I’m pretty sure I was reading a thread just a day or two where people were discussing how headphones haven’t really gotten that much better value for money in the last 10-20 years, and only IEMs have.

I’d have to completely disagree with that and I think headphones like the HE400SE are a great example of how we’re getting a lot more for the same amount of money now. $109 for a planar with the same overall signature as most of Hifiman’s higher end offerings, or closer to $90 if you go refurbished/open box, is a pretty nutty deal.

At that price even the usual concern of Hifiman’s QC issues becomes not much of an issue because in the $110 and below range lots of offerings are very limited in terms of QC, build quality, whether or not they have removable cables, etc.

Probably The Beat Hotel - Allan Taylor

Smart thinking, with headphones the girlfriend won’t mind.

Kind of a tie between the first and last. I will often just scroll places like here while I listen - my attention being on the music and the scrolling just sort of being unconscious. Other times I’ll just close my eyes and enjoy the music.

Sometimes I’ll listen while gaming too although that’s less common. The least common of these is while working because good chunks of my work involve either speaking or working with audio so I’m unable to have background music.

Grab a decent closed back or an IEM that you can afford, and then use autoEQ to EQ it to the overall tuning of the HD6XX. It won’t be a 6XX replacement, but I do this exact thing when I want to listen to my K702 but want the isolation of a closed back - I use autoEQ to EQ my CAL! or HD25 -> the tuning of the K702, and listen with one of those. It’s obviously not quite the same experience but it’s close enough to be great for those times when open back just isn’t possible.

Isn’t that the issue with the Closed Sundaras/some of Hifiman’s closed line-up? From what I’ve heard they’ve basically slapped on a closed design without really changing the damping inside. Makes sense that people describe them as sounding quite wonky and nothing like what you’d expect an actual closed Sundara to sound like.

Something to remember is that to avoid clipping you want something that’ll handle the loudest peaks in a song, rather than the average volume. For music with high dynamic range, this could be as much as something like 25dB higher than the actual average volume. So if you want to listen to something like classical and occasionally like to be able to push the volume loud to like 90dB, that means you might realistically want an amp capable of driving your headphones to 115dB.

And that’s if you’re not touching EQ and only listening stock. If your EQ has a +12dB bass shelf or something and -12dB of preamp gain, then now for the same situation you want your amp to be able to reach 127dB. 127dB takes a little over 4x as much power as 120dB, so if 1W is enough for 120dB, you’re looking at a little over 4W there.

So it’s not completely unfeasible to need that much with that combination of power hungry cans + listening loud + high dynamic range music + EQ. Realistically though I think most people over-estimate how much of that headroom they’ll actually need. Plenty of people listen to music with no more than say 15dB of dynamic range, listen at more moderate volumes, don’t touch EQ, and then still buy a massively overkill amp thinking they need the extra headroom.

Maybe Modhouse Argons? Edit: Someone beat me to it.

Looks like U12T bass and mids with Trio-ish treble from that graph.

Turn the volume up to a level at which it’s satisfyingly loud. Note down the volume number.

Turn the volume down from there until it’s just a bit too quiet to be listenable. Note down the volume number.

Now set the volume roughly half way between these two numbers.

That’s a pretty good way of getting a volume that’ll almost certainly be safe to listen to (in fact it’s likely to be a bit lower than you could really safely listen, but it’s great if you’re wanting to be extra cautious)

Then you should have no worries about hearing loss or anything.

Obviously listening too loud for extended periods of time is bad, so avoid that, but listening at moderate volumes is completely fine.

I definitely think you’re right that people should describe their preferences better or talk about what a particular pair of headphones does well/poorly, rather than just [x] is good, or [y] is bad.

The HD600 example you gave is almost identical to the one I’d give: Multiple times now I’ve seen someone say they want to get an open back for the first time because they want to experience what a large soundstage is like, and I’ve seen them be recommended the HD600, known specifically for having a small intimate soundstage.

Similarly I think it’s good to occasionally reference measurements to get an idea of when it might be us that has a particular preference rather than something being an innate trait of a headphone, as I see a lot of “[really bassy headphone] isn’t what I’d call bassy”, “[really bright headphone] isn’t what I’d call bright” type comments and always scratch my head wondering what kind of level of ear-destroying treble one of those folks would need to consider something bright 😂

If you have EqualizerAPO you can save this as a .txt and import it into the app:

Preamp: -2.1 dB Filter 1: ON PK Fc 21 Hz Gain -1.4 dB Q 1.400 Filter 2: ON PK Fc 82 Hz Gain 1.5 dB Q 0.800 Filter 3: ON PK Fc 440 Hz Gain 1.5 dB Q 0.800 Filter 4: ON PK Fc 1900 Hz Gain -1.6 dB Q 2.000 Filter 5: ON PK Fc 4300 Hz Gain 1.7 dB Q 1.000 Filter 6: ON PK Fc 7200 Hz Gain 3.3 dB Q 0.600 Filter 7: ON PK Fc 8000 Hz Gain -6.0 dB Q 2.000 Filter 8: ON PK Fc 15000 Hz Gain -6.9 dB Q 0.500 Filter 9: OFF PK Fc 0 Hz Gain 0.0 dB Q 0.000 Filter 10: OFF PK Fc 0 Hz Gain 0.0 dB Q 0.000

To get that I did what someone else already described, by visiting Squig.link, finding both the Dioko and Truthear Zero Red, going to the Equalizer tab, setting the EQ model to the Dioko, hitting autoEQ and exporting.

To be honest unless I’m missing something (I’m less familiar with the other models in the MDR series you listed), that entire list is side-grades or down-grades*, so I’m not particularly surprised you still like them best.

(*By down-grades I don’t mean objectively worse in every sense, I mean a headphone that falls into a lower performance tier than yours, and by side-grades I mean headphones that fall into a similar performance tier)

Even when you upgrade to a higher performance tier with headphones there’s often trade-offs.

Since just about every other variable of headphone qualities can eventually be summed to frequency response at the ear canal, that means it doesn’t matter if you’re improving the bass, fixing weird treble, making a headphone sound “faster” or more detailed, you are at the end of the day ending up with anywhere from a slightly different, to very different final frequency response. That in turn reflects back onto all those other individual variables: That improved bass might mean maybe those mids don’t cut through the mix quite so nicely as before. That “fast and tight” bass might mean the overall quantity of bass is a bit lower. That increased detail, might mean a brighter and more fatiguing signature that isn’t as easy listening to for long hours.

So almost every switch from one headphone to another, even when jumping up price changes means “You get this, but…” and it’s just a question of finding a “but” that doesn’t bother you. Sometimes the “but” is a pure improvement, like the tuning being radically different but sounding better in every way, but you won’t find two headphones that are identical carbon copies of each other with one simply being identical but better, there’s always going to be something different about the sound and that often means some kind of trade-off.

It actually feels really special when you do find a pair of headphones that’s just an overall improvement in all the areas you liked the original pair for, rather than an upgrade in 2/3 and a down-grade in the other 1/3.

Not an LCD owner but prior to getting my T50RP 50th Anni (which now does most of the heavy lifting for any bassier music) whenever I wanted to listen to my K702 over my other cans but wanted to enjoy some nice bass I would just stick a stupid +12-15dB bass shelf on there similar to yours and call it a day. It surprisingly took it like a champ.

I haven’t yet tried doing the same on the planar goodness that is the T50RP 50th Anni, but I may do later today when I have a moment to listen, just for the hell of seeing what these drivers can actually handle.