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Hifiman HE 6 ; I'm not sure how much of what I've seen written about them I would agree with !

Posted by Old SteveA (A) on September 17, 2014 at 12:46:23

The HFM HE 6 have had a lot written about how difficult they may be to drive to their "full potential". There is a pretty glaring visual aspect of
the stock appearance of these phones that for some reason I've never seen a whisper of a mention.

The supplied headphone cable really does'nt inspire much confidence that it is capable of doing much more than "just" carrying some trace of a signal to an planar magnetic drivers which we already know are hard to drive. (What a surprise that HFM sells a powerful headphone amplifier that seems to be a highly regarded preference for use with these phones). Would you care to guess how much easier the HE6 are to drive using an aftermarket cable? I was always a bit puzzled by all the talk of how hard they were to drive until I put the stock cable back on. You've heard of "garage band" music well we might be talking about "garage headphone ergonomics" here !

Don't go anywhere this is only the start of how to wring more potential from these headphones!

Due to some of the garage ergonomic features it's pretty easy to tweak these headphones into something pretty exceptional sounding.I have found that I much prefer the AKG K702 velour earpads to the stock earpads. They are slightly bigger than the stock pads but there are any number of ways to attach the new earpads to the cup housing w/ some 3M double sided sticky pads. At this point I have placed 2 circular discs that I've cut from bedroom/bath rug liner foam the same circumference as the earpad openings over the bare planar driver.(this brings the midrange presence up quite a bit;much less distant sounding).The earcup grilles are held in place by a small plastic retainer clip that you can remove with a fingernail(or any thin item. I think the HE6 sounds much better with the drivers on this side with as little damping over them as you feel comfortable with (Mine are completely uncovered on this side)(This really opens up the Soundstage). I'm undecided how much changing the grilles to something more open like metal mesh letter tray or waste basket material makes (I went even lighter & decided to use metal window screening as the grilles)

I have a basically non-existent noise floor (I've tried pretty hard to detect anything but silence between notes & I end up giving up trying)
so I seriously don't know how much these changes will work for others.

In my system the HE6 are the better headphone for the music I listen to
(Acoustic & predominantly Orchestral)than the Senn HD800.The stock
HE6 has some easily correctable flaws due to some insufficient "Ergonomics
R&D) I don't think Senn. would have even approved something like the HE designs

Oh, one more thing. Through chance I've found a fairly inexpensive little tube amp,that(I'd retired sometime ago)that sounds very nice w/ the HE6 a Consonance Cyber 20 w/ some '74 NOS Siemens EL84.(I know of the Schiit amps I did'nt care for them)

Edits: 09/17/14 09/17/14

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