As you can read in Jude's post I had the privilage to visit Head-Fi headquarters yesterday afternoon and take a listen to the HE-1000. I think I can sumarize my expereince with them in one word... "SUBLIMED"
.
The looks to me is kind of a modernized retro design that IMO is very cool. I was very surprise about the weight. They are probably the lightest planar I have ever tried. The construction is very solid and the are very comfortable when on.
The HE-1000 is very impressive. The midrange and high frequencies are at the level or very very close to my SR-009 but when makes a big difference is its bass. Oh boy! I have never heard a bass so deep, with so much volume, impact and speed before. The bass of the SR-009 is not even close but what is nice is that it does not take anything away from the rest of the frequencies. It really complements the total sound perfectly creating a very nice balanced, organic and textured sound. I really loved it!
Have you experience the sound pressure on your chest when you are listening to a big speaker system and it pressurize the listening room properly? Well, that is kind of what I felt in my head when the low frequencies in the Firebird finale arrived... wow!
After listening to Firebird I continued listening to recording very familiar to me and with all of them the HE-1000 did an splendid job to the point that suddenly I found myself taping my feet. The HE-1000 are very detailed like an electrostatic but very musical at the same time, the perfect combination!
Last Saturday I listened to the Abyss driven by the new Moon Neo 430HA amplifier (very nice sounding amp) and compared by memory to what I listen at Jude's office I would go with the HE-1000 with no hesitation at all.
It uses the same 3.5mm mono plugs like the PM-1/2 so we already have all kinds of aftermarket cables available for whoever is interested. At 90 db efficiency and 30-40 ohms they are more efficient than the HE-6 so for instance people using speaker amplifiers of 50 w/ch @ 8 ohms it will put out 8 watts/ch on the HE-6 and 10 watts/ch @ 40 ohms or 13.33 watts/ch @ 30 ohms.
The only disadvantage of getting the HE-1000 is that you will see yourself in the For Sale forum selling a bunch of your current headphones because they just became instantly obsolete.
I fell in love with the sound of the HE-1000 and even at the targeted price of $2,999 (see Jude's post) to me is a most have specially taking in consideration it will not require a specialized amplifier like my SR-009. I can't wait for Hifiman to open the pre-order to place mine!
Great job Dr. Bian!!