Shame, they really come alive after 100 hours or so. The build quality on mine is pretty good, better than my Audeze's but not tank like the Abyss which is a good thing as they are very comfortable to wear for a while.
Yes, I do agree. I did come alive after 100 hrs. Up till 80 hrs, it sound quite dark. I had to use my most aggressive tubes combo on stratus. Started about 120 hrs onward, it sound so close to modded hd800, Currently on 200 hrs plus, I used exactly the same tubes as HD800. IMO, they are a great companion phone to HD800. It's vocal seem had a sweeter tone in them (although in the similar level in bright-dark scale). It didn't have the attack of 800, but they are still close (I haven't heard HE6). They are quite transparent as well, though different from HD800. Their transparency seem to come to how effortless the flow of music and liquid its presentation (better than 800 in these regards), and I could hear the difference in these aspect between playing same song on TIDAL and jplay mini. While using HD800, the difference between TIDAL and jplay seem to on the edge and smoothness the sound being produced.
Even though not hard in term of amplification (only about 10% in volume compared to 800 using stratus), it seem scaled as well from schiit vali-GO720 to stratus-yggy. But using vali-GO, they were much better than HD800 though.
So far out of my setup, I seem to still prefer modded 800. They sound more lifelike listening to acoustic instruments and classical. HE1000 seem to offer different point of view, adding a tiny bit of sweetness. I quite like them though, so I think that's the reason of being a great companion phone. After listening to 009 from BHSE and abyss, I would say HE1000 still a good phone as a companion to both 009 and abyss, not a replacement. IMO, HE1000 will be an upgrade from Audeze though.
I have zero regret upgrading from LCD-X