[Nankai]

Quote:

Dear NANKAI. :You have reached your daily allotment of 2 private messages per day. Note that multiple recipients of the same message each count toward your limit.
 
My twitter:Vonsorgenfri
E-mail:chrisjorg@hotmail.com

Pls email to head.direct.customerservice@gmail.com and keep the conversation. 

 

[roma101]

Quote:

Ah man, please enjoy your holiday.  I am patient and positive you will take care of us all.  Thank you for keeping tabs on the thread and your concern.  I really do enjoy the sound for the first 5 minutes anyway.  : )
 
 

You are seriously one of the nicest people on here, Danny. More head-fiers could learn a thing or two from you, including myself.
 

 

[Kilosonic]

Quote:

 

Actually you did, so did all of us who pre-ordered. There is a reason we got it $50 cheaper than the already fair price. Of course I hope things don't go wrong at all, but won't complain too much for being testers. After all, we're "paid" $50 to do this. Also now Fang is personally looking into this, I'm sure he'll have some solution soon.
 

Actually he didn't. Nowhere was there a disclaimer stating that prior to ordering. Saying there's "a reason we got it $50 cheaper..." is imo misleading and misinformed. I preordered Evolution Acoustic's MMMicroOne and they had a lot of issues with their newly-contracted manufacturers that has caused extensive delays (been waiting almost a year now) but I did not get even a small discount or reimbursement, not even a set ETA. But after demoing them myself, I'm more than happy to put up with the wait. EA is like HFM in that it's small, innovative, and relatively young to the market; glitches both pre- and post-production are bound to happen. So the $50 off, imo, tells me more about HFM's generosity than it does this notion that somehow they're paying us all to be guinea pigs, insinuating that they're so unconfident and negligent as to not even do any sufficient Q/A testing before launching.  
 

 

[DannyBai]

Quote:

You are seriously one of the nicest people on here, Danny. More head-fiers could learn a thing or two from you, including myself.
 

Thanks man.  You are among the nicest Head-Fier's yourself.  I appreciate it my friend.  

 

[dd051]

Very much agreed - 
Hifiman is a product pusher at the moment.  You can call Fang some new engineer with these PM designs.  However, if its' his responsibility to ensure a quality, functional product, he fails quite badly.
With perhaps exception of the amps from Hifiman, they have had persistent and near-constant QC issues with their products upon release. 
Quote:

Where did I say the majority had problems?  I simply questioned another poster's statement that the majority did not have problems but were not posting here.  There is a difference.  Fact is, mine were bad and inoperable from the minute I first used them, as were others -- not acceptable at all.  If there was any semblance of QC this would never have happened.  An occasional defect occurs with any product at any price, but the incidence of the same problem with relatively few units in the wild is a huge red flag and does not inspire confidence for long term ownership.  
 
While this is a budget priced planar design, it is still priced at $400, which is not exactly chopped liver.  The fact that the problem exists at all is troubling and not indicative of a company that is taking care with its products -- especially a new one that has been highly touted by the owner himself.   It is not like this is the first issue with HFM -- the standard feature of cracked wood on the bowls of other models also points to a history of less than stellar R&D and QC.  Not to mention their machine gun release of new products to rectify the SQ shortcomings of previous models. HFM seems to play very fast and very loose.
 
If the issue gets resolved, I may keep the HE-400's because they sound pretty good and might be a good, relatively reasonably priced phone to take on extended trips. But the bottom line is, these fall way short of the mark in terms of basic functionality and quality for me.  Maybe when yours come in they will not have problems both short term and in the long run -- I look forward to hearing your feedback whenever that happens.
 

 

 

[olegausany]

I'm the one who had problem paying for my pre-oder using cards issued by CHASE bank. Kevin. head-direct web designer, thought it could be problem that zip code i provided when placed order don't match with the one bank has on file (THEY DO MATCH) and suggested to try different card so i did it yesterday and had no problems this time. Also i promptly received confirmation email stating that i will get $50 back to get pre-order price. Today i received email stating that shipping of my order is delayed cause of holiday with the promise to ship it on January 30 but i doubt it's gonna happen since Fang said they will be manufactured after holiday but hopefully i will get a bug-free pair.
 
