[bleudeciel16]

Just got them in the mail, and I'm now listening to them.
 
First impression: UGH.  Sounds all closed and echoey.  Like the music is echoing around in a plastic helmet.
 
Digital Coax > Uberfrost > Lyr > HE-400
 
Could it be needing burn-in?  The pads maybe?  Would velour help with the echos?  Or the echo sound... not sure what it is I'm hearing, but it doesn't sound good.
 
The bass sounds impressive, and the mids sound great and in my face, but the high end is shredding my ears apart.  The highs sound muddy, almost like they're clipping, and it's distracting me from the awesome mids/bass.  I really hope burn-in and maybe a mod can fix these issues.  Any suggestions?
 
UPDATE: I did some side by side back and forth comparison with my HD650's, and what really surprises me is that I like the bass on the HD650's better.  I was thinking open dynamic headphones would suck in comparison to orthos in the bass department.  I know they're two completely different headphones, so I should stop being so hard on these without giving them more listening time, but I guess I hope myself really hyped up on these.  Maybe I give these to my wife and I order some LCD-X's?

 

[KLJTech]

I ran mine in for a couple days (after listening to them for 10-15 minutes) and then really sat back and listened to them. I never listen to phones that I'm running in as I don't want to just get use to how they sound. It's certainly worth playing either music or pink noise through them for a day or so...I know that Magnepan's certainly sound better after the panels have had time to work for a while. HE's are kinda like miniature Magnepan's. 
 
Good luck, I hope you end up enjoying them. 

 

[bleudeciel16]

  I ran mine in for a couple days (after listening to them for 10-15 minutes) and then really sat back and listened to them. I never listen to phones that I'm running in as I don't want to just get use to how they sound. It's certainly worth playing either music or pink noise through them for a day or so...I know that Magnepan's certainly sound better after the panels have had time to work for a while. HE's are kinda like miniature Magnepan's. 
 
Good luck, I hope you end up enjoying them. 

 
Will definitely try that. 
 
Worst case scenario, these will be a good upgrade from my wife's M50's.

 

[MrMateoHead]

  I doubt the HP50 will be better than the HE400 for electronic anyway? but I want a pair that are better for other genres, vocals, guitars etc. when I have some more money I may end up keeping the HE400 for electronic and getting another pair for other genres. Every NAD product I have owned has been extremely good, I had the NAD 3020a, 315bee and now the 326bee which is a beast of an amplifier. I tried other amps, cambridge audio, Marantz etc. but the NAD's are always better.

The HP50, Focal Spirit Classic, and Spirit Pros are all currently some of the most "nuetral" phones you will probably find in the $300-$400 dollar range. Interestingly, the HE-500s measure somewhat similarly for Orthos but aren't generally described as "nuetral". For me $300 for NADs (or any other phone) is pretty doable but I don't like going higher.
 
As I am currently listening to some "flat" (neutral) speakers, I can say that neutral is generally where its at - it will be balanced no matter what you put through them, leaving the character of the music up to the recording / performers. Buying into "sound signatures" is fine if it works with the genres you like, but obviously that has its problems.

 

[MattTCG]

  Just got them in the mail, and I'm now listening to them.
 
First impression: UGH.  Sounds all closed and echoey.  Like the music is echoing around in a plastic helmet.
 
Digital Coax > Uberfrost > Lyr > HE-400
 
Could it be needing burn-in?  The pads maybe?  Would velour help with the echos?  Or the echo sound... not sure what it is I'm hearing, but it doesn't sound good.
 
The bass sounds impressive, and the mids sound great and in my face, but the high end is shredding my ears apart.  The highs sound muddy, almost like they're clipping, and it's distracting me from the awesome mids/bass.  I really hope burn-in and maybe a mod can fix these issues.  Any suggestions?
 
UPDATE: I did some side by side back and forth comparison with my HD650's, and what really surprises me is that I like the bass on the HD650's better.  I was thinking open dynamic headphones would suck in comparison to orthos in the bass department.  I know they're two completely different headphones, so I should stop being so hard on these without giving them more listening time, but I guess I hope myself really hyped up on these.  Maybe I give these to my wife and I order some LCD-X's?

