[MacedonianHero]

Quote:

The HE-400 driven by my m903 sounds slightly tinny and had issues with distortion with music that has a large dynamic range like the Tron soundtrack.  This is supported by the charts:
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/HiFiMANHE400.pdf
 
Look at the distortion charts and the impulse response.  Any time I see that kind of ringing on the impulse response I can almost always if not always hear a tinny nature to the sound signature.
 
The HE-300 sounds better to me than the HE-400 in regards to being more pleasant to listen to with more of my music.  I heard less distortion and no tinny nature to the sound signature.  Do not get me wrong the HE-300 has its own set of issues with distortion, but it was more pleasing overall to listen to than the HE-400.
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/HiFiMANHE300.pdf
 
The HE-500 proved the most reliable and pleasing to listen to compared to the HE-300 and HE-400.  It could not get the HE-500 to distort at normal listening levels and the clarity and neutrality was stunning.  The mids were less harsh than the HE-300 and did not fatigue nearly as much over long listening sessions.
 
In regards to MacedonianHero what source are you using, what tracks are you listening to, and what amp do you use?  I will try to replicate this wide sound stage scenario, but I find it pretty hard to see why my m903 would not drive the LCD-2/3 well.  Please elaborate on your LCD-2/3 testing in regards to soundstage.  I am using soundstage as in how wide and from where I can detect a sound.  The wider the soundstage the more directionality it has.  I found both the LCD-2 and LCD-3 very singular as far as directionality with little openness.
 
I think you hear a great many things that I have yet to hear in the LCD-2/3.  Would you be willing to loan your setup to Tyll or myself so we can see if we can hear it too?  Perhaps I am missing something, but in regards to soundstage I remain unimpressed by the LCD-2/3.
 
For me it is difficult to see why changing between quality amplifiers would drastically change the sound stage characteristic of a headphone.  I admit that impedance, driver damping, and power delivered to the driver varies from amp to amp, but as long as each quality amp does the job well enough the soundstage should not suddenly become enhanced.  Perhaps someone out there can give a details explanation of why the soundtage would increase simply by flipping between quality amps.  By quality here I mean an amp designed to deliver a high enough damping factor for the driver, has a low output impedance ( below 5 Ohms ), and can deliver adequate power to the drivers to give 70dB of loudness.
 
I can see how adding in higher order harmonics may contribute the the soundstage and soundstaging is often a factor of the Fourier transform of the signal and how the ear interprets the higher order harmonics.  I can also see how a poor amp would introduce a time delay between higher order harmonics and thus introduce the effects of distance and directionality, but are we really saying that the m903 or even Ultra Desktop Amp is not driving the LCD-2/3 properly?
 
I require further explanation before I believe that the LCD-2/3 is capable or even competent at delivering an immense soundstage or even a great sense of space.  As a scientist I admit it is completely possible, but with the m903 or Ultra Desktop Amp I have not heard it.

 
What I'm using is in my signature.

I also previously used the WA22 (with the Tung-Sol 7236/Shugang Treasure CV181Z, and EML 5U4G). Both instances the soundstaging of the LCD-3 equaled my HE-6s (now sold) and beyer T1s. Is that to say that they can compete with the HD800s? Sorry, as I'm in Canada, shipping anything over the boarder usually incurs duty (not to mention the shipping costs and $ I've got tied up in the gear).
 
I have heard the Grace M903 with the LCD-2s and wasn't overly impressed. I found the amp section with more than sufficient gain, but lacked power to properly drive orthos fully. That said, I did like it very much with dynamic headphones (through the amp) and the DAC section was quite good too.

 

[Windsor]

Quote:

 
I have heard the Grace M903 with the LCD-2s and wasn't overly impressed. I found the amp section with more than sufficient gain, but lacked power to properly drive orthos fully. That said, I did like it very much with dynamic headphones (through the amp) and the DAC section was quite good too.

 
Gain vs. power. That's an interesting distinction. How would you distinguish the two?

 

[Fearless1]

Would my Buson HA-160 be enough to drive the HE-500s? I like to switch from tube to SS pending on my mood/music.

 

[fabio-fi]

Quote:

Would my Buson HA-160 be enough to drive the HE-500s? I like to switch from tube to SS pending on my mood/music.

