[ThurstonX]

 
You shouldn't have to pay for defective merchandise. HiFiMan would have an international shipping account that they could use to get this done for you, and that is commonly done. Again I think HFM performs well below acceptable standards when it comes to both quality control and customer service, certainly by North American standards. Here you have arguably the most popular headphone community research site on the Internet and they allow dissatisfied customers to experience such subpar quality testing and subsequent service and post about it here, are they nuts? I would without a doubt arrange courier shipment for you and do everything I could to mitigate your displeasure. Now if you have only asked the Australian distributor for service that is another thing.
 

Spoiler: The rest of the (justified) rant

The first thing you should do/should have done is contact HFM directly and insist that as this is a defective product you should not be responsible for any burden of shipping at all, and they must set-up the pickup with their account. You paid your part of shipping when you purchased the original set, and more than you should have if you paid for the first set to be returned. My concern would be that the Australian distributor just checked over the set, couldn't replicate the fault and sent it back to you.
 
Did you make sure you were given a brand new set? If I were you I would right away contact HFM directly. If the faults manifested themselves right away that triggers an enhanced responsibility on the part of the manufacturer as opposed to a product that has been used for some time. I know that customers need to bare some of the risk, but not for right out of the gate defective goods, especially multiple failures. Are the headphones themselves marked with a serial number anywhere that the customer can see? A paper serial number is little evidence to my mind, I want to know the product is stamped in a way that a customer can see if need be.
 
If you can't control your quality issues as a company, that is the companies problem, not the customers.  I feel strongly that HFM need to step it up and pay for their issues. Why? Because once a company starts losing money from quality control issues they fix the problem plain and simple. Simple economics, customers pain and expense, lower motivation, companies pain and expense, higher motivation.
 
Even if there was a small flat fee that customers paid I could get behind that a little, but this 100% hit to the customer is shocking to me. If nothing else this shows that the testing at HFM needs to be improved. Perhaps the faults being discovered are such that the existing procedures would not detect, but if so again, the company thanks the customer for helping them improve and they pay for the shipping, they don't nickel and dime the customer to death.
 
Tough love I know, but I will gurantee you once the financial pain becomes theirs to bare, solutions will follow. It isn't that they are a bad company, all companies will seek to download risks on their customers if they feel they can get away with it. North American companies used to be bad as well (and some doubtless still are, but they will lose marketshare over time), but years of consumer activism (which this post is meant to be) forced companies to step up their game. HFM runs the risk of losing customers to other companies if they fail to respond. We might see Audeze step up their game and bring excellent products (such as a working 560 can be) at a more competitive price. Oppo can also seriously up their game and we know they have the scale of economy to out compete smaller companies so the last thing HFM needs to be is complacent with quality control and customer service. Okay for the last time HFM, get these problems ironed out, and make sure that customers feel valued and are not asked to pay for lax quality control standards (if that is what is happening here).
 
If I am wrong, and for some technical reason there was no way the issues being raised here with these customers could have been detected, than I apologize, but I just don't see how that could be. It is these multiple failure unit customers that make my blood boil. In my business I bend over backwards to keep customers. If doing so is too expensive I would either need to improve the process causing the profit to be too low, or stop selling the problem merchandise. Seriously, am I being too hard on HFM here?

 

 
While I agree with you 100% in principle, I'll play devil's advocate and say that for small companies the reality and practice are quite different.  There are a few things of which we are unaware: total units produced and sold, percentage of those that have been returned as defective, and percentage of those customers who complained about the cost of return shipping vs. those who just paid it.  All that, combined with the gambler's sense of What can we get away with?, influence the policy.  Given that the small company is often a majority direct order operation, there's little chance the consumer has any recourse but to accept the policy, or keep the defective product, and quite possibly stop doing business with that company, and use forums like this to alert others to the consequences of purchasing a possibly defective product.
 
If the company thinks their schiit is good enough, and that customers will prefer to return a defective unit for repair or replacement rather than go without or look elsewhere, and if, indeed, that's their experience, then the policy won't change.  I agree that producing an inordinate number of defective units will force a change, as word will get out and potential customers will be put off.  That will affect QC, but will not likely change the return shipping policy.  What's a dissatisfied customer going to do, sue?  Not even remotely likely, mostly because you tacitly (or actively, if you actually read the fine print) agreed to the company's policy when you bought the product.
 