 
Are you using the lyr that's in your signature? The bass on the he400 will spank the 650 especially on sub bass. This is coming from a 650 fanboy. 

 

[kcazbarach]

  Just got them in the mail, and I'm now listening to them.
 
First impression: UGH.  Sounds all closed and echoey.  Like the music is echoing around in a plastic helmet.
 
Digital Coax > Uberfrost > Lyr > HE-400
 
Could it be needing burn-in?  The pads maybe?  Would velour help with the echos?  Or the echo sound... not sure what it is I'm hearing, but it doesn't sound good.
 
The bass sounds impressive, and the mids sound great and in my face, but the high end is shredding my ears apart.  The highs sound muddy, almost like they're clipping, and it's distracting me from the awesome mids/bass.  I really hope burn-in and maybe a mod can fix these issues.  Any suggestions?
 
UPDATE: I did some side by side back and forth comparison with my HD650's, and what really surprises me is that I like the bass on the HD650's better.  I was thinking open dynamic headphones would suck in comparison to orthos in the bass department.  I know they're two completely different headphones, so I should stop being so hard on these without giving them more listening time, but I guess I hope myself really hyped up on these.  Maybe I give these to my wife and I order some LCD-X's?

EQ can tame the highs, some people have bigger complaints than others. Jergpads I believe have less treble than the velours.
 
as for the bass-I was underwhelmed as well at first. but the he 400 isn't inherantly a bassy phone. it's got a great quality bass that hits when the recording asks for it. It's tight too so there isn't a long decay either. (I did grow to enjoy the bass a ton).
 
 
 
the grill mod does expand the soundstage, and acoustics sound better to me at least. also the vent mod (part of jergpad mod as a whole) increases soundstage. I would like to add for me personally that the grill mod did help by adding air, and width to the soundstage, but I can also hear my surroundings in my apartment much more (which can be a bad or good thing). by the third-4th hour, it all kinda just came to me. I think part of it might be that the magnetic driver has so much going on that your ear might have to adjust in comparison to a regular driver that all resonates from the same part of the coil (this is how i understand it to work, could be a little off)
 
Give it some brain burn-in. for the first 2 hours, I really couldn't see a big difference between them and my former ad900x and really felt bad.
 
P.S.
 
I feel like from reading this thread, it kinda comes off that you're almost expected to be letdown by the bass based off the hype... (that was my reaction at least initially). If you're into EDM, maybe listen to some of that first. EDM and he 400 are a great match.

 

[bleudeciel16]

   
Are you using the lyr that's in your signature? The bass on the he400 will spank the 650 especially on sub bass. This is coming from a 650 fanboy. 

 
Yes.
 
The sub-bass is for sure better on the HE-400.  The regular bass though, it's hard to say.  I have to EQ the lower end a lot more to get the same amount of bass on the HE-400 than I do with my HD650's.  Not a huge deal--just more of an observation.  Sub bass on these is seriously subterranian though.  Pretty awesome, especially on the game of thrones soundtrack and skyrim soundtracks I've been listening to lately.
 
Did pink noise burn-in during the several hours I was out running errands and it seems a tiny bit better maybe?  I think the velour earpads and grill mod might help. 
 
It's just surprising the the highs are sounding like they do on closed headphones, which is weird considering these are open phones.  Hopefully it's just the earpads causing this.

 

[Atavax]

one more quick question. Now that i have an external amp as well as the amp built into my dac. Does it make a difference whether i turn the dac amp or external amp up to increase the volume?

 

[nicholars]

  Just got them in the mail, and I'm now listening to them.
 
First impression: UGH.  Sounds all closed and echoey.  Like the music is echoing around in a plastic helmet.
 
Digital Coax > Uberfrost > Lyr > HE-400
 
Could it be needing burn-in?  The pads maybe?  Would velour help with the echos?  Or the echo sound... not sure what it is I'm hearing, but it doesn't sound good.
 
The bass sounds impressive, and the mids sound great and in my face, but the high end is shredding my ears apart.  The highs sound muddy, almost like they're clipping, and it's distracting me from the awesome mids/bass.  I really hope burn-in and maybe a mod can fix these issues.  Any suggestions?
 
