[dill3000]

Nice write up daltonlanny,

Just curious on what mods has been done on your HE-6? Thanks.

 

[daltonlanny]

Nice write up daltonlanny,

Just curious on what mods has been done on your HE-6? Thanks.

Thanks!

1. Grill mod: New grills with large mesh + no foam, cloth, or cotton behind grills.
2. Fuzzor mod.
3. Switching between Audeze Vegan Pads and stock velours.

 

[lojay]

Yes, your impressions and mine do seem similar!
Glad you noticed the same overall strengths and weaknesses that I did

 
Not only me, quite a number of people share these views. I think you managed to summarise the views in a very readable and succinct way, thanks and great job!
I listen to quite a lot of classical and acoustic (about 50%-70% of my musical diet in a day) but also enjoy some pop, rock and electronica. So I plan to keep the HD800 and HE1000. The question is whether the SR009 will beat the HE1000 when my DIYT2 comes. That's a very expensive experiment but I am extremely curious. Heck, it is likely I'll keep all my headphones!

 

[daltonlanny]

Thanks again!
Yeah, that will be a tough choice.
This hobby is so expensive, it can be very frustrating.
Keep us posted on the SR009 vs HEK.

 

[doctorjazz]

It seems, if you only listen to the best recordings, there are other TOTL headphones that may outperform the HEK. But, for those of us who like to listen to new music, indie, stuff not perfectly recorded/sounding, HEK sounds like it may be a good choice.
I only had a limited listen, certainly couldn't go into the detailed analysis you did, but my impressions did match yours. Very nicely done...

 

[ruthieandjohn]

Great write up! Quick note - the impedance matching thing doesn't apply to planars.

Hey, thanks a BUNCH!  I did not know that the damping factor / impedance ratio thing did not apply to planars... wonder what makes them different?  Is it that the coils that make the electromagnetic drivers in dynamic headphones need a restoring force ("damping") from a low-impedance source, while the planars do not rely on a restoring force?  Fascinating.  Makes me understand why my hDVD 800 sounds good with the HE1000 despite having a similar impedance.
 

   
Does it make me a Kayandjohn fanboy if I get a little excited every time I see he's done a new review?
 
Excellent work as always, sir!

WWWow!  That comment makes me feel Really Good. Thanks!
 

YEA

It is fine work, though...detail I'd never be able to follow through in a million years!

Thanks so very much.  I really appreciate that.

 

[Music Alchemist]

Thanks to @kayandjohn, I will be able to audition the HIFIMAN HE1000, Abyss AB-1266, and perhaps others very soon.
 
Any special requests?

 

[Trogdor]

The HEK are forgiving imo. I can listen to anything, both extremely good and extremely mediocre recordings, without distracting me one bit from work. The problem is exceptional recordings are not exactly sounding stellar either. I did this for days on end. They are more relaxed and less engaging compared to other established flagships, such as the HD800s, HE-6s for example, in the same conditions. That should not be confused with "musical". Accurate transducers are inherently musical.

The HD800s have some flaws, including but not limited to: treble peak, whistling, sibilance, reflections, limited sub-bass response. Also they are highly revealing, which doesn't help in the wrong mix. No headphones are perfect, and these for sure aren't. But I can tolerate some flaws with the HD800s for what they do extremely well in the right combination of gear, genres and recordings. Frankly the HD800s can be real bi****, but there are great rewards with them too. That's why people mod them and go to other great lengths.

However I cannot really accept mediocre engaging, energetic and dull edges on a flagship. Simply because I don't think that's how those recordings sound. This is also of course relative to other flagships (including speakers), not in a vacuum.

As someone who now has owned both, I totally agree with the top and bottom but totally disagree with the conclusion. Weird.

Can you give me an example of what you consider an exception recording? I just want get a sense of what you are hearing there.

 

[miceblue]

Curious. If there's one thing I learned from the last mini-meet in Seattle, it's to try headphones backwards.

Has anyone tried the HE1000 backwards on their head (left earcup on right ear, right earcup on left ear)?

I'll leave my impressions aside for now, but let's just say I hear a similar effect between the SR-207 and HE1000 but in the opposite way.


I have about 96 hours of continuous driver burn-in on my HE1000 right now. Audirvana Plus froze up on me at around 3AM until I woke up, so I took the opportunity to get about a minute of listening and added a few tracks to the burn-in list.

