Massdrop x HIFIMAN HE4XX Measurements and Impressions

So I assume this means 2,5 mono plugs (like on the HD700) works too, as the original HE-4XX has stereo plugs.

My cable is not reliable - turn it in its jack and at one point (40 degree span or so) there's no signal going through. And it's the plug itself - happens when I change it to the other channel as well. Weird. Anyone else experienced this?

So I'm looking for a longer, cheap and simple cable with those 2,5 mm plugs that I can convert to balanced. Any suggestions?

 

You can always shoot me a mail

 

I'm sure you can offer excellent craft and products for those in need, but I (like you) prefer to make my own parts.

Can anybody just confirm that the mono 2,5 mm mono plugs (like on the HD700 cable) works with the HE4xx?

 

I've been doing measurements of my new HE-4XX pair. First off, channel matching isn't that great, which is odd. Not audibly so, though.

I tried them with the focus-A pads, cheap pleathers (just to compare), ZMF lambskins and cowhides.

The lambskins win because of comfort, but cowhides sound a TINY bit better. Not much. Just a teeny bit. Measurements show less treble peaks, less lower treble, and WAY better sub bass extension than with stock pads. It goes down to 10Hz without dropoff on the best driver. The other driver has more dropoff in the subs, and like 1.2db more midrange across the board. No idea why. Treble lines up basically the same, though.

 

I've been pondering what could potentially be the cause of the channel imbalance I'm experiencing with these... One side has low end that goes flat down to 10HZ, with a bump up in level towards the sub bass, and the other side looks like a HD650 or something (not literally, but you get the idea) with significant bass dropoff that eats into the sub bass a lot...

Knowing nothing about how these are assembled, I don't know if there's an obvious place there could be a pressure leakage between the front and rear of the baffle, causing the bass to die off? Is there a place I can check inside to ensure that everything is tight?

 

Sennheiser cable for HD212 works perfectly well. Two mono 2,5 mm & one stereo 3,5 mm plugs, 3 m. I've converted it to balanced. Cheap.



https://imgur.com/ZvFWTin
https://imgur.com/AReHkAT


https://www.thomann.de/gb/sennheiser_hd_212_hd_497_ersatzkabel.htm

 

Seriously considering buying these for my T3 since I've never owned a planar and really curious. Cheap enough to take the plunge without too much regret. Apparently the 400i works well with the amp so hopefully that'll translate over.

 

Get it, man. As you said, it is cheap enough so you don't feel much remorse if it breaks or if you don't like it.

Just so happens, I'm listening to Megadeth with 4XX (ZMF Ori Sheepskin). I actually prefer this to my HEKv1. Sounds sharper. Bass is actually pretty good. Tight and impactful. But it does have certain treble peak.

 

I have been sent my third warranty return pair from Drop, they all have the same issues, some completely minor and one I don't want to put up with.

Each set has had the left driver with the crackling issue where the membrane is deformed and crinkles/crackles at the slightest change in air pressure. Does not happen at all on the right side in any set so I am thinking I take the right side off one and replace the left on the other. Then I can send a double left pair back and be done with it.

Naturally to make that more difficult each pair I have been sent the right cup is massively over tightened making not stripping at least one screw highly unlikely.

 

I received my HE4XX this week. They are now heavily discounted so a great bargain. I'm in EU (actually UK so it's temporary hahahah Brexit Brexit Rule Brexitannia) so used Drop's EU service and paid US $160. This was a few pennies under £130. Compared to importing from the US to UK at US price this is still very good. I have learned by experience that once you spend more than a few dollars then as well as shipping fees there is import duty, then VAT, then handling fees at UK end. $160 with tracked delivery in 5 days is fine!