 
It drives the HE-500's fine, but a lil more power is not bad either. 

 

[NA Blur]

Classical music, depending on how busy it it, can be a poor test for distortion due to the lack of a high dynamic range.  I did not hear drastic distortion in the HE-400 until I listened to the Tron soundtrack.  The mids became really garbled at times whereas they sounded fine with the HE-500 and Denon AH-D2000 I had laying around.

 

[TMRaven]

Um, Tron soundtrack isn't really the epitome of dynamic range.  Classical music usually is however.

 

[Fearless1]

Thanks for the input on this thread. I went  with the HE-500s. I hope they give me what I am looking for. 

 

[IEMCrazy]

Quote:

Classical music, depending on how busy it it, can be a poor test for distortion due to the lack of a high dynamic range.  I did not hear drastic distortion in the HE-400 until I listened to the Tron soundtrack.  The mids became really garbled at times whereas they sounded fine with the HE-500 and Denon AH-D2000 I had laying around.

 
I still would be interested in someone (not my, I won't part with mine!

) getting you to hear their HE-400's.   What you describe regarding distortion sounds very very different from my experience.  It may be the source chain not liking it, though then you should have heard it certainly on HE-500.  D2k isn't a good way to test for garbled mids since the mids are recessed to begin with, but HE-500 should have been a fair test.  Unless you're driving crazy volumes.  You tried it with the Grace, right?  wje compared 400 & 500 and reported that the 400 seems more source/amp dependent than 500 for some reason.  (I.E. He found 500 sounded more or less similar on his portable and desktop amps, but the 400 sounded considerably worse on his portable, where it sounded very similar to 500 on his desktop.) If you used the AirHead or something, that would be an unfair test (the Denons and HE500 would handle it better than HE-400.)
 
I've listened to a good bit of high DR music through them.  Some of the highlights: Lang Lang plays Rachmaninoff w/ St. Petersburg Phil., Lord of the Rings: The Complete Recordings (possibly the pinnacle of crazy DR peaks....so low you can't hear it for 20 minutes followed by being blasted out of your earlobes, especially the DVD-A cut which actually USES some of the DR span beyond the 92dB of Redbook.), Ricardo Muti & Phila. Orch. Beethoven's 9th.  Stokowski's Bach recordings.  Some crazy DR stuff.  And lets not forget pipe organ.  My HD-650 is my favorite can at this point, but the HE-400 has become my go-to for most orchestral and piano music.  The HD650 is the more accurate, detailed, refined of the two for that music on my setup, but there's something magical about the presentation of that kind of music on the HE-400 that keeps me hooked.  The timbre and resonance of piano is especially great, and the HE-400 is much more dynamic than HD650.  It is often a liability, but for that type of music the dynamics really sell the realism.  In all these recordings I have not encountered any distortion of the kind you speak of.  Some odd resonances from the undamped enclosure at times, sure.  For piano that's actually part of the charm.  But distortion affecting the mids? 
 
If there's one thing we know about HiFiMan it's that their QC isn't always up to snuff.  It makes me wonder if you had a defective pair.
 
Looking at the headphones in your collection, you seem to like a lot of what I like.  If so, you owe it to yourself to give them another try at some point.  They may not take home technical achievement awards next to Audeze, but they're a beautiful headphone regardless.

 

[NA Blur]

I mispoke before when I used the term "dynamic range".  I should have used spectral density or even resolution, but not dynamic range.  As for which music has a higher dynmaic range depends on the recording of course.  If it was a classical piece recorded on a piece of Vinyl then the dynamic range will most likely be much less than a recording placed onto a CD.
 
Dynamic range can, however, be directly related to saturation in the signal.  This is heard as distortion.

 

[IEMCrazy]

Quote:

I mispoke before when I used the term "dynamic range".  I should have used spectral density or even resolution, but not dynamic range.  As for which music has a higher dynmaic range depends on the recording of course.  If it was a classical piece recorded on a piece of Vinyl then the dynamic range will most likely be much less than a recording placed onto a CD.
 
Dynamic range can, however, be directly related to saturation in the signal.  This is heard as distortion.

