[punit]

 
I have the WA22 & it seems to drive the HE-6 well & then I tried them on my Tube Speaker Amp.
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/493214/hifiman-he-6-planar-magnetic-headphone/13020#post_10478555
 
It sounds more dynamic with better quality Bass (depth & texture) also I can hear more details & Sound stage has more depth. But this comparison is from memory, I haven't heard the HE 6 with WA22  after I tried them on the speaker amp. Today I will do a direct side by side A/B comparison between the 2 & reconfirm whether my above impression based on auditory memory  is correct .
 
 

Above confirmed after A/B comparison, except the sound stage , it seems nearly the same on the WA22. WA22 highs are a bit shrill whereas the Cayin highs are smoother, overall sound has more weight, is more fleshed out. Amongst the frequency range the Bass has the most improvement (but perhaps I give that the most importance as I am a bass-head).
 
The WA22 has good NOS tubes (cost around $ 800), whereas the Cayin has stock current production average tubes ( around $ 120). Have ordered some nice NOS tubes, so will expect some more improvement.

 

[Xenophon]

   
The Emo mini is a great "starter amp" for the HE-6.  So you may just happen to like the HE-500 better than the HE-6 on that amp.  I've owned two at two different times.  It's great to use when you main amp is out for upgrades or repairs.  However, if you do decide to get the HE-6 - a much better amp is needed to weak up the beast.
 
 
 
Bold:
 
I didn't think so.  The only thing with the V800 is that it still use an old USB technology (Adaptive)  - Thus improvements are to be had IMO.  If you have a great adaptive USB implantation and a great asynchronous USB implantation I'll take the async implementation every time.
 
Violectric is coming out with a new DAC soon time soon I think - this one will have the async technology and is said to be much better than the V800.
 
Others that's an upgrade over the V800 that's around the 2K mark - give or take a few $$ IMO
 
Master 7  (one of the best out there at that price)
 
A used PWD mk2 (not worth the asking price - but a steal at the 2K mark)
 
NAD M51 (really good digital volume control)
 
Hilo (lots of features - and good sound to go with it)
 
John Kenny Ciunas DAC (SE only) but has a great USB input - Great for a lower cost solution
 
Schiit Gungnir with the new Gen2 USB board (I heard the Gen1)
 
Benchmark DAC2 (haven't heard)
 
Lavry DA11 (was going to get)
 
Matrix X-Saber (haven't heard)
 
Metrum Octave mk2   (I really like this one)
 
Mytek DSD DAC  (really technical - a bit on the bright side for me)
 
Eximus DP-1 (haven't heard)
 
Ayre QB-9 ( the mk2 is at the 3K mark)  (the mk1 is a really good DAC - only has a USB input thou)

No, Vio 'll be coming out with new amps including an upgraded USB module but no immediate successor to the V800 DAC in the works afaik.  New V281 will deliver 4W into 50 Ohms (balanced), 14Vrms but at a price of about 2k USD for the base version without taxes in the EU...dunno...not for a blind buy anyway.  Also took a look at the Octave Mk2, interesting NOS-concept and good price, will try to audition it in a couple of months.
 
That Hilo looks really strong and at a nice price (in the US, in the EU it's something else after duties and VAT).
 
I'm bloody cursed in the hunt for my HE-6 speaker amp...first I cancelled my F3 after the entire discussion about clipping we had a couple of months ago, then I order and prepay a custom F5 clone build and as you know that's falling to pieces and it starts to look like I'll end up without amp AND out of pocket.  Thinking evil thoughts of hopping on a plane with a pair of pliers, a blowtorch and soldering iron and going medieval on someone if it doesn't get straightened out.  

 

[Cante Ista]

   
I remember hearing your m51 -> F3 -> HE6 rig with some Amon Tobin at a meet last year, bass was definitely very visceral
How do you feel the m51 pwdmk2 compare? Does the m51 come pretty close?

I think it is close with PWD slightly better than the m51. Not worth at MSRPs but used prices - go for PWD if you don't have either. If you have m51, I would listen to the PWD before dropping money on it. If I did it all over again I would have held off for a better DAC before buying PWD. I had m51 first. That's just my 2 cents. 

 

[markheadphonium]

i found wa6-se and wa22 both inadequate for he-6, of course i listen slightly louder than most people and need more dynamic range and volume range.

the wa6-se, absolutely no way, clipped before got loud and sounded thin and bright.

the wa22 did pretty well and more people could live with it, still not ideal for me, I believe Ardilla has a wa22 with he-6 he uses...

Curious, the WA6-SE I listened on got very, very loud at about half volume setting and didn't clip. Also had great bass. The guy who loaned it to me put a lot of search into tube types with it, as you know the different tube types sound very, very different. Some of them sound terrible in his opinion and I believe they have different gains also.

