Not sure if this may be your first time looking/trying any planars (and particularly Hifiman headphones), but if you’re open to the idea, I would suggest to go with the cheapest possible entry first before going higher into the lineup. From my experiences, the $109 HE400se is a great entry point to give you a taste of the “Hifiman house sound”, before sinking more money, which again you can leverage Amazon’s return period window to your advantage for evaluating. While there are appreciable differences the higher up you go, the more you listen to their headphones, the more you tend to find a lot of tuning similarities across their product line.
No worries.
Not sure if this may be your first time looking/trying any planars (and particularly Hifiman headphones), but if you’re open to the idea, I would suggest to go with the cheapest possible entry first before going higher into the lineup. From my experiences, the $109 HE400se is a great entry point to give you a taste of the “Hifiman house sound”, before sinking more money, which again you can leverage Amazon’s return period window to your advantage for evaluating. While there are appreciable differences the higher up you go, the more you listen to their headphones, the more you tend to find a lot of tuning similarities across their product line.
Just my $.02. :) Good luck with the hunt!