khz - especially 8khz and 12khz treble spikes, make it worse.
 
Most important parts are above 7khz.
 
I don't know why people complain that EQ has been talked about a lot on this thread, frankly it makes more difference to the sound then anything else you can do for the HE400, only other things that are talked about are amplifiers, pads etc. All of which have also been talked about a lot as well. This is the nature of a thread with 1015 pages..... But EQ will make the biggest difference with the HE400 as well as the pad mods.

 

[H3nk]

  The right grill seems to be a bit loose for me.
When I tap gently on the blue part of the cup I hear a ringing sound.
The left side is just dull with no ringing at all when I tap it.
 
Has anyone experienced this, or even have a solution?
I tried putting small bits of plastic under the ring which holds the grill but it only results in a minor improvement.
I can't say if this actually has any impact during listening, but still it bothers me.

I would really apreciate if someone could comment on this.
I've come to the conclusion this doesn't affect the sound but it still bothers me.
 
I also have a problem with the screw that allows the cup to turn in the horizontal plane, it's too tight.
There's quite a lot of strain on the head band connection when I rotate the cup, so much that it has actually become a bit loose.
I have tried to loosen up the screw but it's difficult as you can't counter the torque on the flat top.
 
It sucks to have these quality issues when I want to use these for many years to come.

 

[Thujone]

The ring that holds the grill on has 4 tabs that slip into the cup. Sounds like one or two of the tabs are broken, which makes the ring stick out a bit. You can email HFM and ask for replacements.

 

[jerg]

 
I would really apreciate if someone could comment on this.
I've come to the conclusion this doesn't affect the sound but it still bothers me.
 
I also have a problem with the screw that allows the cup to turn in the horizontal plane, it's too tight.
There's quite a lot of strain on the head band connection when I rotate the cup, so much that it has actually become a bit loose.
I have tried to loosen up the screw but it's difficult as you can't counter the torque on the flat top.
 
It sucks to have these quality issues when I want to use these for many years to come.

Mineral oil for the yoke swivel joints.
 
Also don't swivel free-handedly, firmly grip the extender piece of the yoke so that the torsion is put onto the swivel joint, not the headband connection piece.
 
I concur though that the logo pieces that secure the yokes to the headband are way too weak, it's a blunder on Hifiman's part. They are coming out with new planars next year though, so we might see a complete design change that fixes these things.

 

[H3nk]

  The ring that holds the grill on has 4 tabs that slip into the cup. Sounds like one or two of the tabs are broken, which makes the ring stick out a bit. You can email HFM and ask for replacements.

I compared rings on both cups and it doesn't seem like it's broken. Maybe the ring is not holding the grill tight enough.
I'm definitely going to ask Hifiman and see what they have to say about it.
 

  Mineral oil for the yoke swivel joints.
 
Also don't swivel free-handedly, firmly grip the extender piece of the yoke so that the torsion is put onto the swivel joint, not the headband connection piece.
 
I concur though that the logo pieces that secure the yokes to the headband are way too weak, it's a blunder on Hifiman's part. They are coming out with new planars next year though, so we might see a complete design change that fixes these things.

I just tried mineral oil and it definetly got better.
Too bad it's so difficult to untighten the screw because I'd really like to have them even more loose.
 
Good advice on how to swivel, I'm going to be very careful when swivel from now on.
 
 
Thank you both for your response.

 

[Fraguh]

So I've got HE-400s and I want to listen to FLAC music but also have virtual surround for PC gaming. If I get something like the Xonar DG, then hook it up to an o2 amp, is the sound card going to make it useless to have FLAC files? If I understand the product description correctly, it says the max output is 96Khz. So that means that even if I have FLAC I'm going to hear the music at a lower quality, compared to coming straight from USB to DAC? What is the difference between the 196Khz on the Essence compared to the 96Khz on the Xonar DG? I was hoping to listen to nothing less than 320kbps, so is that completely separate from the 96Khz/196Khz?
 
Also, I was considering skipping the sound card and going USB -> DAC/AMP and using razer virtual surround but I wasn't sure how that would match up against Dolby. If anyone else has experience with this type of thing and HE-400s let me know. 

 

[Okamoto]

  So I've got HE-400s and I want to listen to FLAC music but also have virtual surround for PC gaming. If I get something like the Xonar DG, then hook it up to an o2 amp, is the sound card going to make it useless to have FLAC files? If I understand the product description correctly, it says the max output is 96Khz. So that means that even if I have FLAC I'm going to hear the music at a lower quality, compared to coming straight from USB to DAC? What is the difference between the 196Khz on the Essence compared to the 96Khz on the Xonar DG? I was hoping to listen to nothing less than 320kbps, so is that completely separate from the 96Khz/196Khz?
 
Also, I was considering skipping the sound card and going USB -> DAC/AMP and using razer virtual surround but I wasn't sure how that would match up against Dolby. If anyone else has experience with this type of thing and HE-400s let me know. 

Don't worry too much about that. 16bit/44khz is all we humans need.

What may make a difference in SQ is the quality of the DAC and amp on the Essence vs DG's. The max sampling rate really doesn't matter. As long it's higher than 44khz, you're fine.

Don't worry too much about the file bitrate either. Above 320kbps the differences are pretty much negligible, if there's any at all.

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

I would just stick with 44khz for cd music and 48khz for dvd. Bumping up will introduce errors that may or may not be audible. The exception of course is if your flac files are 192khz/24bit or 96khz/24bit then you want your settings set accordingly. Is HD tracks worth it...well there's science behind that as well and to my understanding it's theoretically unnecessary.

If your ripping your original Cd into flac then it should be 44khz.

 

[Fraguh]

Thank you for the responses, definitely cleared a lot of things up for me and I feel like I can make the correct purchases now. Next thing on the list is to find a good place to download 320kbps that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, but that is another story.

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

If 320kbps mp3 or similar is all you want then Spotify Premium might be a good choice at $10/mo. Just be sure to download the content to offline mode, turn off the volume leveling, and put your quality rate to the highest setting.

Usually FLAC is in the 600-1000kbps region, depending on how complex a song is.

 

[money4me247]

If 320kbps mp3 or similar is all you want then Spotify Premium might be a good choice at $10/mo. Just be sure to download the content to offline mode, turn off the volume leveling, and put your quality rate to the highest setting.

Usually FLAC is in the 600-1000kbps region, depending on how complex a song is.

why turn of volume leveling?