 

[Theogenes]

Thinking evil thoughts of hopping on a plane with a pair of pliers, a blowtorch and soldering iron and going medieval on someone if it doesn't get straightened out.  

Marsellus Wallace doesn't like to get [redacted] by anybody except Mrs. Wallace.

Also, yeah, the Hilo is fantastic. Haven't heard enough to say it's the greatest thing on earth, but is sure is phenomenal, and the feature set is second to absolutely none.

 

[Happy Camper]

The Hilo gave me pause and I've stopped my source obsession. So I have my headphones and my source. I am accepting my amp status. I've heard better but I have decided not to go there. Life has a way of prioritizing and changing the best laid plans. As Meat sings, "two out of three ain't bad".

 

[Silent One]

I'm with Happy Camper and won't allow lust to hijack my listening pleasure.

 

[Theogenes]

Just a heads-up, I'm going to have my HE-6 (and Hilo, FWIW) at the Music City Meet in Nashville on May 10th if anybody is in the area and wants to swing by and listen.
 
You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming!

 

[NZtechfreak]

Regarding my experience of various DACs and the HE-6:
 
At present I have both the PWDII and Auralic Vega at home. My lazy and entirely unmethodical impressions of their sounds is that I have a slight but definite preference for the PWDII (and that's compared to the Vega in Exact mode). I actually preferred the sound of my Reference 10 to both of these however, and that was running direct off USB and I expect its sound would improve further with something like an OR5 to overcome Audio-GDs USB implementation (which is not as good as either of the other two DACs or many newish DACs with improved USB implementations, like the Schiit stuff on their newer USB revision). I think both of the current DACs have it over the Reference 10 for micro detail and other minutiae, but I simply don't enjoy their sound as much as the Reference 10 which had a little extra warmth that for my tastes suited the HE-6 well.
 
I think as things currently stand, a secondhand PWDII is a very decent option for the HE-6 indeed.
 
With the experience I've had with these three DACs I'm currently considering getting a Master 7 and OR5, and if that has some resemblance to the Ref 10 sound with better fine technical merits across the board that'll probably be it for me on the DAC front. All that will remain after that, for a little while at least, will be settling onto the speaker amp I intend to use in the longer term with my HE-6.
 
I've also done a lot of reading on the Hilo, and that is up there for consideration too - one great thing about it is the universal power supply, meaning I can get one from the States (hopefully at secondhand prices) without any concerns about it running here in NZ or faffing about with stepdown transformers and such like. The A-D conversion features may even be useful for me if I take the plunge into vinyl, or - heaven forbid - actually do any recording with my guitar.
 
Oh, and as an aside, had the LCD-X for a week and the HE-6 easily saw that challenger off to my ears and tastes. I think the hype train is a little out of hand where the X is concerned myself, listening to 46 and 2 by Tool (a track I use for imaging/instrument separation/soundstage adjudication - the recording of the drum track in the intro is a masterpiece) the X has a smaller soundstage and the clarity with which the cymbals are heard in terms of separation and imaging was very disappointing. That was via Vega/PWD2 and Taurus, all balanced in and out (and also SE output on the Taurus to see if that helped any), so realistically I'm not sure the Xs have a huge amount more to give even if the pairing isn't optimal, whereas I know the 6 will scale yet higher on a good speaker amp pairing (I thought the 6 on a Luxman integrated amp bested the Abyss off the Vega into a Liquid Glass for example).

 

[NZtechfreak]

   (crunchy metal guitars should have texture and bite to 'em!).

 

 
Besides me, I think you're the only other person on Head-Fi I've ever seen make mention of this. The slight 'politetening' of distorted guitars is just an immediate no-go for me, and part of the reason the Audeze sound really doesn't do it for me. As a guitarist predominantly into metal and rock, with an ear very attuned to these sounds, I just can't do headphones that don't get it right. When I say 'very attuned' to these sounds think hours and hours (probably hundreds of hours in total) of dialling in sounds on effects pedals and boards and amps in a dizzying array of permutations trying to get this or that tone (ultimately your pick attack and fret hand produce a huge amount of the feel and sound of a guitarists tone, so these lengthy session mucking around with pedals and such like rarely attain the exact sound you're after, but you sure find some other good ones along the way).
 
I see a lot of people remarking how difficult pianos are to reproduce with headphones, and while that is absolutely true, there aren't that many headphones that get distorted guitars right either.
 
I think part of it is that distorted guitars and listening fatigue are somewhat inextricably linked, and for those who really hate a fatiguing listen a slightly smoothed over sound is preferable (and nothing wrong with that). For myself, I just can't get amped listening to distorted guitars like that...

