Hifiman HE6Se V2

You blokes are on fire.

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This is a real danger. At least for me. And that danger was two fold: chasing things down a rabbit hole (amping) as well as high expectations. I have since tried to temper expectations, and have happily been pleasantly surprised from time to time.

Again, solid gold!

You and @mfadio have absolutely made my day! Thank you.

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I think a lot of amps can power it, I have yet to try anything between 2 and 10 watts. However, at 10 watts on the dial im using the volume knob at 2 and 3 and it goes to 6 so I’m running at almost 75%.

So I can imagine that something like the A90 is not something that would give this headphone what it needs to shine. And I believe this is 5 watts at 32 ohms so 50 ohms is going to be less.

The recommendation by HiFiman for 2 watts is utter nonsense plus I believe I’ve seen the true sensitivity is even lower than what HiFiman claims.

At 2 watts it’s basically sounds recessed and everything is veiled, it sounds like everything is farther back, and the bass is trash.

I’m not certain how much power is going in at 75% on my flux labs, but let’s say it’s 7.5 watts you need at least something in that ball park to make this headphone crisp, full, and detailed.

So with this in mind, I’m not sure how much variation would occur on the sound with something weaker. I was very skeptical that even 5 watts would do justice. Plus the fact there aren’t a large amount of head amps that do 5 at 50 ohms.

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I’m hoping the Mjolnir I’ve got now will be enough power, since it’s rated at exactly 5W at 50 ohm.

I have seen numerous people claim Joutenheim 2 is a good pairing and it’s only at 4W at 50 ohm.

I don’t think 75% on the volume would be 75% of the power you have available, power increases exponentially with volume. Also it depends on how the headphones load the amp, you might top out the amp before hitting 100% or you might hit 100% and still not be drawing the maximum continuous power the amp is capable of. Not to mention music isn’t a 100% duty cycle, so I think there is going to be more to it than just “is 5W enough?” Amplifier design will make a big difference in how well it can handle dynamic spikes and power peaks.

Two different 5W amps aren’t going to perform exactly the same.

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More than enough.

If you were listening at an average level of 95 dB/SPL (which would be VERY bad for your hearing in VERY short order) and wanted a 20 dB margin for musical peaks, the Mjolnir would still have 8x more power available than you were actually using. If you changed that to 98 db/SPL, and 118 dB peaks, you’d STILL have 100% headroom.

If it were taking 7.5W of available power (because there is no way anyone is actually using that much power to drive the HE6SE V2 - that’d yield a 122 dB/SPL output) to make the HE6SE V2 sound good, and do their thing properly, then it is likely because that amplifier has a very sharp rise in distortion vs. power - which says more about the performance of the amplifier than it does about how much power the HEADPHONES need.

More power won’t hurt; but if the amplifier can already deliver clean power at the levels being demanded by the listening level, it won’t help either.

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Power specs can be misleading at times. Based on my experience, the reason people recommend speaker amps for headphones like HE6se or Sus is due to the current that they want. Headphone amps generally are more current limited compared to speaker amps. That’s why even though something like a THX 789 might reach a peak power rating of 6W or whatever they say, it only outputs up to 1A or something close to that. If you compare to something like a Benchmark AHB2, the peak current is 29A.

I’m not saying headphone amps can’t power these headphones loud enough but they can leave you wanting more.

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You have to be careful when reading, and applying, specifications like that.

AHB2 specs say 29A peak current delivery. While it’s possible Benchmark are quoting that differently, that’s usually a transient measurement into the lowest supported (stable) load, not a steady-state one that’s valid for all loads.

Current delivery is affected directly by the impedance of what is being driven. Double the impedance, you halve the amount of current. So if that 29A is into a 2 ohm load, it would equate to 1.16A into the 50 ohms of the HE6SE V2. Which isn’t that much different to the THX AAA 789.

Notwithstanding that, at 120 dB/SPL, the HE6SE V2 won’t quite draw 300mA, so 1A yields 3X headroom.

So it’s generally more that speaker amplifiers are either a) cheaper for higher power than a comparable headphone amplifier (usually at the cost of much higher noise levels) or b) they have stiffer power supplies and better slew rates and are generally running into SUPER easy to drive loads compared to speakers.

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So the THX engineering expert for the 789 stated that the 789 peak current limit is 0.8-0.9 Amps so it will never hit the 1.16A even though the power ratings may indicate that it might output ~3w at 50 ohms. Also, the AHB2 is not recommended for 2ohm loads so the 29A peak is probably at 4ohms which would mean double the current based on your calculations.

I think from experience, many will swear that the AHB2 has plenty more power than a THX 789. The THX 789 is known to clip and struggle with harder to drive headphones. I haven’t seen that to be the case with an AHB2. Obviously AHB2 is 10x the price so there should be a difference between the two. Which brings me back to my point, power specs are just one part of the equation and from personal experience and experience of he6se/sus owners, speaker amps have paired much better compared to headphone amps.

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Didn’t say it did.

I said “isn’t that much different”.

Sure it does.

It just doesn’t differ by that much when it is driving headphone loads vs. high power headphone amplifiers. 29A vs 1A makes the difference sound immense, when in reality into a 50 ohm load it may not even be a 20% difference.

