Hello community
I just lend my Hifiman He400 + GeekOut 720 to a friend. He wants to switch from speakers to headphones in the office. He really liked it and wants to pull the trigger, but I told him to wait since there is the Fidelio X2 on the market
So my question to everybody:
Does the Fidelio needs amplification, or is the internal DAC of the Audioengine A2 Speakers good enough for them? Do they improve with better gear?
My quesstion to people who heard both, the He400 and the X2:
How different are they? Also sound wise and also comfort wise.
Thanks
I just traded my HE400s for X2s. Here are my thoughts.
I loved the HE400 for a while. The bass was just so amazing from the moment I first heard it. I could not get enough of it. It just has some sort of ethereal feel to it. I showed them off to all my work buddies and felt cool when explaining planar tech to them, and they were all captivated for 10 minutes. I had some badass looking communist headphones that were an interesting talking point and bassy as hell for open back cans.
The problem is, after my honeymoon period wore off, I found myself leaving them home and taking more portable cans to work, and only using my HD600 at home. There are a couple reasons for this. Though initially pretty comfy with the velour pads on, the HE400s get HEAVY. You feel like some sort of pack horse or donkey after a while carrying water buckets over each ear. I'm not exaggerating here. The headband does very little to help this situation.
The other problem was the treble spike from hell. Fatigue was a big issue for me with them. I could listen for an hour max unless my music had very little treble. I know there are ways to mod them, and I am a light modder and made the pads angled. But, I don't want to spend hours and hours trying various mods to get my headphones to sound the way I feel like they should to begin with, especially on a $300 pair. These do require good amping to really sound good. Also, the cable design was made by freaking monkeys that love screwing things into other things. They are the absolute worst.
On the other hand, I have only had the X2s for about a month now, but I love these cans. I plan to use them as my main gaming/movie watching cans, but will still use them for music much of the time. They are %95 as fun as the HE400s with slightly lower quality bass but pretty much the same quantity. They have better overall mids and so much better treble. They are much more comfy. They drive a hell of a lot better out of cell phones or console controllers. They sound much better our of my X3ii, and with even just a low end DAC they sound fantastic, and they should sound fine with his situation. They look much classier. Philips nor Hifiman are particularly great when it comes to customer service, but I have heard worse stories about Hifiman, and will probably not be buying anymore of their products until I hear about some vast improvements in their customer service, so I prefer Philips there. I've had 2 Hifiman products, one of them wore out within a year and is dead in my drawer, and the other is now owned by someone else. I have 2 Philips headphones that I don't plan on giving up any time soon.
So, overall, I would resoundingly recommend the X2s not only over the HE400s, but over everything else in general for an office setting that is OK for an open back can pretty much over anything else, unless he has room and budget for a full setup. If he can have a good amp, then try out the HD600/650. If he does want planars badly, I would suggest looking at Oppo before Hifiman or the Mad Dogs before they are gone.