 

[ruthieandjohn]

  Thanks to @kayandjohn, I will be able to audition the HIFIMAN HE1000, Abyss AB-1266, and perhaps others very soon.
 
Any special requests?

@Music Alchemist  if you let me know when you are going down to listen to the HiFiMAN HE1000 and the Abyss, I will try to drop off my Sennheiser HD800 / HDVD 800 DAC/amp as a third comparison for you to listen to there.  Just don't want to be without them for too long, but pleased to have you try them in the mix as well and report your findings.
 

 

[negura]

As someone who now has owned both, I totally agree with the top and bottom but totally disagree with the conclusion. Weird.

Can you give me an example of what you consider an exception recording? I just want get a sense of what you are hearing there.

 
To get an idea, take most Stockfisch acoustic work or Dali CDs for example. Some Rodrigo & Gabriela recordings are very good too at highlighting the issues. Listen to leading edges on instrumentation. Since you listen to metal, take Agalloch or Anathema. Rock - Dire Straits. Listen to the chords. This is an example that sets it out. The softness/lack of presence is throughout the FR range.
 
What's your main rig including headphones? Are your HD800s stock or modded?

 

[Music Alchemist]

  @Music Alchemist  if you let me know when you are going down to listen to the HiFiMAN HE1000 and the Abyss, I will try to drop off my Sennheiser HD800 / HDVD 800 DAC/amp as a third comparison for you to listen to there.  Just don't want to be without them for too long, but pleased to have you try them in the mix as well and report your findings.

 
Cool, thanks. I'll message you when I know when I'll be there. I need to either borrow a USB flash drive or buy one so I can bring my own music.

 

[money4me247]

@Music Alchemist, "Caravan" by John Wasson from the Whiplash (OST) is a great jazz test track for percussion speed, cymbals, and bass in direct comparisons. even better if you saw the movie on a nice set of speakers

 

[ruthieandjohn]

  I think some actual beta testers are struggling a bit with describing how this headphone performs. The combination of driver surface area, extremely low mass, new / optimized magnet structure - we're experiencing a headphone that can respond extremely quickly to impulse, without the 'edges' we've heard in the past with other ortho's - due to the extremely low diaphragm mass / optimized magnetics. We have a headphone here that can present as very fast AND laid-back / relaxed. When the music hits hard, this headphone will shake your spine. When music is delicate, layered, textured - this headphone delivers. Many are calling it a genre master; that really tells us a lot about its technical capabilities.
 
As always, you and everyone will need to decide if it's the headphone for your needs and preferences; I guess the point I'm trying to make is while driver speed has often meant certain strengths / limitations in the past, IME - that assumption should not be applied to the HE-1000.

Having completed my listening tests, I can understand what @Misterrogers is talking about here.
 
I found that metrics that I have used for comparing over three dozen headphones do not quite anticipate the performance of the HE1000.  For example, several metrics in my writeup were a bit confounded by the simultaneous strong bass and detailed treble of the HE1000.  One measure, "drum twang,"  seeks to extract the tonality of the kick drum in the test piece, trying to compare to what degree it has a pitch, harmonics, and a timbre in manner of tympani rather than the lowest-tone "thud" invoked by stuffing a towel into the drum.  With the HE1000, the treble detail needed for that "twang" is certainly there, but the low-frequency fundamental is so much stronger than on other headphones I've tested (including the HiFiMAN HE500, the bassiest of those), that it can seem to suppress the twang over a headphone that does not have the bass intensity.  You do not want to penalize the ability of a headphone to transmit the high frequency aspects of a drum blow because it also transmits the low frequency so strongly as well.  Similar challenges occurred for "bass pitch" and "detail of finger attach on plucked bass string."

 

[Misterrogers]

This impression has only strengthened with more listening. Further, I believe many of the early reviews / conclusions will change or evolve as we recalibrate our assumptions / expectations - which frame our listening experience. Don't want to get too abstract or conceptual here, so I'll just say this: the drivers on the HE-1000 are IMO are more capable of accurate music reproduction than anything I've listened to (to date - HD800's, HE-6, 009's, Abyss) - with fewer driver / technology limitations. Not that's it's perfect, but it presents music in a way that's closest to live (IMO, yada yada).