I got back from the Newport show late last night. It was a pleasure to speak with Eric from HiFiMan's NY office on several occasions on Sunday at the show. I think Fang must have left for home by then.
The HE-560 on the left is the reddish finish, the middle phone is the lighter, more natural finish, and the one on the right is my pre-order teak, which actually looks darker and less red and more boring in person than shown in the picture. These pictures were taken without a flash, but with indoor lighting of course. I preferred the more natural color to the reddish color. The reddish color makes a bigger impression initially but I think long term I would be happier with the natural, but I could live with either one. They will pick only one for production however. That is smart decision for a small company like them. The new models definitely look like they have wood veneer trim vs solid wood, which is of course is what they are. Anyone who has the pre-order versions can keep theirs if they prefer not to get the latest version because of looks.
I compared the new version with my pre-order set using their EF6 amp, and based on that, I want the new version regardless of looks. Comparing open headphones in a large busy and fairly noisy room makes hearing small differences hard, but I thought the improvement in the new version was fairly significant. The overall balance remains about the same, but the new version is much more transparent...like veils were lifted. This was evident across the frequency range. I asked Eric how much was due to the change in the cable vs the headphone itself, and he said it was mostly due to the added baffling that the new housing allowed them to add that was not possible with the solid teak housing. He said the cable change, which was to upgrade the purity of the copper conductors (used along with silver) was more of a minor tuning tweak. I noticed that the new cable seemed to be a little less stiff, even though it seemed slightly thicker in that it filled the pvc cover better. By the way this new version still had the old pads, although that will be changed for the production version to one with a large opening.
Here is a picture of another pair that used a WyWires balanced cable on a Schiit amp.
I also briefly discussed with Eric the upcoming electrostatic headphone and amp. They will start out with a statement product that will be pretty expensive, and then try to trickle down from there with other models eventually. They will try to make the headphone compatible with Stax amps but that is secondary to getting the best sound. They are also working on some ear buds that will have really deep bass for a change. I hope they can pull that off, as I don't care for IEMs myself.
FYI, you can click on the pictures for a bigger view.