UPDATE: I did some side by side back and forth comparison with my HD650's, and what really surprises me is that I like the bass on the HD650's better.  I was thinking open dynamic headphones would suck in comparison to orthos in the bass department.  I know they're two completely different headphones, so I should stop being so hard on these without giving them more listening time, but I guess I hope myself really hyped up on these.  Maybe I give these to my wife and I order some LCD-X's?

 
The "UGH echoey'ness" can be fixed with Jergpad mods, and the mid bass can be fixed with EQ, the bass on these headphones is very good with EQ. No comparison with the HD650 to be honest, the HD650 have literally NO bass below about 40-50hz. In completely stock for with no EQ or pad mods I don't like the HE400 very much at all to be honest, but with some effort they can sound good. Just get electriQ and mod the pads, sounds like a different pair of headphones to the stock pleathers / no EQ.

 

[teohouse88]

Here below is my EQ for Electri-Q with EDM music :

 
I love it so much!!

 

[nicholars]

  Here below is my EQ for Electri-Q with EDM music :

 
I love it so much!!

 
Get sinegen and measure the peaks for your individual headphones / ears.... Becuase my headphone for example is not the same as the graphs on innerfidelity etc. I think a lot of your "tizz / sibilance" on that EQ is because you have raised 4-6khz too much, raise it around 1.2-3khz and then slope it off a bit because 4-5khz can sound harsh. Yours is close but you could make it better and also change the treble points to "warm - peak" filter, this seems to smooth it out for me. You have the right general shape but could do with a few adjustments

 

[nicholars]

This is what I am using most of the time as it does not mess up the stock sound too much but works pretty well with all genres, I have tried meticulously removing / adding every peak and trough in the FR but it ended up sounding worse so I decided to keep it simple, I sometimes raise the upper mids a bit more for vocals and guitar type music. The guy who is complaining about the mid bass on these, try using electri Q to get a nice curve like on this picture, using parametric EQ the midbass is a mess and sounds bad but with electriQ it sounds good. The bass on these should absolutely destroy the HD650 bass when setup right!
 

 
 
Best thing is to get "sinegen" and do it to your own headphones / ears / preferences..

 

[bleudeciel16]

The only problem I'm having with reading about these "fixes" is that I'd basically lock myself into these $300 headphones the second I put it under the knife.  Right now, since I got it from amazon, I can return it for either no charge or a light restocking fee, which is cool, but if I modify them and still don't like them--I'll be out $300 and stuck with cans I don't like.
 
Makes me feel I'd be better returning them, and buying a BH Crack for my 650's and call it a day while I research what end game cans I want to get. I didn't mind shelling $300 on the HE-400's because the low price.  I figured they'd be better bass for my gaming and EDM, but I couldn't stand them while playing BF4 last night.  I think I wore them for half hour before I got fed up with the echo'ing.  Sucks!  I wonder what I could sell them in the classifieds section of the forum for if I tried the mod(s) and still didn't like them?

 

[nicholars]

  The only problem I'm having with reading about these "fixes" is that I'd basically lock myself into these $300 headphones the second I put it under the knife.  Right now, since I got it from amazon, I can return it for either no charge or a light restocking fee, which is cool, but if I modify them and still don't like them--I'll be out $300 and stuck with cans I don't like.
 
Makes me feel I'd be better returning them, and buying a BH Crack for my 650's and call it a day while I research what end game cans I want to get. I didn't mind shelling $300 on the HE-400's because the low price.  I figured they'd be better bass for my gaming and EDM, but I couldn't stand them while playing BF4 last night.  I think I wore them for half hour before I got fed up with the echo'ing.  Sucks!  I wonder what I could sell them in the classifieds section of the forum for if I tried the mod(s) and still didn't like them?

 
All I can say is do what you want but jergpads and EQ will remove the echo.

 

[nicholars]

On another note, I have been playing with the bass EQ on the HE-400, I have called this preset "HE400 comedy bass", if anyone says these cannot do enough bass... Give this a go, haha. 25db bass boost FTW. And it STILL does not distort haha.