rroseperry
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2010
- Posts
- 3,306
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- 69
(I want to thank rhythmdevils for letting listen to the HE-500s for a week and showing me his ortho collection.)
Fundamentals
Frequency Response: 15 to 50 KHz
Impedance: 38 Ohm
Efficiency: 89 DB
Weight: 502 g
Where I'm Coming From
These are the first orthos that I've spent any time with. I've listened to LCD2 r2 and even the LCD3 at meets, but rarely for more than a few minutes at a time and always against a noisy background. And tbh, I hadn't been impressed with the Audez'e phones. They have great bass, excellent detail, but I experience a smoothed treble with them. I think this lends them to extended listening sessions; users, especially the treble-sensitive, won't get worn out. But erasing the edge that naturally occurs in music -- the rasp of a bow on strings, a pick hitting steel strings -- makes for a less accurate phone, in my view.
The HE-500s didn't have that problem. They have the crunch (when needed) and they have the detail. They're not a "perfect" phone, but more on that when I get into the details. I don't have a set list of music that I listen to when testing gear. I listen to whatever I'm listening to at the time. I try to spread out among styles and genres, but I can guarantee that if I had it to do over again in a couple of weeks, the list of music below would be different.
Listening Set Ups
iPad and iPod Classic ->Leckerton UHA - 6S
Xonar STX -> Asgard
iPod Classic and iRiver iHP140 (rockboxed) -> iBasso D10
I used both the stock cord and a silver cord that rhythmdevils passed along. There wasn't enough of an obvious difference to remark on. I did run the phones straight out of the Classic a few times, but they really did scale up when used with portable DAC/amps.
First Impressions
It's sort of shocking how silent these things are. It jumps out on acoustic music in particular. These are extremely well suited to low level listening. There's a velvet black background, which makes them outstanding for critical listening sessions. At the same time, that accuracy and clarity makes them less fun.
Specific Listens
What Worked
Alison Krauss - The Scarlet Tide - Cold Mountain Soundtrack The midrange strengths of these phones highlight the clarity of her voice. This is a spare recording and Krauss' voice, cello, piano and harmony seem to hang in spare. Acoustic music does very well, emotion, pathos, suspension in mid space, black the silence (nothing but the cello, the piano and voices) and spare
The Roots - Right On - How I Got Over The HE-500s just barely pass the hip-hop test. The drums go deep enough, but with a certain lack of resonance. The low end seemed dulled, but throughout the rest great detail, percussive snaps and rimshots
Erykah Badu - 20 Feet Tall - New Amerykah - More hip-hop, this track has an interesting combinations of therimin/electronic sounds, electric piano, and strings that all come through sounding accurate and balanced. The detail in the phones is so good that I can hear the slight processing on Badu's voice which I hadn't noticed before.
Davitt Moroney - Contrapunctus 13 with three voices - The Art of the Fugue - Harpsichord can be hard for phones. They naturally ring, have high sharp trebles, and percussive attacks. I didn't notice any problems with harshness or sibilance, but I wasn't engaged either. There was something a little too cool about the way this piece sounded through these phones, though I would ordinarily recommend them for classical music like:
Steve Reich - Fast - WTC 9/11: Mallet Quartet , Again a spare recording where the midrange, where the mallets live, shines. Here that sense of air works with the recording and the instruments, especially the bass gong drone throughout. Another good classical match was the SF Symphony's recording of Ives/Brant: A Concord Symphony II Hawthorne With symphonic works, the instrument placing is accurate, though there's not a huge soundstage. This piece has a lot of atmospheric delicacy which the phones transmit transparently.
Soulfege - Trapped in My Heart - AFropolitan This recording has wonderful vocals. The phones gave a clear separation of voices, including a gut-rumbling bass harmony
What Didn't Work
Although the HE-500 were ok with hip-hop, they weren't very good with 20th century R&B. This may be where recording styles have changed, but music from the 70s although full of detail, sounded thin. Electronica was also not the greatest, imo, with a little less bass than I (no basshead) would have liked. This was especially true with a tune like Skin Divers' - 29 Rivers Remix. This is old school drum n bass, the bass is there, but the airness intrinsic to the phones doesn't altogether work in a genre that's usually pretty dense and where space isn't being reproduced from some "real" world performance.
What Matters
Orthos are detail monsters. As a result, they're unforgiving of source. Low resolution or poorly mastered recordings really suffered. Also, unlike some other phones, I rarely lost myself in the music as I listened to the phones. Partly it's all that detail. I found the experience less holistic than with other headphones, I found myself focusing on minutiae. But the other thing that kept me from just enjoying the music is the fit. These are heavy cans, with an uncomfortable clamp. I wish that ortho makers would work out a better suspension system for these things.
