I finally got my HE-400s in the other day. I let my EF1 warm up while I got them out of the packaging. The Canare cable they come with is pretty solid; I prefer something simple and easily replaceable. The cups came "out of alignment" as seen in previous pics, which is entirely a non-issue: the cups swivel back and forth and are easy to line up, nothing is really misaligned as such.
So, with the amp warmed up, I plugged in the HE-400s, ready to hear that planar sound for the first time. And wow.
What a disappointment. All of three or four seconds into the first track, it had already hit me, or rather, hadn't hit me: the sound was very muffled and the mids seemed heavily veiled. I figured that something must be wrong and tried re-seating the cables, tried different amps, but I couldn't escape from the serious badness of the sound. I expected the sound to be dark, but not this much. I don't mean to be dramatic but I usually find something to like in a headphone, and it was just missing here. There was something good in there, but it was hard to appreciate the even, deep bass and nice imaging when so much of the spectrum seemed so far away and lifeless.
So after 30 or 40 minutes, I put them down to get ready for bed, figuring I would ship them back in the morning. I couldn't figure out what was so interesting about the HE-400s; maybe they just weren't suited to my taste. My main headphones now are D2000s, which some might describe as bright, but I also really enjoyed the HD650s I had earlier this year, as well as other Sennheisers and "darker" headphones. I just couldn't get into the HE-400 sound.
I wanted to try out the velours, but wondered if it was really worth the effort if the sound was that far off from my ideal out of the box. I gave it a shot anyway. The pads actually came off easily—easier than my D2000s—and went on easy enough. And wow.
What a difference! I couldn't believe this was the same set of headphones. I'd read the posts about the velour pads being an improvement but I was expecting something subtle or just better comfort, not a drastic change. The low end was not negatively impacted at all, and the entirety of the rest of the sound improved. It didn't just sound better than before, it sounded good. The mids came back, the treble no longer felt veiled, all of the muffled impressions I had before were gone. It still has a dark sound, but more along the lines of what I had been expecting to start with. I'm really enjoying them now.
I'm curious to see how these measure with the velours in comparison to the stock pleathers. It's either a big difference or my ears are really sensitive to the areas that changed. Why does HiFiMAN sell these with pleathers? I know everyone has their own tastes, but I have a hard time believing that anyone would prefer these the way I first heard them with the stock pads. Maybe HiFiMAN went too far in their effort to create a certain concept sound in the HE-400s?
If you own these and haven't tried the velours, definitely try them out, the improvements noted in many posts in this thread are not exaggerated. If you've reviewed them before and didn't try the velours, review them again.