Wish Fang, Kevin and others at head-direct happy holiday 

 

[Auxint]

I opened the grills on mine and found the heatshrink was loose on both sides, put a little electrical tape on it to secure it and haven't had any drops out. So in my case it wasn't a cable problem like I thought.
 
Edit: Nevermind, still cuts out randomly, but not as bad, at least.

 

[timeslip]

I might as well jump in now.  Immediately when I plugged it in, the right side dropped.  I jiggled it a bit, and also checked the inside wiring.  They are not touching and when the right side does magically start to work, some of the range is a bit static like.

 

[timeslip]

Interesting, like some others in this thread have mentioned... When I push the bottom part of the headphone real hard towards my head, sound comes back.
 

 

[timeslip]

Ok, I think I may have just fixed mine.  I took the earpads off, and tightened some of the screws.  This is somewhat of a hack, as you can see that it starts to add more stress to the plastic piece. 
 

 

[timeslip]

Nm, cut out again. There is definitely a bad connection somewhere inside of it.

 

[Phos]

Well there went my left channel again.  Adjusting the screws no longer seems to help, and the two wires inside the ear cups appear to be A-OK.  There are a few tiny breaks in their shielding, but they're not near anything conductive.  Well, they worked just long enough for me to figure out that I like them.  

 

[zeffa]

Mine worked perfectly for the first day or so. Then the left channel cut out (or rather the volume out was only about 10% of the right output). I fixed it by taking the whole thing apart and tightening the screws. There are actually two layers of screws. The outer black screws fix a plastic ring to the inner driver piece. For me it was the inner layer that had fairly loose screws. Anyway, this is what I did:
 
1. Take off earpads.
2. Unscrew all the black screws and remove the black plastic ring.
2. Take off the back grille (steps by Nankai here)
3. The driver part should now be accessible. There are 7 silver screws with tightening nuts that are compressing the driver together. Tighten these (especially around where the wires come out). I used a small wrench to make sure the nut didn't move, then used a screwdriver to tighten it.
4. Put it back together again (reverse of above steps). Make sure to align everything properly before screwing it all back together again. I found that it was easier to mate the black plastic ring with the driver piece and screw those together first before finally screwing it into the metal enclosure.
5. Enjoy!
 
You might find it prudent to tighten both sides. After fixing the left side, the right side started acting up. Anyway, now there isn't any channel imbalance that I can detect & everything sounds great! Hope you guys find this guide useful - these headphones definitely deserve to be listened to!

 

[Kilosonic]

Welcome to capitalism lol. Every for-profit company pushes products for profit. You wouldn't be a very good company otherwise (ipods/iphones/ipads anybody?). I've spent a lot of time reading posts, reviews, etc on the HE-500/HE-5LE/HE-6 and although I came across many complaints, I never got the sense that Fang "fails quite badly". What measuring stick are u using? In fact, most of what I read was positive. Not to mention my friend's HE-300 just came in and we were trying them out. As much as I didn't care for the sound, I have to admit the presentation, finish, and overall build quality were professionally well done. Same when I examined their product lines @ CES. They all felt more solid to me than say Sennheiser's HD800 which felt relatively cheap and fragile by comparison. I must strongly disagree with your assertions. 
 
Quote:

Very much agreed - 
Hifiman is a product pusher at the moment.  You can call Fang some new engineer with these PM designs.  However, if its' his responsibility to ensure a quality, functional product, he fails quite badly.
With perhaps exception of the amps from Hifiman, they have had persistent and near-constant QC issues with their products upon release. 


 

 

 

[zeffa]

To figure out what is causing your channel imbalance / cut channel - test the wire first. Unscrew the SMA headphone connectors, and swap them. If the good side is now bad, then its a wire issue. If the bad side is still bad, then it might be a loose connection inside. To test this, try pinching the earpad near the connector. If the sound gets louder, then its a loose connection and you should tighten the screws inside. If it doesn't make a difference, check that the internal wires aren't shorting (as described by gusarich). If after all that it's still not fixed, then its probably time to contact HifiMan for an exchange.