My HE-6 arrived yesterday
After a few hours of listening, I must say I'm very impressed. The treble is just awesome!
Regarding amping, the Roc SA has enough power to drive the HE-6 to ear-blasting volume levels. However now I DO see the point of the High-Gain switch on the amp. According to the audio-gd website, the amp puts out 9W into 60 Ω (I assume this is both channels combined, so 4.5W per channel). Turning up the volume pot to 12 o'clock is
really loud, even on very "quiet" recordings. But anyway, I'm amazed how great the HE-6 sounds at low volume levels. This is something my previous headphone, the HD600, lacked completely.
I have yet to try the HE-6 with a speaker amp, but honestly I don't think having 50WpC instead of 4.5WpC would be a big improvement.
I often thought that the Roc SA sounded really warm with the HD600 (which is supposed to be a quite neutral headphone), but it's a lot different with the HE-6. I don't have another headphone amp to compare (unfortunately), but I certainly would not describe the sound was warm or dark. Instead it is neutral with just a tad of warmth. I'm really glad I didn't buy the LCD-2 instead, I would not want more bass or a darker sound. At least for now...
A question to other HE-6 owners, not related to the headphone itself: Was the value of the HE-6 declared correctly on your invoice? I received a letter from DHL today which says that there was a problem at customs due to missing documents, which I now have to send to DHL ASAP. I'm guessing this is because on my invoice, the value was declared as 1 USD instead of 999 USD. Probably the package was opened at customs, and they got suspicious seeing that a huge, heavy pair of headphones is only worth $1...
I have requested Head-Direct to send me the correct documents immediately. If they dont, I will probably have to pay a fine for importing incorrectly declared ware.
I often got incorrectly declared ware from china (inexpensive stuff from ebay), but for a reputable company such as Head-Direct, I think this is very dubious behaviour. It certainly does not strengthen my confidence in them.