Hifiman HE-6

I stand corrected!

 

It's doable, just not doing UERM the best justice IMO. I almost use HD650 with Ember II exclusively. UERM sounds better being driven by a decent SS amp. I also tried UERM with Lyr 2, and it sounded too bloody damn hard. Every note became Mortal Combat brutality kill, no delicacy left.

 

Yeah, Lyr 2 has a weird dark yet somewhat peaky/sharp/edgy sound to my ears, too.

Anyway, here's something interesting regarding the HE-6. I measured @drfindley's HE-6 on my rig and got this:



But they sound bright and kinda piercing to me. What gives? And then I looked at spectrogram...



It looks as though there's some ringing at 10-11KHz (that green line that goes straight up) on this one. Huh...

So perhaps it is that that is causing "brightness" on the HE-6. There must be parasitic reflections somewhere in the headphone that's causing this. Maybe it's in the rear of the enclosure?

But... aside from that, it looks awesome, and I must say... EQing down 11KHz by about 3dB was all it took for me to not notice this "brightness" as much. Now... I think some amps have issue controlling high frequencies, especially when they have to deal with high power output, so perhaps that's why the HE-6 has the reputation of sounding bright on amps that "can't drive" it? Also to say... I think some vintage speaker amps only extend up until about 10-12KHz before taking a nose dive due to tech limitations back then, etc... so perhaps that's why HE-6 sounds good on those amps even though they may not be as good as modern designs?

Just some thoughts. But... yeah, HE-6 measures very well on my system. Now I can kinda see why people love this one.

 

WE talked about this on CS, I tried just changing headbands but the hole on the HE-6 cups is incompatible with the plastic gimbal of the HE-560 band.

Then I just came to appreciate the comfort of the HE-6 band, although not as nice as the HE-560 band, you can get by fine with it. Also if one is using Audeze vegan pads then they are too big as they hit up against the plastic gimbal of the HE-560 band.

 

Stick with the stock headband and use the Audeze Vegan pads. This will improve both comfort AND sound

 

I actually just slapped on some vegans for the first time last night... I hate to say it but I think you guys are right. These pads really smooth out the treble nonsense but I can't subjectively hear any loss in clarity. The response just sounds very balanced now. I was able to get the treble to a decent level with the velour pads but these do even more taming in that department.

I will definitely post measurements soon to throw into my measurement thread. I'm trying to get the hang of them subjectively first.

Also, @Bill-P, what pads/mods were on those?

 

They do, you just have to email them. I was gonna get an HE-560 headband a few weekends ago but decided not to for a while. Besides, I know the headband is incompatible with the old cans so I'm trying to find a way to connect em.

 

What I meant was something a bit different, that is, extracting out the HE6 drivers (sans cups) and resoldering them into new cups/headband from a sacrificed HE560/400i/s or whatnot.

 

Vegan pads + regrill mod.

I think the 11KHz ringing is as a result of residual reflections in the back of the enclosure. There's quite a bit of space between the magnet array and the grill after all. I think the grill does reflect a bit, but the exposed plastic parts (if you've removed the wool felt) are suspect as well.

Either way, I covered that plastic part and the ringing is more or less gone. Though treble is still not as clean as HD800.

 

One reason for this is probably different output devices in pos-neg side.

Amp that reaches nearly 100% psu voltage peak could be made only 1% efficient to some cans.
Output voltage is usually limited by voltage drop on output transistor(s) semicondutor band-gap (s),
this ofc is some source of heat as well with large currents.

edit: Where is Solderdude? He'd set us newbs straight.

 

^

Yep. I did mention "op amps" specifically because they're more prone to that "problem". Looking back, though, it's more like a "limitation" than "problem", and I'm merely suggesting that we design with overhead to avoid such situations rather than assuming perfect ideal response from everything.

And "overhead" is precisely what the HE-6 needs, IMO, since it tends to push the boundaries of most headphone amps. Sure, you can try to run the amp up to its limits, but I don't think that's wise.

 

Stock grills without any damping material eliminate that extra brightness Bill was mentioning. I made a ring of rubber from a mouse pad and placed it between the driver and the grill, huge difference in brightness. It doesn't show up in measurements but I think either reflections or vibrations are minimized and the result is easily heard.

 

Similar result on my HE-6. This is the reflection from the grille and why it should be replaced or removed. ~9kHz/4.5k hikes are caused by cup resonance - fill them with something, e.g. bluetack or silicone. An alternative is to apply minimum phase eq at medium Q (~8 for 9k and ~4 for 4.5k AFAIR) which will work almost as good.

Bass hike as in +6 dB flat is caused by pads being bit too thick and goes away with thinner earpads - at the cost to comfort.

It's excellent QC all around, pity they cannot just redesign the cups and ergonomics a bit - instead going the ching bling route and hiking prices to hell...

 

Thanks for the tip on cup resonance.

And you stumbled on a bit of genius, I think we have a new term for Chinese bling: either bling blong or chling chling.

"I was interested in getting the newest Hifiman flagship but once I saw it I knew I would never be able to bring myself to don that ridiculous bling blong."

 

Ugh I really need to get one of these before they get discontinued.

 

What about bling chlong ?

 

That's f'ing racist.

 

Arent he-6 already discontinued?

 

They are, but a LOT of retailers are still selling them, obviously they haven't sold super well.

i am a big HE-6 advocate, for whatever flaws they have, there is no headphone like it in it's ability to produce such a slamming, visceral sound. I am constantly tempted to buy a backup pair due to it being discontinued.