This discussion of soundstage has prompted me to finally report on my finally having heard the HE1000se at the Toronto Audiofest on October 21.
This was at the AudioWise booth on the second floor which was demonstrating their RF•STOP technology for isolating the amp and DAC electronics from RF interference and back EMF. In this case, their fancy gear was set up around the Chord Mojo 2. The representative at least said that this gear is not meant to change the sound at all, its merely being meant to prevent extraneous noise from interfering with the DAC's doing its job, whatever literature might exist on the conditions for such effects to be audible. Anyways, I am skeptical as to whether it makes an audible difference on top of properly designed gear that already filters RF.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...rasonic-noise-affect-the-sound-quality.11558/ amusingly mentions Chord themselves having supposedly claimed that RF noise actually makes their gear sound both "warm
and bright".
They were using these exquisitely comfortable aftermarket pads they acquired a few months prior on Amazon, likely
https://www.amazon.com/Voarmaks-Compatible-Headphone-Replacement-Sheepskin/dp/B0B96NFG7H?th=1:
You get the exquisite feel of the Meze Elite hybrid pads (which I can find at times to be too flexible when you move your head) combined with the exquisite fit and security of the HiFiMan Serenity pads. I haven't seen any measurements of these pads' effects on the frequency response. Going off of
https://dekoniaudio.com/product/dekoni-audio-elite-sheepskin-replacement-ear-pads-for-hifiman-arya/, it probably does increase the bass extension, though maybe deepening the 1 kHz to 3 kHz dip, which for some might contribute to the sense of soundstage; to me, that just dulls vocals and some instrument timbres.
The HE1000se "dialysis cable" was an interesting thing to encounter in person, my realizing that it has narrow ridges along its length. Otherwise, I especially per
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/in-...c-headphones-frs-are-indeed-identical.970202/ certainly don't believe in cable sound.
The representative fortunately did have some classical music available on their foobar2000 library (I have personally used foobar2000 with VB-Cable to facilitate bs2b crossfeed, but am now using Voicemeeter to feed audio into Reaper and the head-tracked SPARTA AmbiRoomSim, AmbiBIN, and Binauraliser NF plugins using my Earfish-measured HRTF and
measurement-based EQ (post #61) to achieve convincing anechoic stereo imaging). On first impression, it simply sounded good, "familiar" in neutrality with respect to the fine-tuned Meze Elite hybrid pads PEQ I had arrived upon in
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/mez...eadphone-official-thread.959445/post-17743502 (post #5,151). I didn't hear anything special in regard to soundstaging or imaging.
As for "details", I am an adamant believer that any sense of "more details" can be explained from one headphone simply bringing said details forward within that band within the frequency response where the other headphones' frequency response for the individual's ears were comparatively attenuating said details. For me, "resolution" is related to frequency response smoothness insofar as no frequencies are unnaturally attenuated so as to be insufficiently heard, else peaked so as to mask the hearing of the adjacent frequency content. In practice, I have found that maximum clarity can be achieved at least by EQing down peaks detected in sine sweeps and pink noise. Then for "transparency", other than ensuring neutrality across the entire chain (which is measurably quite easy to achieve),
that EQ post (post #61) showed what it takes to match headphones to the anechoic in-ear response of an equilateral stereo triangle.
This finally gives transparency into what a recording "actually" sounds like or how the mixer's monitoring system differs from true neutral, or how their ear physiology and preferences differ from yours.
Now, on requesting some Mahler, he played "Das Lied von der Erde" I believe as recorded by Pierre Boulez with the Wiener Philharmoniker with Michael Schade as the tenor. It was here that I was stricken with the surprise of my first the time heard a disembodied voice singing right from the middle of the hollow of my head. It was truly bizarre. For headphones, when not using crossfeed, I've with nigh all that I've encountered including high-end headphones only really heard sounds as coming from the drivers then wrapping around the front of my face with the center image being around an inch in front of the forehead depending on how the track was mixed, whereby though tracks like Yosi Horikawa's "Letter" could get things sounding beyond the drivers and sometimes behind my head and ears, I have generally found the span of the opening pencil's trajectory to be very similar, "soundstage" to me only being a subjective effect of the earpads' size and the space around your ears, hence the extent to which the earpads do or do not intersect or interfere with the perceived image span, and finally how tonality may create the illusion of greater distance, an illusion I haven't really been very susceptible to, especially with the HD 800 S which I didn't find special. Anyways, I've checked at home, whereby both my Meze Elite and Arya Stealth rather have the vocals in front of me. Actually, checking right now on the Meze Elite, even with EQ, say, around 7 minutes into the first part of "Das Lied von der Erde" (I'm listening through
https://app.idagio.com/recordings/18122663), there is indeed something weird with the mix that has Michael Schade's voice coming from the middle rear left inside my head. Through speakers and my binaural head-tracked simulation, his voice is centered and ahead, maybe a tad closer than the midpoint between the (virtual) speakers. For the non-crossfeed case, the rest of the centered sources sound reasonably ahead. Sometimes his voice can sound a bit ahead. The Arya Stealth with my EQ might also be more inclined to having me hear his voice a tad more forward.
Amusingly, the representative took my reporting of this "in-the-head" effect as a compliment despite my clarifying how for me, hearing that is technically a "bad "thing", though as I've found now, this weird effect is found only at specific parts of the recording and can indeed be heard on other headphones.
Anyways, nothing particularly impressive on my end at least with these pads, tracks, and the Chord Mojo 2's power delivery. For binaural head-tracking, the main advantage of my Meze Elite over the Arya Stealth other than more convenient mounting of the head-tracking IMU is its excellent distortion performance, better driver matching, and easier to EQ nulls. The HE1000se would have to have comparable distortion performance and driver matching plus a cleaner CSD to be a worthwhile complimentary headphone from the comfort perspective. My ideal is likewise a headphone that somehow has no treble nulls that could interfere with HRTF simulation where the nulls are supposed to move around with direction of the sound source, but it seems like the nulls I've measured from headphones match the nulls from my in-ear free-field response for sounds of 90-degree incidence.
with hekse