The power supply in my Lyr died after less than three months.  Was I pissed that I had to pay nearly $20 to ship it back to them?  Of course.  Was I willing to do it?  Of course, because I wasn't willing to eat $450 for a fancy door stop, and am not dishonest enough to sell it on eBay.  That's just the price we pay for dealing with small companies.  I don't see it changing as long as the gambler's margins pay off for the company.
 
Again, just playing devil's advocate.  The QC issue with HFM is off-putting.  I've had nice exchanges with their service reps, and can't complain there.  They don't set the policies.  If I had to send back two pairs of the same HFM cans, I'd sell the third, buy something else, and bid the company good day.  Fortunately, I've had good luck with my HFM cans.  Luck, of course, should not enter into it.

 

[hekeli]

  problems with distortion at higher volumes is common with higher impedance headphones that are paired with an inadequate amplifier. you will need to check your amplifier's RMS/channel power specs at 50 ohms. what amplifier are you using?

 
Chasing pointless parameters. Probably even the crappiest amplifiers of all can reproduce this infamous tizzybuzzing.
 
If someone wants to know if it's the driver or not, simply brake the seal (lift your cup) while playing low sine. The buzzing will come and together with the seal. You might even find a volume position where a slight change will change it suddently on/off with a seal. The sound is unmistakeably "physical" in nature and not some vague amplifier distortion that usually grows gradually.
 
Even without a seal a good pair will play quite loud without any side effects. Atleast on my previous two pairs the other side was always clean to extreme levels while other started buzzing very soon.. on any headphone I'd expect nothing less than equal power handling on both sides.

 

[money4me247]

While I agree with you 100% in principle, I'll play devil's advocate and say that for small companies the reality and practice are quite different.  There are a few things of which we are unaware: total units produced and sold, percentage of those that have been returned as defective, and percentage of those customers who complained about the cost of return shipping vs. those who just paid it.  All that, combined with the gambler's sense of What can we get away with?, influence the policy.  Given that the small company is often a majority direct order operation, there's little chance the consumer has any recourse but to accept the policy, or keep the defective product, and quite possibly stop doing business with that company, and use forums like this to alert others to the consequences of purchasing a possibly defective product.

If the company thinks their schiit is good enough, and that customers will prefer to return a defective unit for repair or replacement rather than go without or look elsewhere, and if, indeed, that's their experience, then the policy won't change.  I agree that producing an inordinate number of defective units will force a change, as word will get out and potential customers will be put off.  That will affect QC, but will not likely change the return shipping policy.  What's a dissatisfied customer going to do, sue?  Not even remotely likely, mostly because you tacitly (or actively, if you actually read the fine print) agreed to the company's policy when you bought the product.

The power supply in my Lyr died after less than three months.  Was I pissed that I had to pay nearly $20 to ship it back to them?  Of course.  Was I willing to do it?  Of course, because I wasn't willing to eat $450 for a fancy door stop, and am not dishonest enough to sell it on eBay.  That's just the price we pay for dealing with small companies.  I don't see it changing as long as the gambler's margins pay off for the company.

Again, just playing devil's advocate.  The QC issue with HFM is off-putting.  I've had nice exchanges with their service reps, and can't complain there.  They don't set the policies.  If I had to send back two pairs of the same HFM cans, I'd sell the third, buy something else, and bid the company good day.  Fortunately, I've had good luck with my HFM cans.  Luck, of course, should not enter into it.

luck does factor into it. a small percentages of headphones are defective from every company. just the reality of it. i've owned a ton of different headphones & never had an issue with hifiman's products. had a defective akg though. ...does that does that mean akg has bad quality control? unlikely. just that i was unlucky once.

obviously if uve been unlikely twice, that seems highly suspect. i honestly wld tend to think the issue is arising from somewhere else as (source or amplification matching) as you need to be very unlucky to get two defective products.

though i have heard stories of hifiman lagging a bit behind in terms of quality control compared other companies based on their track record. that is the trade off i guess to get the sonic performance at this price.

 

[ThurstonX]

Paul, I opened my HE-560 up... and disassembled it down to the diaphragm.

And I found hair pieces and dust stuck to the conducting trace in the back of the diaphragm that would graze against the magnetic array at high excursions (resonant or under-damped frequencies).

It's not the diaphragm. It's really poor manufacturing quality control on Hifiman's part.

Cleaning those conducting traces carefully and flattening the traces gently so that they do not stick out anymore will fix this and allow a super linear sine sweep from down low to super high.