My HE4XX are branded "Massdrop" on the box but "Drop" on the headphones. The connectors at the drivers are 3.5mm (on both sides fortunately ha ha). The headphones are fitted with the FocusPad-A pads. My pair arrived in a sealed box, in perfect working order, no sign of defects. The cable (about 145cm) has an L shape at the jack that is cunningly designed not to fit through a thick protective phone case. This is doubly cunning because you really don't want to listen with these without some proper amplification, so respect to Drop for preventing you from discovering the huge, yawning, chasm-like gap between the "works with phones" marketing BS and the reality.

Pair them with proper amplification and they are remarkably good. Pair them with inadequate amplification and they are feeble. I have a variety of amplification options so I'm happy. If I'd bought these to use with a typical smartphone I'd be thinking up ways to do dastardly and distressing things to Drop marketing people, if people they are.

They work quite well with my LG V20 after tricking it into outputting extra voltage with an inline impedance adapter, short extender and sleight of hand worthy of Houdini. They are shit with less powerful phones. Really shit. They sound fabulous with my super-f**k-off-powerful S.M.S.L. sAp II amp, and not bad with my el-cheapo I.A.M.D V200 weird digital amplifier thingy.

 

Current HE4XX are 3.5mm at all three ends. I believe the people at Drop & Hifiman had a business lunch together where the menu was exclusively liquid and alcoholic, and at about 3:45 PM they decided it would be fabulously amusing to dream up a cable spec that is not quite right either for portable or fixed use, and is also almost universally unavailable from third parties, or even themselves. Admittedly, I don't really know about that business lunch, it's pure conjecture, but I do know that it's very hard to make such fucked up decisions while sober.

 

So I got my pair last week and I was pleasantly surprised (and now I want the HE5-SE.) That said, there was one thing that bugged the shit out of me: it got sibilant at the weirdest times.

So I did what Bill-P would do and used some good ol' kitchen liner. It toned it down, but that wasn't 100% enough either. So, I removed the cloth on the back grill. Surprisingly, that increased the air and soundstage a bit more than I thought it would, but it was still there.

So I butchered my focus pads and slapped ZMF Universal pads on it. Made a huge difference in the highs (as they became more linear and a touch darker,) and the bass got a lot more linear.

I am using the Schiit Hel atm. I'm contemplating getting the Asgard 3 + 4490 module, but haven't decided yet.

 

Anyone else think these are too thick and musky sounding from 150 to 400hz? Everyone except the brightest female vocal is singing to me through a wool sock.

Treble resolution seems good, crisp separation, decently fast.

But this is a bar with red hooker lights, not a neon studio lighting kind of deal. I wouldnt trust it to monitor anything.

my 880 might be too bright up top, and after years might seem normal to me, but the midrange of 4xx seems too gooey fat to me.

Not super bad, enjoyable headphone, but somewhat muffled.

For listening LOUD it's great (unless the treble starts to annoy you) But for a podcast it's like the people are talking into their chest.

 

Someone sent me these in the mail gratis on top of miscellaneous other parts I purchased off them. You porkers are too nice sometimes and that makes me feel kinda bad, but this is the first time I've had planars to use in the home setting so it is with merit. Just figured stating the above might be useful in understanding the context of this write-up:

Laptop USB > iFi micro iDSD > Lake People G109A or G1217 Sunrise III with Genalex ECC81.

Executive Summary:
Bass well-extended with lithe and nimble character but develops a farty nature below about 50Hz that doesn't seem entirely due to SPL tanking paired with sparkly highs that border on offensiveness with poorly synergising gear/recordings. Upper bass has some weird flub?? Vocals have a thin, vaguely hollow character; headstage is roomy with lots of breathing room— downside is that localisation is poor particularly for images in the center field. Macrodetail is great as are subtle dynamic reverberations like on acoustic strings (i.e. microdynamics are surprisingly nice!), but ambiance and texture fall short of Meze 99 or HD650/600 out of the same mid-fi upstream chains.

These are headphones that suck for listening at lower volumes. Something about their voicing makes me want to turn them up a bit, but exacerbates their harsher presentation, blergh.