The precise delta depends, of course, on what the “29A peak current” was measure into. The AHB2 is supposed to be stable into all loads, and they quote numbers for 2 ohms whether they recommend it or not, so absent clarification from Benchmark I’m going to assume they do what most manufacturers do - and are quoting best-case. But even if it’s 4 ohms, the difference is closer to ~200% and not nearly the 2900% that a 1A to 29A comparison suggests - since that doesn’t take into account the load.

Regardless, even 900mW is 3x headroom vs. what the HE6SE V2 can draw at 120 db/SPL.

But, yes, power output is just part of the equation - HOW that power is delivered is of more concern once you’ve hit your power requirement and have some headroom.

I’m not arguing that the HE6SE V2, or the original HE6 or the Susvara (all headphones I’ve either owned, or had here for weeks/months at a time and run on some of the best amplification available - speaker and headphone), don’t sound better out of some speaker amplifiers.

Just that a) it’s not just because of power and b) it’s not a given and c) most people don’t properly translate what a speaker amplifiers power ratings mean when it comes to pairing them with much higher impedance loads than speakers typically present.

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Sounds like you’re agreeing with what I’m saying unless I’m understanding you incorrectly. Each spec provided by a manufacturer doesn’t provide a full picture. Not all speaker amplifiers are good but when you’re comparing TOTL headphone amplifiers that are $2-5k vs speaker amps that are $2-5k, for something like a HE6/se/sus, I’d recommend a hard look at the speaker amplifiers.

do you have an objectivish way of determining this?

I certainly had the experience with the he6se that more power wasn’t automatically better. And I am guessing I am having that experience again with my current amp experimentation.

I’d agree that speaker amplifiers should be a serious consideration for people making the HE6 variants or the Susvara a significant part of their listening.

I was really just pointing out the reality that high-power/high-current speaker amps don’t necessarily get you any more current into headphone loads than a suitably rated headphone amp, and that more current isn’t necessarily why speaker amps tend to be good pairings with those specific headphones.

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Could you expand on what you experience was and what your current amp experimentation is? I scrolled up to about 15 days ago and still wasn’t able to find it. Sorry if you’ve posted it somewhere else.

It’s worse than that, as the supermodel is actually Helen of Troy and the object of war. Some seek to posses her, others want to abduct her, some want to defend her honor, and some blame her for the conflict.

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It’s on the jot 2 thread.

But nutshell: So far, outside of power, there is very little difference in quality on my Dunu Zen and LSA HP-2 Ultra. Both stupidly easy to drive. I have been looking for something that gives me a jump in some sound quality (over qudelix 5k, which to me shouldn’t have been a hard task). And haven’t found it yet.

It’s similar to the he6se adventure I had, in that I went chasing amps for it, and really never had a wow moment (speaker amps included). Just marginal changes once power was met. That experience is why I just hunted for headphones that I like for a while (and found them).

The objective evaluation would be to see which amplifier had the lowest noise and distortion (all types) at at the power output you wanted, into the load you are using, for a given signal.

That doesn’t mean you’ll PREFER the better-measuring amplifier, or even be able to hear the difference, but it is the objective way to compare them.

All amplifiers have a performance curve, and different noise and power vs. distortion performance. Just because they have the same output power rating, does not mean they have the same noise or distortion performance for any given power output level or load at, or below, that rating.

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So, for my current headphones, I care about first mw delivery more than anything else given how easy they are to drive.

But that doesn’t help with other attributes of the amp.

Example: does anything on those graphs explain why, say, the idsd micro signature and jot 2, keep the bass tighter and more present when pushed hard? Or is that just the raw power?

I can take the hp-2 to a very loud volume for a few delicious minutes where the bass is still obscenely controlled but it drive dynamics I haven’t heard out of anything else. This is the one place the qudelix 5k doesn’t do as well. Is it just the raw power? Obviously, this is not safe listening levels, so it’s basically irrelevant for any regular listening.

Does that make sense?

Increasing output level pretty much always improves the perception of dynamics. Increased output level is a function of power. More available power tends to accompany later onset of distortion (at least for competent amplifiers).

So it could just what you’re hearing comes down to the difference between power vs. distortion at a given output level between the different amps. In other words, whichever can deliver more clean power, and still have clean headroom, sounds more dynamic.

It could also be a tonal difference; dynamics tend to seem emphasized with good transient response (a factor of slew rate in amplifiers) and slightly elevated sub-bass and treble response.

Whether these factors can be directly/wholly correlated to specific static measurements is up for debate.

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And I think what you just described fits nicely with my own experience of wanting “gobs of headroom” on an amp. The dx3 pro didn’t do it for me. the sp200 did from a power perspective for most headphones I had at the time.

The qudelix has “enough” but I can’t go bat crap crazy with it on most headphones.

Cool.

Does class-a help in any way? I have seen the obsession posts. And I have seen some seemingly scientific rebuttal of said posts.

Maybe this is for a different topic? Or is it helpful to he6se owners?

Maybe … but not just because it’s “class A”.

You can certainly build a Class AB, D or H amplifier that’ll outperform (objectively and subjectively) a class A amplifier of similar rating. The devil is in the details.

Class A tends to be simpler to be implement, which frequently equates to better audible results. It also completely avoids transconductance/crossover issues (among others) and allows operation of the circuit in its most linear region…

But being class A really tells you nothing specific about actual performance or quality. It’s merely a topology/operational designation. There are plenty of shitty class A amplifiers out there.

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