I think I mentioned this already at some point in this thread, but people didn't pay much attention at the time, it seems.

 
Thanks for sharing your experience and results.  That's pretty annoying for $900 cans, but at least the insane(ly brave) have a path to a remedy, should their pair be out of warranty.

 

[Schokolade bar]

HiFiman customer service has been excellent to me, got a replacement for my HE560s within a week or so and they came flawlessly packaged with no rattle or aesthetic irregularities. The only complaint I have regarding HiFiman is their third world tier QC. 

 

[ThurstonX]

luck does factor into it. a small percentages of headphones are defective from every company. just the reality of it. i've owned a ton of different headphones & never had an issue with hifiman's products. had a defective akg though. ...does that does that mean akg has bad quality control? unlikely. just that i was unlucky once.

obviously if uve been unlikely twice, that seems highly suspect. i honestly wld tend to think the issue is arising from somewhere else as (source or amplification matching) as you need to be very unlucky to get two defective products.

though i have heard stories of hifiman lagging a bit behind in terms of quality control compared other companies based on their track record. that is the trade off i guess to get the sonic performance at this price.

 
Sure it does, but that wasn't my point.  Spelling it out, if a company exercises proper quality control from manufacturing to unit testing (and yes, most companies suck at this; I've done it for a living, and we always got the budget shaft), then the luck factor can be virtually eliminated.  So while luck shouldn't enter into it, clearly it does.  Given companies varying attention and resources devoted to QC, the luck factor will vary.  I'll iterate my earlier point: we don't know the percentages of defective units, etc.
 
Since I bought my AKGs from Amazon, I was covered, should they have been defective.  That's a different economic scale, which I tried to point out.  Amazon has an operational philosophy few companies can match.  I bought a C2G Female-Male RCA extension cable to run across The Lab from turntable to XPS-1.  Like almost every cable I tried, there was a nasty hum.  I reported it as defective, expecting to ship it back.  Within seconds Amazon had issued a refund and told me to keep the cable.  LOL.  Nothing wrong with the cable, but of course no small company can operate like that.
 
So yeah, while the small company has one sort of gambler's logic, we consumers of their products have a different sort.  We're willing to take the chance for the sonic pay off.  I just paid $79 for a pair of 1963 Siemens CCas, knowing from the seller that they didn't test all that well.  But 1963 CCas... couldn't resist.  So far so good, and time to try them with the HE-560s 

 

[mlxx]

  I only get tizzing when the seal is broken - ie. I lift the earpad from my ear.
Guess I am in luck as I am an owner of the very first batch HE-560.
With good seal, I get no tizzing in any of the tracks mentioned above. I've also run my HE-560 through SineGen through 20 - 50Hz tones and raised the volume to test. Again, no tizzing with good seal, noticeably tizzing without a good seal.
I have a theory that my recently installed aluminum baffle [previously had my plastic baffle from the first batch] improves the seal significantly. Can anyone confirm this?
 
Also, love this tune - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrXLX9D8ibU

 
I wouldn't call that luck.. don't you ever take your headphones off temporarily to do something and leave them playing for periods of time? If the diaphram is hitting things, that can't be good in the long run. If I had any tizziness whatsoever at any stage under any conditions, I would be sending them straight back while they are under warranty.
 

Paul, I opened my HE-560 up... and disassembled it down to the diaphragm.

And I found hair pieces and dust stuck to the conducting trace in the back of the diaphragm that would graze against the magnetic array at high excursions (resonant or under-damped frequencies).

It's not the diaphragm. It's really poor manufacturing quality control on Hifiman's part.

Cleaning those conducting traces carefully and flattening the traces gently so that they do not stick out anymore will fix this and allow a super linear sine sweep from down low to super high.

I think I mentioned this already at some point in this thread, but people didn't pay much attention at the time, it seems.

 
 
About hairs and dust stuck on the diaphragm, that is really pathetic!
 
BTW, I would be very careful pulling hairs off stuck on the diaphragm. There are photos in one of the threads (maybe in the HE-500 or one of the modding threads, forget now) where someone did that and it tore a hole in the diaphragm, the hair was glued on.
 
One would have to have rocks in their head or be made of money, to buy the ~$2500 HE-1000 anytime soon after it is released, with the HFM QC.

 

[conquerator2]

   
I wouldn't call that luck.. don't you ever take your headphones off temporarily to do something and leave them playing for periods of time? If the diaphram is hitting things, that can't be good in the long run. If I had any tizziness whatsoever at any stage under any conditions, I would be sending them straight back while they are under warranty.
 