Comparisons to other planars would probably be more useful. Ah well. Usual rambling review:

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COMFORT AND BUILD:
Great comfort, but I generally don't seem to have trouble with heavier cans or ones with crappy headband padding so my opinion here could be suspect. They do seem heavy in the hand— Drop site says 370g, which is still lighter than the HP-3's 450g (!!!).

The Focus-A pads hug the sides of my face gently, and though I do worry about the long-term durability of the protein leather outers based on prior experiences with the material, they seem sturdy enough. Eh, they'll last for however long they last in this torpid humidifier of a broken landmass, it's just fortunate that the parts actually in contact with my oily, superacidic skin are velour so not as susceptible to structural damage.

I've got smallish ears that don't stick out a lot, internal pad capacity is more than sufficient for me. That isn't saying a lot though, as the TH-X00 pads are roomy enough for me too and my ears just barely touch the foam on Sennheiser HD6__es with pancaked pads.

Build is janky. Adjustment of headband sliders is firm which is reassuring but the swivel mechanism on the yokes are all stiffer than a day-old cadaver; lots of wince-inducing creaking and squeaking that bothered me in the first couple days using them enough to make me bust out the screwdrivers and loosen the torque on the hinges. Some threadlocker present, but nothing as obnoxiously strong as on the TH-X00 that led to stripped heads. The quality of plastic isn't horrible, these seem like they could survive getting knocked about a bit. As mentioned by @purr1n in the OP, the finish is handsome. Love the subtle colour and the clean branding.

The "Hifiman HE-4XX" badges on either side of the headband are a class touch. The right one seems to be pulling away from the headband slightly at the top (visible in pic below), but it feels firmly affixed still. Likely won't pop off unless I go out of my way to prise them away from the band. Headband itself has enough plushness for me, but... yeah my input WRT comfort is suspect, hah.

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SOUND:
These came pre-modded so I spent the first two days listening to them in this configuration, but wanted to get a feel for them stock so took the shelf liner out. I immediately regretted my decision to do so after re-assembling the headphone and putting on my treble pain tracks (The Rumours album - Fleetwood Mac, Bleed Your Cedar - Elysian Fields, etc.). They were borderline sizzly for me with the liner and reverting them to stock only served to exacerbate things— hi-hats and brass instrument overtones are unbearable at higher volumes, and at my usual moderate levels they grate on my ears over extended listening sessions when paired with my phone (of course I tried) or the Lake People G109A (discrete solid state design). Tubes seem to take the edge off in a great way; G1217 Sunrise III with Genalex ECC81 reins the top-end in enough to keep me from wincing, though the overall tonality still leans bright. There's a surplus of sparkle in the highest range of my hearing, especially with J-Pop and J-Rock that tend to be heavy-handed in the application thereof (e.g. Rolling Star - YUI, Critique & Curation - fhana). I tried listening to Young Folks by Peter Bjorn and John off my phone but had to yank the headphones off my head partway through the song, it was just that tizzy.

Bass extension and pitch differentiation is better than the HD600s and Meze 99 Classics— there's good definition down to about 50Hz before the quality poops out. There's a litheness to the bass in that even on reasonably complex basslines or rapid EDM bass farts it doesn't stumble over itself, plus there's a lack of bottom-octave rumble that keeps the low end from overwhelming as in the HP-3 or TH900. Upper end is hashy and confused when there's a lot going on though, which adds to a pervasive sense of haziness. Upper bass around 200Hz seems a bit tubbier than HD600, which is surprising; strings on Walkin Blues off Eric Clapton Unplugged seemed a bit less taut. Odd.