 

[Clemmaster]

  Regarding my experience of various DACs and the HE-6:
 
At present I have both the PWDII and Auralic Vega at home. My lazy and entirely unmethodical impressions of their sounds is that I have a slight but definite preference for the PWDII (and that's compared to the Vega in Exact mode). I actually preferred the sound of my Reference 10 to both of these however, and that was running direct off USB and I expect its sound would improve further with something like an OR5 to overcome Audio-GDs USB implementation (which is not as good as either of the other two DACs or many newish DACs with improved USB implementations, like the Schiit stuff on their newer USB revision). I think both of the current DACs have it over the Reference 10 for micro detail and other minutiae, but I simply don't enjoy their sound as much as the Reference 10 which had a little extra warmth that for my tastes suited the HE-6 well.
 
I think as things currently stand, a secondhand PWDII is a very decent option for the HE-6 indeed.
 
With the experience I've had with these three DACs I'm currently considering getting a Master 7 and OR5, and if that has some resemblance to the Ref 10 sound with better fine technical merits across the board that'll probably be it for me on the DAC front. All that will remain after that, for a little while at least, will be settling onto the speaker amp I intend to use in the longer term with my HE-6.
 
I've also done a lot of reading on the Hilo, and that is up there for consideration too - one great thing about it is the universal power supply, meaning I can get one from the States (hopefully at secondhand prices) without any concerns about it running here in NZ or faffing about with stepdown transformers and such like. The A-D conversion features may even be useful for me if I take the plunge into vinyl, or - heaven forbid - actually do any recording with my guitar.
 
Oh, and as an aside, had the LCD-X for a week and the HE-6 easily saw that challenger off to my ears and tastes. I think the hype train is a little out of hand where the X is concerned myself, listening to 46 and 2 by Tool (a track I use for imaging/instrument separation/soundstage adjudication - the recording of the drum track in the intro is a masterpiece) the X has a smaller soundstage and the clarity with which the cymbals are heard in terms of separation and imaging was very disappointing. That was via Vega/PWD2 and Taurus, all balanced in and out (and also SE output on the Taurus to see if that helped any), so realistically I'm not sure the Xs have a huge amount more to give even if the pairing isn't optimal, whereas I know the 6 will scale yet higher on a good speaker amp pairing (I thought the 6 on a Luxman integrated amp bested the Abyss off the Vega into a Liquid Glass for example).

Thanks a lot for the impression!

 

[Theogenes]

You know, that's the example that often comes to mind when thinking of how radically different listener preferences can be... I really don't care much about soundstage at all, and that's hugely important around here, but texture and tone are absolutely critical, and I remember being initially a little surprised that (it seemed) nobody else really cared as much about those things. (I mean, how can you really appreciate just how amazing Meshuggah is without something that truly values and highlights those parameters?) That's actually one of the reasons I value the HE-6 so highly-- it manages to really communicate all the various layers and dimensions of Melody Gardot, Amon Tobin, and Dillinger Escape Plan, while really never leaving you thinking that the 6 isn't the best for X genre. Jack of all trades... And master of 'em too . 
 

 to you as well, bro!! Wish you lived in the US, I'd buy ya a beer .

 

[NZtechfreak]

I should mention that the LCD-X I heard probably had about 30 hours on them, and I also listened to a second set to confirm what I was hearing wasn't some outlier/aberrant unit that slipped quality control somehow (given the extraordinary hype I was half convinced that must have been the case, but the second set was more or less identical).

 

[ohhgourami]

   

 
Besides me, I think you're the only other person on Head-Fi I've ever seen make mention of this. The slight 'politetening' of distorted guitars is just an immediate no-go for me, and part of the reason the Audeze sound really doesn't do it for me. As a guitarist predominantly into metal and rock, with an ear very attuned to these sounds, I just can't do headphones that don't get it right. When I say 'very attuned' to these sounds think hours and hours (probably hundreds of hours in total) of dialling in sounds on effects pedals and boards and amps in a dizzying array of permutations trying to get this or that tone (ultimately your pick attack and fret hand produce a huge amount of the feel and sound of a guitarists tone, so these lengthy session mucking around with pedals and such like rarely attain the exact sound you're after, but you sure find some other good ones along the way).
 
I see a lot of people remarking how difficult pianos are to reproduce with headphones, and while that is absolutely true, there aren't that many headphones that get distorted guitars right either.
 
I think part of it is that distorted guitars and listening fatigue are somewhat inextricably linked, and for those who really hate a fatiguing listen a slightly smoothed over sound is preferable (and nothing wrong with that). For myself, I just can't get amped listening to distorted guitars like that...

 
So many headphones can't get the sound of fast attacking guitars! HE-6 is still probably the best headphone for that.

 

[Happy Camper]

Audeze and Schit have been the site's favorite hype for a couple years.