 

I should have been more specific. The tizziness was only during testing at higher volume... I normally listen at around 45/100. The tizziness was only at around 60/100 with only sine sweeps [~30Hz] and only when the seal is broken. So during normal listening conditions, it does not happen regardless of headphones on/off I believe. I don't even think I have a single track that has sustained or repeated ~30Hz tones. Just not my kind of music. YMMV. Just a clarification.

 

[Sonic Defender]

   
I wouldn't call that luck.. don't you ever take your headphones off temporarily to do something and leave them playing for periods of time? If the diaphram is hitting things, that can't be good in the long run. If I had any tizziness whatsoever at any stage under any conditions, I would be sending them straight back while they are under warranty.
 
 
 
About hairs and dust stuck on the diaphragm, that is really pathetic!
 
BTW, I would be very careful pulling hairs off stuck on the diaphragm. There are photos in one of the threads (maybe in the HE-500 or one of the modding threads, forget now) where someone did that and it tore a hole in the diaphragm, the hair was glued on.
 
One would have to have rocks in their head or be made of money, to buy the ~$2500 HE-1000 anytime soon after it is released, with the HFM QC.

Agreed, HFM hasn't earned the right to ask consumers to trust them with that type of investment. They continue to allow simple to eliminate quality control issues to significantly impact their customers. I would gladly pay an additional $50 per unit produced by HFM if that money was invested in a proper quality control/testing process. As I said, I am not sure I would buy HFM gear again as it seems very risky. I have been lucky with my 560 and not experienced any issues yet.

 

[Sonic Defender]

  HiFiman customer service has been excellent to me, got a replacement for my HE560s within a week or so and they came flawlessly packaged with no rattle or aesthetic irregularities. The only complaint I have regarding HiFiman is their third world tier QC. 

But were you expected to pay for shipping a defective unit that should not have passed quality control in the first place? My spiddy sense tells me that quality control and testing is not granted the appropriate status and budget at HFM as compared with research and development.

 

[Bill-P]

  Bill-P do you have pictures of the HE-560 disassembly? I'm very interested in seeing the inside and how it's done. Was it hard to put it back together?

 
Yep!
 
For science!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Well, hopefully I'm not infringing on Hifiman's copyrights of their products or something... this truly is just for studying purposes.
 
Diaphragm and conducting trace. Note: one soldering point had a bad contact (bottom left corner of photo) that just snapped off, so that was the other reason why I had to dissect the headphone. Soldering the wire into that point was much more trivial compared to cleaning the conducting traces on that super thin diaphragm. As mentioned: one false move and it could tear pretty easily. Disassembly won't cause it to tear, though.
 
Also, dust from having the vents open will most likely get to the diaphragm and just slide to the side because they have no adhesive to stick, and also the space in between the diaphragm and magnetic structure is very small, so not a lot of things can get squeezed in between unless by some freak accident. But that'd also mean any fraction of a millimeter of the diaphragm being uneven, and we will have "buzz", "tizz", "rattle", or whatever else that may happen when the diaphragm tries to make drastic movement. TL;DR: full open back vent is safe, and can be cleaned out if you know how to do this. But if your pair is already "defective", then it'll just stay that way... until you get to the diaphragm and flatten it, or pluck the problem thing (hair, dust, etc...) out.
 

 
Magnetic array, on the side that's facing the diaphragm. Note: it's actually very very flat on this side. Single-sided, and neutral overall except for small space in between 2 bars where there's a combined field (it's this field that interacts with the diaphragm), so just avoid sticking anything metal in there. Otherwise, it won't cause as much grief as with the dual-magnet structure of the HE-500/HE-6... where the front and back array will try to stick together, thus causing disassembly to be unnecessarily hard. I think Tyll @ Innerfidelity killed his HE-6 in the process to make that post educating us about planar magnetic technology...
 

 
And here's the filter in the front in case anyone is curious. This filter is actually the thing that causes that "rattle" when the seal is broken. Supposedly, the back of the diaphragm will always have an induced magnetic field (B-field) when in actual use due to current produced by the amplifier, so this B-field is almost guaranteed to prevent the diaphragm from actually hitting the magnetic array. However, there is no such "preventive" mechanism in the front of the diaphragm, and the space between the diaphragm and this "flat" plastic is very small (think 1mm), so the diaphragm will almost always hit this plastic structure in front... without fail, when there is not enough mechanical damping to prevent over-excursion. The Abyss will also over-excurse (this is why it has insane bass when the seal is broken), but its diaphragm has no such plastic structure for the diaphragm to hit, and the end result is... it's one of the best bass headphones in the world.
 
