I will definitely audition the HE1000, as I'm interested in it from a technical perspective (large membrane area, ultra-lightweight membrane, special magnet array) and the reports – and that's why I'm active in this thread.
As mentioned, all headphones suffer more of less from inner reflections, and e.g. the HD 800 is no exception – therefore my
mod which has been adapted and now runs under the trademark «Anaxilus». Magnet bars behind and in most cases also in front of the membrane are a necessary evil in planar magnetic drivers, as are stator grids in electrostatic drivers – and both produce reflections of somewhat different characteristics. Even classic dynamic drivers produce various kinds of unavoidable reflections, and be it just those between membrane and ear in the ideal case (which doesn't exist, though). All those reflections are probably not perceived as such because they're unavoidable and present in every single headphone, so everyone is used to them. But the orthodynamic headphones I have experience with suffered from the most obtrusive kind to my ears, threfore my skepticism, although actually it has always been a favored transducer principle for me.
The ideal would be a ribbon-like transducer without any magnet bars directly in the radiation area (
Setmenu has built a headphone on the basis of homegrown ribbon transducers). My own hobbyist occupation with speaker building has led me to this
kind of
transducer as well. It can effectively be called virtually free of reflections, if you take classic speaker designs as a measure. Also with classic dome tweeters (also homegrown) and cone woofers I have always taken care for minimal reflections on housings and driver components, internally and externally. And of course with my electrostats on the basis of Stax
Lambda Pro and
Signature Pro. So I know what I'm talking about and what the absense of obtrusive reflections means for depth of image and imaging generally – we're talking of
accuracy here, a signal reproduction as unsmeared as possible in the time domain.
we're several people to share the same impressions. I returned it as well. I've no real use of a 3000$ headphone that smoothen everything even when the recording does not need that treatment. I compared abyss, he-6 ,sr009 and hd800 to the he1000. Even if I can understand how and why the he1000 could please to a lot of people, I strongly disagree that it outperforms the listed flagships. Even with gazillon hours of break in or miracle amps. YMMV.