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Not sure how this compares to the Klipsches in low-end control since I lent those out almost exactly a month back so haven't been able to do a back-to-back, but just based on memory the HE4XXs are "smoother" in texture down low and throughout the frequency spectrum (not in a good way), and the reduced bass presence relative to midrange makes it so that acoustic recordings don't sound like they're too bloated. They actually remind me of listening to the first-gen Samsung Galaxy Buds in that there's great macrodetail and minimal frequency masking, but relatively mediocre microdetail and ambiance. Some likely refer to this as a plasticky timbre, I just think of it as being technically suited for modern pop. I've found myself re-listening to a butt-ton of early Lady Gaga, P!nk, Maroon 5, and loads of other pop odds and ends I've not visited in ages since I got these headphones. These are all basically hyper-processed tracks with hardly any low-level detail to begin with, so I don't feel as shortchanged as much as I would with other headphones like the DT880s or the Senns.

Noticed nuances in the bass on Lady Gaga's Lovegame that I have literally never caught before even on ostensibly better headphones, though to be fair it's been a few years since I really listened to the song. Pretty impressive. Microdynamics are pretty surprising, they don't seem overly tensioned like I expected they would— they seem about par with, or maybe better than, the Klipsch HP-3 and around HD600 tier on my basic-ass rig. I'm actually mildly surprised by that, haha.

The headstage is massive but has little depth; doesn't hold a candle to the HD800, but might be around as large as on TH-X00. Doesn't have that three-blob effect I noticed with other planars in previous settings, but it's extremely difficult to localise center images— they all seem to be coming off from some vague distance far in front of me but also somehow from inside my skull? Very disconcerting. Sounds hard-panned to either side are all comparatively well-defined, which makes it jarring on some binaural recordings or films. There's a definite greyness present on even the G109A (generally offers as clean a background as you can expect at the price). I don't mind a tad of haze myself so it's far from a dealbraker per my tastes, but vocals come across as oddly hollow-sounding. Bit of an uncanny valley effect comparing to the HD600, which has vocalists more "there" in comparison, but resolution is still good enough to catch those little "cuts" of sound with Freddie Mercury's overdubs in the intro of Bohemian Rhapsody. The siblilance is also more pronounced on these than on most other headphones, though it's far from as bad as on the HE-350 from years back that were literally painful to listen to. I actually feel like it subjectively sounds like the treble balance of the Klipsches, but with a more pronounced upper-mid suckout and lacking the BIG bass to smoothen things.

Sonic images are reasonably large, not shrunken like they can be on the Klipsch HP-3 or Mezes. Despite the greyer background, sonic images don't get muddled out of any sources I have even during moderately busy passages, making it easy to follow individual instruments through the midrange, something that's basically a no-go on the Meze 99s (e.g. Breaking the Girl - Red Hot Chili Peppers). Besides this, the drivers don't feel particularly fast— not sure if that's a limitation of planar diaphragms or just this particular design. Might be the cause of that greyishness, in hindsight.

There's a fairly obvious gulf in the 2-3kHz region that I don't entirely hate, but can see why it won't be to everyone's preferences; the HD600 is a bit much for me in this area but I do often go back to the Senns for some guilty crunch. What I like about the HE4XX is how it makes the guitar solo on Achilles Last Stand listenable; same solo is cringe-inducing on the HD600s. Based on demo memory the HEKv2 and Susvara seemed to have a similar voicing, so I guess this one follows HFM's target curve quite devoutly save for in bass extension. Side note that I prefer their target to Audeze's, for whatever that's worth, though it can sound overly polite and disengaging at times. The fact that these sound somehow slow doesn't aid its lack of visceral danceability.

Measurements using my take on SBAF comp with MiniDSP EARS below. I think I'm happy with where this is now (flat=neutral, average of 5 sweeps per channel). Made some tweaks but I'm reasonably confident in matching between mics so the channel imbalances are really there. Nothing sounds bad enough to warrant comment though, neither the ~5dB imbalance around 4.5kHz nor the ~7dB discrepancy around 5.8kHz. Bottom-octave bass dependent on seal with 10kHz+ air on positioning, otherwise seems mostly immune to FR changes borne of shifting the cans around the jig. Note that this is from 10Hz to 24kHz, 55dB scale with 1/48 octave smoothing.