Not tried: a foam or felt ring inserted in between the diaphragm and this plastic structure may just help with bass rattling when the seal is broken, and may in fact improve bass response because then the headphone can be driven with the bass a little more undamped. But that's only in theory. I have never tried this in reality, because if I were to write up a mod on the HE-560, I didn't want to include this as a step that the modder has to go through, so... that's that. But trust me, I was very tempted!! It would have fixed a (IMO) major issue with the design, and it would have allowed for better bass.
 

 
Anyway, disassembly and re-construction were easy, or at least easier than cleaning. All of that was done within 30 minutes, so it isn't like it's a huge task anyway.
 

  I wonder if blasting them with compressed air would damage them? Obviously not from an inch away, but would it help remove debris?

 
Diaphragm is very thin and may shrink/expand if blasted with hot/cold air. Obviously, I didn't have the balls to try that... and perhaps you may have better luck but I'd HIGHLY recommend that you do it with magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers with SOFT tips, and forget about the blower altogether.
 

  Thanks for sharing your experience and results.  That's pretty annoying for $900 cans, but at least the insane(ly brave) have a path to a remedy, should their pair be out of warranty.

 
Yep. Luckily, it's not that hard... but I'd agree that it's kind of an annoyance.

 

[choC.]

  that makes me think that there is a problem with your amplification.
 
1.5W @ 1ohm does not mean anything as the HE-560 is around 50 ohms. Also, it does not state whether this is max power or RMS power. RMS power is useful as it is the average power that the amplifier outputs. Max power is useless as it is simply the highest peak power that the amplifier may reach - this does not translate well into real world usage as it may only reach that power rating for a few seconds. You will need to find the RMS per channel power ratings at 50 ohms.

 
The 1ohm was the output impedence, not the headphones. If it was a problem with the amplification I'd be having problems in both drivers. I said in my first comment that even when I changed the L/R connectors to their opposite drivers, I still had the distortion in ONLY the left driver.
 
The Centrance DACmini has plenty of power for the HE-560, it is not the problem.

 

[pauldgroot]

Thanks for the pics and explanation Bill, very interesting.

 

[Kalavere]

Hmmm, I've spent much of the morning blasting Robert Glaspers - 'In My Element' out of my HE-560's and actually, it seems to have made a difference. 

I switched my Lyr 2 to high gain and just cranked the volume and let them run though the album a few times, they sound noticeably clearer, I've not done tonal tests but Lee Ritenour's 6 String Theory  - My One and Only Love (the song that shows the vibration up the most) is notably better, not perfect, but better. 

 

[sci80899]

   
Yep!
 
For science!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Well, hopefully I'm not infringing on Hifiman's copyrights of their products or something... this truly is just for studying purposes.
 
Diaphragm and conducting trace. Note: one soldering point had a bad contact (bottom left corner of photo) that just snapped off, so that was the other reason why I had to dissect the headphone. Soldering the wire into that point was much more trivial compared to cleaning the conducting traces on that super thin diaphragm. As mentioned: one false move and it could tear pretty easily. Disassembly won't cause it to tear, though.
 
Also, dust from having the vents open will most likely get to the diaphragm and just slide to the side because they have no adhesive to stick, and also the space in between the diaphragm and magnetic structure is very small, so not a lot of things can get squeezed in between unless by some freak accident. But that'd also mean any fraction of a millimeter of the diaphragm being uneven, and we will have "buzz", "tizz", "rattle", or whatever else that may happen when the diaphragm tries to make drastic movement. TL;DR: full open back vent is safe, and can be cleaned out if you know how to do this. But if your pair is already "defective", then it'll just stay that way... until you get to the diaphragm and flatten it, or pluck the problem thing (hair, dust, etc...) out.
 
 

 
Thanks Bill, this is very useful. Is it just taking out the ear cups and then removing all the screws?
 
My phones are 3 weeks old and the right side has a slight fizz / buzz at certain frequencies. I've half a mind to send them back to China but not sure if they would replace it with a 'perfect' set given their QC records. May actually try taking them apart to try and do some cleaning myself.