Thank you for reading!

Vintage stuff is really interesting; almost every vintage dynamic headphone I’ve owned was a flop but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by most of them.

I have! I wrote a tiny bit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/nfewef/sennheiser_hd660s_impressions_versus_older_hd600/

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In general I've found every HD600 variant I've heard to have a little too much 1kHz elevation which makes them sound just at the threshold of shouty to me, so I found I never wanted to use it so I've gotten rid of it every time I've owned one because I already have way too many headphones for someone that uses speakers 95% of the time. The HD650 usually has a little bit more elevation in the mid bass and less elevation at 1kHz so it sounds more relaxing. The exceptions are ones with paper baffles, which are rare enough that you really have to look for one to end up with one of those so you can assume that if you buy an HD650, you'll get a more relaxing sound than the HD600. They have a little more damping behind the driver than the HD600 so they do suffer a little in dynamic contrast though.

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I'm in the "scale" team, as you probably could guess by the fact that I actually took time to list out my chain used for this review lol. But I certainly can't recommend most people buy a mid-priced headphone and also buy a mid-priced chain unless they have heard plenty of other headphones and find that they still like that same headphone more than the others. After over a decade into this hobby and having experience with most modern flagships, I still can't get over just how well the Senns do midrange and I'm willing to give up some resolution for that midrange, since most flagships can't live up to them in that one particular area. A lot of the music I listen to focuses on vocals though, so the things I index for may not match yours.

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The best recommendation I can give though is to try everything you can off a cheap source to figure out your preferences. Then if you want to get into the nervosa of gear scaling, buy something that has good resale so if you find you don't hear a difference after a couple weeks, you won't be stuck with it. I've certainly sold a lot of gear because I found it either didn't make a difference or it sounded worse to me.

I get a lot of with with my HD580 and HD650! It’s another $100 or so but I think it’s worth saving up a little for it. I actually realized how spoiled I was when I switched from the 560 to the 580 and it felt like removing a veil over my music. The DT880 resolves some of this too but I’ve never felt like it’s quite up there.

I wish the Focal Elex were more reliable, as I felt that was solid there too and not that hard to find for around $400-450…but their questionable reliability may be why they’ve gotten to that price. On the planar side, the Hifiman HE500, on the occasion they’re available used, weren’t too bad at that but do have a rather annoying mid treble peak.

The $85 deal was legitimately very good! I told a couple people to buy them at that price. $200 seems steep for this but anything under $100 makes plenty of sense.

I have no idea to be nicer than this, but I have an entire section detailing other cheap planar options, linked an amazing resource to discover different vintage headphones to research, and mentioned twice in the review that I think a $15 KSC75 sounds more normal than the HE400SE and also recommended the $40 Creative Aurvana Live. The purpose of the second half of the last paragraph is to say you can get better sound for cheaper.

Portapro also works for those that want a darker sound.

I’ve heard other things easy to find used that also work, but I know many people have an aversion to buying used so only offer that option to people that really want to experience the planar experience. If you’re actually shopping in the price range, the DT880 is apparently under $200 now, the AKG K612 is an interesting alternative but current refurb prices for the HD560S are more compelling.

Yup! I only have my ears so I certainly can’t speak from other people’s perspectives.

Thanks for reading!

I don’t think the problems were FR-related; it generally followed the same curve subjectively as every other modern Hifiman I’ve heard, but the intangibles are so, so bad.

I’ll be honest, I was way nicer about the HE400SE than I actually feel because I didn’t want to put off too many people new to the hobby that stumble across this review if they happen to see it, but it legitimately felt like a chore to use the HE400SE. Every time I caught myself thinking, “Okay this is $109 maybe my standards are too high,” and put on my KSC75 as a sanity check I cursed at how much less terrible the KSC75 is. My partner’s wireless Bose headphones sounded more normal. As someone who legitimately was a big fan of Hifiman stuff in the past, I can’t believe how disappointed I was in the HE400SE.

Right after this was published I found out the DT880 can be purchased straight from Beyerdynamic for $175 in the US, which I think I would rather have than the HD560S, assuming I can EQ down treble. But for the sake of this review, I'll treat the DT880 as a $300 MSRP headphone like I thought I remember it being...

Good audio should be accessible to everyone. While it’s very nice that I’m fortunate enough to be in the position to use the kind of gear that I never thought I would be able to have growing up, I recognize that more often than not, I’m yelling into the wind when I talk about how much I like stuff like the ZMF Atrium or Audeze LCD4. In the real world, the sub-$200 USD over ear open headphone market currently is dominated by two headphones: the planar-magnetic Hifiman HE400SE and the Sennheiser HD560S. While I appreciate the opportunity to be able to finally hear both these headphones, I can't help but feel like even for the amount of money they cost, I expect a bigger upgrade from other things that cost less money.

Read more: https://den-fi.com/hifiman-he400se-versus-sennheiser-hd560s-modestly-priced-madness-review/