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Edits 1-74: grammar, phrasing, turns of phrase, etc.
Edit 75: added photo in direct sunlight

 

Good review, very thorough and as an owner wanted to just say "agree with a lot of what you said". When I first got interested in "better headphones" (~January-ish 2018) I used Massdrop as my jumping-in point, the same way I think a lot of others did... I picked up a pair of these, a pair of Sennheiser 6XX's (and a schiit jot to drive them), and a pair of Fostex TR-X00 mahogany's...

The Fostex still get a lot of use. They're my daily driver in the office (closed back for privacy and respect for others around me). I'm actually wearing my 6XX's right now as I type this, even though I've picked up a few other "toys" since that first foray of purchases... but the HE-4XX's have basically been retired-in-place. I have little use for them anymore, for a lot of the reasons you mentioned there.

Budgets are a real thing. I still think of these as "a fun and affordable first step into the world of planar's", and a noteworthy part of my journey through this fun hobby I like so much.... They're just not my bag. A bit too sibilant on the highs, and not particularly refined or clean sounding (to my ears at least) through the mids.

 

@psuKinger thanks! I do enjoy listening to them for some material, yeah, but apart from low bass control I do generally prefer the HD600 with the bulk of my music. The HE-4XX are definitely great value as a "my first planar" can considering what you can get them for, but even with just demo memory to compare it's fairly obvious that there's a lot more that can be done with the technology— the HE4XX feel like "background music cans" to me sometimes.

If anything this makes me want to get ears on a Verum based on others' impressions. Argh. No. Already have enough shit I want/need to get )

 

I'm thinking of upgrading to a balanced cable - just to see if there's any noticeable difference.

I really do understand what you mean when you say "the HE4XX feel like 'background music cans'."

Thanks for such a thorough review!

 

Well, I upgraded the cable on the HE4XX. I'm doing a lot of listening now, and trying to be a little structured about what I'm doing. I went from the original cable (not balanced) to an upgraded, balanced cable. Fortunately, I also have an 1/4" adapter for the new cable, so I'll be able to see if I:

(a) notice a difference between the new cable and the old cable (single-ended)
(b) notice a difference between the new balanced cable and listening to the new balanced cable with 1/4" adapter.

 

HE-4X (left) vs HE-4XX (right). This is the front side of each driver that faces your ears. 4XX has no magnets front side.:

IMG_6503 by philimonmon, on Flickr

HE-X4 (left) and HE-4XX (right) rear of drivers. HE-X4 has double magnets. 4XX magnets are shinier and smoother. 4XX tracing is corrugated which is a technique to improve driver ability (I forget how but its described in detail in vintage ortho roundup on HF). Tracing looks denser too on 4XX.:
IMG_6499 by philimonmon, on Flickr

HE-X4 is just a repackaged HE-400se. Still prefer 4XX to 400se and 5XX due to sounding a little less grey but that could be the warmer tuning (minus very highs peak).

The HE-X4 I didn't listen to. *Click links for higher res.

 

HFM 4XX
- EARS measurements of 3 different samples. Don't know if this displays variance with 4XX or my measuring. Focus-a pads are not durable pads either and even look L/R imbalanced.
- I listened briefly and I still like these aside from the slightly peaky highs. 4XX for $89shipped is fantastic value. Relatively lightweight and comfortable compared to HE6se. I understand the notion that it's often considered plasticky sounding. I'd say that's a combination of the peaky highs and relatively soft sound (macrodynamics and transients). Still, an impressive listen for the cost because you get a huge driver full-sized headphone planar with solid build. Difficult to recommend though to a newb who wants a single good all-rounder because needs amp and you could get the more commonly pleasing 6XX for just a little more. I personally am not sure I which would rather live with as my only headphone between the two. Either can be modded or EQd to tailor towards tonal prefererences, so then you'd be choosing by their constraints: 4XX limited by its timbre, 6XX limited by it's bass.

Anyways, I bought a 4XX again because I need the parts for HE500 and HE6se.