Are they worth it? For the sound, yes, no question. But I don't think I could live with them
Fundamentals
Frequency Response: 15 to 50 KHz
Impedance: 38 Ohm
Efficiency: 89 DB
Weight: 502 g
Where I'm Coming From
These are the first orthos that I've spent any time with. I've listened to LCD2 r2 and even the LCD3 at meets, but rarely for more than a few minutes at a time and always against a noisy background. And tbh, I hadn't been impressed with the Audez'e phones. They have great bass, excellent detail, but I experience a smoothed treble with them. I think this lends them to extended listening sessions; users, especially the treble-sensitive, won't get worn out. But erasing the edge that naturally occurs in music -- the rasp of a bow on strings, a pick hitting steel strings -- makes for a less accurate phone, in my view.
The HE-500s didn't have that problem. They have the crunch (when needed) and they have the detail. They're not a "perfect" phone, but more on that when I get into the details. I don't have a set list of music that I listen to when testing gear. I listen to whatever I'm listening to at the time. I try to spread out among styles and genres, but I can guarantee that if I had it to do over again in a couple of weeks, the list of music below would be different.
Listening Set Ups
iPad and iPod Classic ->Leckerton UHA - 6S
Xonar STX -> Asgard
iPod Classic and iRiver iHP140 (rockboxed) -> iBasso D10
I used both the stock cord and a silver cord that rhythmdevils passed along. There wasn't enough of an obvious difference to remark on. I did run the phones straight out of the Classic a few times, but they really did scale up when used with portable DAC/amps.
First Impressions
It's sort of shocking how silent these things are. It jumps out on acoustic music in particular. These are extremely well suited to low level listening. There's a velvet black background, which makes them outstanding for critical listening sessions. At the same time, that accuracy and clarity makes them less fun.
Specific Listens
What Worked
Alison Krauss - The Scarlet Tide - Cold Mountain Soundtrack The midrange strengths of these phones highlight the clarity of her voice. This is a spare recording and Krauss' voice, cello, piano and harmony seem to hang in spare. Acoustic music does very well, emotion, pathos, suspension in mid space, black the silence (nothing but the cello, the piano and voices) and spare
The Roots - Right On - How I Got Over The HE-500s just barely pass the hip-hop test. The drums go deep enough, but with a certain lack of resonance. The low end seemed dulled, but throughout the rest great detail, percussive snaps and rimshots
Erykah Badu - 20 Feet Tall - New Amerykah - More hip-hop, this track has an interesting combinations of therimin/electronic sounds, electric piano, and strings that all come through sounding accurate and balanced. The detail in the phones is so good that I can hear the slight processing on Badu's voice which I hadn't noticed before.
Davitt Moroney - Contrapunctus 13 with three voices - The Art of the Fugue - Harpsichord can be hard for phones. They naturally ring, have high sharp trebles, and percussive attacks. I didn't notice any problems with harshness or sibilance, but I wasn't engaged either. There was something a little too cool about the way this piece sounded through these phones, though I would ordinarily recommend them for classical music like:
Steve Reich - Fast - WTC 9/11: Mallet Quartet , Again a spare recording where the midrange, where the mallets live, shines. Here that sense of air works with the recording and the instruments, especially the bass gong drone throughout. Another good classical match was the SF Symphony's recording of Ives/Brant: A Concord Symphony II Hawthorne With symphonic works, the instrument placing is accurate, though there's not a huge soundstage. This piece has a lot of atmospheric delicacy which the phones transmit transparently.
Soulfege - Trapped in My Heart - AFropolitan This recording has wonderful vocals. The phones gave a clear separation of voices, including a gut-rumbling bass harmony
What Didn't Work
Although the HE-500 were ok with hip-hop, they weren't very good with 20th century R&B. This may be where recording styles have changed, but music from the 70s although full of detail, sounded thin. Electronica was also not the greatest, imo, with a little less bass than I (no basshead) would have liked. This was especially true with a tune like Skin Divers' - 29 Rivers Remix. This is old school drum n bass, the bass is there, but the airness intrinsic to the phones doesn't altogether work in a genre that's usually pretty dense and where space isn't being reproduced from some "real" world performance.
What Matters
Orthos are detail monsters. As a result, they're unforgiving of source. Low resolution or poorly mastered recordings really suffered. Also, unlike some other phones, I rarely lost myself in the music as I listened to the phones. Partly it's all that detail. I found the experience less holistic than with other headphones, I found myself focusing on minutiae. But the other thing that kept me from just enjoying the music is the fit. These are heavy cans, with an uncomfortable clamp. I wish that ortho makers would work out a better suspension system for these things.
Are they worth it? For the sound, yes, no question. But I don't think I could live with them