 
Fair enough, however I'm still not sure your experience is standard for the model.  In terms of spectral density, 24/96 recordings of orchestras at full belt (I had a lovely experience with Elgar's Organ concerto no 1 for orchestra transcription yesterday...quite a bombastic performance, hard to argue density or DR in that setting), dense electronic music like Enigma (16/44.1) all of this seems to play extremely fine.   The technicalities may not be as refined as HE-500 or HD650 on a silver cable (though I haven't tried HE-400 on silver, and I doubt I will)   The midrange is a highlight, if slightly recessed by signature.  Nuiance may not match the more powerful magnets on the heavier models or a speedy dynamic, by planar standards I could see it called "slow" (which is to say, as a planar, quite fast, but compared to other planars with stronger/more magnets, slow), I could see some resonances (which likely plague all HE- models with the same chassis and damping).
 
I have heard that at higher volumes HE-400 (and HE-500 for that matter) can distort more than a dynamic...that's a known quantity with planars.  If the Tron soundtack (haven't heard it) is particularly bassy perhaps the bass was blooming into the mids, though I haven't heard the HE-400 do that, but I see how resonances could cause that, and HE-500 may escape that fate due to less weighted bass.  And while HE-500 is said to have somewhat less distortion than HE-400, both are rated very, very well for distortion overall until hitting higher volume.  At any volume I would be able to sustain for any period of more than a few minutes, I have encountered no appreciable distortion of the mids on either of my two pairs.
 
My Silvered HD650 has returned to the #1 spot on my head...it just does technical so well while remaining beautifully musical, however if there's one thing HE-400 does exceptionally, it's "big."  Nothing does "big sound" and huge DR swings such as orchestral like the HE-400.  The "big sound" combined with the dark signature is very concert-hall-esque.  As a result, while everyone else seems to run to flat, detailed, bright headphones like K70x, HD800, etc for classical, I prefer the HE-400 for orchestral first and foremost.  It's the most realistic tone to the dark timbre of a real concert hall.  Without appreciable distortion and normal (read: tolerable) volumes that I have detected.  I'm a bit opposite to most audiohphiles there.   It's a great all-rounder headphone though that hasn't sneered at a single genre I've thrown at it, I just prefer the 650 for a good many genres, and nothing does hand drums as life-like as HD650, so world type music, as well as jazz, goes to the 650.
 
Point being: Unless you just like your music really loud, I can't agree with your observations, and they seem different from both the discussions in the HE-400 threads, and the critical reviews.  Given HFMs spotty QC track record, I can't help but wonder if your drivers were a bit botched.  It's very possible that your volume level just won't agree with them, but it would be a shame, given your music genres and other headphones, I'd have suggested HE-400 as a "must have" for your collection otherwise. There aren't many wonderfully dark headphones around, and what HE-400 does, it does so very well.

 

[TMRaven]

No planars by nature should distort less than dynamics.  

 

[davidgotsa]

No, planars by nature should distort less than dynamics or 
 
No planars, by nature, should distort less than dynamics? 
Quote:

No planars by nature should distort less than dynamics.  

 

[Matt head 777]

Quote:

No planars by nature should distort less than dynamics.  

DEFINATE +1 with the LCD-2 r2
 
3mm Xmax big surface area and listening test confirm it against the trusty bass headphone D5000 and also HD518. The LCD-2 doesnt go close to distotion like the other headphones feel verging on distortion.
 
EDIT: Also their is less distortion as the surface area is uniformly moved unlike dynamics that can flex. Confirmed further by this; http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/how-planar-magnetic-headphones-work-page-2 You might be mixing up facts with electrostatics.

 

[TMRaven]

No, planars.  

 

[IEMCrazy]

Quote:

No, planars by nature should distort less than dynamics or 
 
No planars, by nature, should distort less than dynamics? 

 
Reminds me of a funny quote I saw somewhere: "Punctuation: The difference between 'Let's eat, grandpa!' and 'Let's eat grandpa!'"

 
Quote:

No planars by nature should distort less than dynamics.  

 
I originally thought that, but I had read somewhere about at high volume (read higher than listening volume) dynamics handle it better.  I could have misunderstood, or the author could have been mistaken.  In either case, I have no explanation for NA Blur's experience short of shoddy QC on the pair being evaluated.