Hifiman HE6Se V2

Official Headphone Model Discussion
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Thanks again for the advice Marcello @MRHifiReviews. I’m actually going to Costa Rica for a (safe/masked/isolated) vacation on Saturday, so I’ll have to save my extensive burning in and listening for when I get back. I’m an Adorama VIP360 member, so I have 60 days to test it.

@antdroid, nice and very timely review. I’m glad that you liked it with a Jot 2, because that gives me a level of comfort that I have at least 1 amp with sufficient power. My Burson Soloist 3XP is also a candidate, with 4W at 32 ohms (they don’t list anything for 50 ohms).

LOL, that’s a great idea. I do have both a class A and tube amp that I can warm myself up with for the next few days, and then I think 3 weeks in the tropical rain forests of Costa Rica will do the trick. :sunny:

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Yea I’ve been thinking about doing that, but for one money is a factor right now. I was supposed to start work again in March, I doubt that’s going to go as planned.

Many people just recommend changing out the grill. It changes the upper frequencies to more pleasant, but it doesn’t bother me at all. I mean I believe fatigue would set in after an hour or so. I’m getting work shifts of listening sometimes.

It’s kind of hard being on a budget and being picky. Just really wanted a pair of planars. I didn’t want to pay for the Arya or LCD-2 and amp. I figured it would be nearly the same price. Cause I didn’t have an amp either.

It will definitely hold me over until I go back to work whenever that may be

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He6se first impressions and experience vs others

I bought the he6se at one of the $700 sales. I ended up returning it because the right cup died within the return window (on christmas eve). But I thought I would share my experience with it. I also think some of what was said above is very important for buyers to understand. I am writing this entirely from memory, but I talk about things in terms of what they evoke from me, not comparative sound differences. So I expect it to be fairly accurate.

I bought it because I was auditioning the arya and sundara as well as a number of others. I did not choose to keep the arya because I felt it was overpriced for what you get. Arya’s strengths do not mesh well with my sound desires. I liked it a lot, and it’s certainly the most gorgeous headphone I have heard, but it didn’t bring increased enjoyment over the sundara. The he6se v2 was an attempt to better that.

Did it? A bit. I want to focus on the bass as that is where I struggle with all hifiman. To that point in my journey, I had only heard planars + the ath-r70x (at the time, I found it to be disappointing). To put in context, I hadn’t heard bass I really genuinely enjoyed. So the he6se felt like an improvement.

I went down the road of buying a 100w speaker amp for it as well as the topping 90 stack. This is where the he6se started to feel like a headphone I really wanted to have. This is also where the right cup died. So, the changes I describe between a few of the headphones I had below are based on very little head time when it was at its best.

Vs Arya: The he6se had a meatier sound that was more engaging to me. The arya had canyons between notes and a gorgeous airyness that is unrivaled. For me, the he6se meaty sound was much more engaging. Bass was a bit more impactful which I enjoyed. Counter to antdroids massive attack - angel, I felt it was still quite lacking there.

Vs Sundara: The sundara is a touch more balanced to me even than the arya. But, to me, vs the he6se, the same description can apply, simply less extreme. The balance of the sundara, if you aren’t going to bring the bass, is in some ways more appealing than he6se or arya. But everything else on it is a firm step down.

Vs Quad Era-1: The quad became a mess for me. It was actually the second headphone I received after the sundara, and it’s warm engaging sound was initially pleasing. But it quickly felt overwhelming in bass and warmth taking over all songs. It did have decent bass response but the cost was too high in other areas. So the he6se kept that tonal balance I enjoyed, some of the engaging warmth and a cleaner sound.

Vs LCD-X: This headphone just sounded wrong to me. I don’t know if it’s lack of pinna gain or whatever was the issue, but I couldn’t get on board. Anytime I put anything else on after listening to this, it felt like a breath of fresh air. Even the quad. The he6se had much of the slam and good qualities of the LCD-X but with, you know, appealing sound. ( If someone gave me the LCD-X for free, I would probably sell it and buy something good )

The he6se did better and better as I added more power. It died while connected to the a90, but I had heard it for about 20-30 minutes on the speaker amp before then. It was definitely preferable to the others. But, I am glad it died, because of what happened next.

In the end, I returned every product mentioned above and stopped my journey for a couple weeks while I figured out what to do. I landed on the blessing 2 dusk, and put a review on here which explains some of this. And I think it’s massively more enjoyable and practical than everything above. That would not have happened if the he6se had not died.

Is the he6se a great hifiman? Yes. Is it better than other things? no to me. It’s amazing how your journey can flip as you hear new things.

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I picked up a pair of these a few months ago and am enjoying them so far. I replaced the stock cable with a custom cable of my own making. I’d reallylike to replace the headband, too. Does anyone know if the Mr. Speakers (Dan Clark Audio) headbands from the older Ether series would fit these cups? They look like they might have a similar cup diameter.

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Added a Parasound Z-Amp to try out with the HE6SE and currently using the Schiit Jot 2 as the pre-amp. I set the power amp gain level to 50%, and jot 2 at low gain at 50% volume and it sounds pretty nice.

First impressions: More low end body and power. It is better resolving than the cheaper $45 TPA3116D2 amp I tried out, but it’s not necessarily a night and day difference. They both share similar low end and more forward sound compared to the Jot 2 and A90. I think the Jot 2 is brighter and more airy sounding, while the ZAMP has more fullness and more engaging and reduces the Jot 2 brightness.

Getting a passive preamp to try out with this this weekend. Some cheapie thing on Amazon.

The ZAMP is 60W in 4 Ohm/45W in 8Ohm… just doing simple Ohm’s Law, its roughly 7.2W at 50 Ohm, but that does depend on how it’s biased, I believe. This is well more than enough power either way.

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Did you try to EQ any of these headphones? You should be able to get a headphone with the slam you are looking for and EQ the rest to fit your preference curve. I’m currently listening to HD800S (Dekoni pads + EQ) and am quite pleased with the low end…

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Have you measured the difference with your rig? My experiment measuring (granted with EARS) the A90 vs Liquid Platinum showed nearly identical FR but a slightly different distortion profile.

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Yea they measure the same in terms of FR haha. Placebo?!
There’s slight differences in phase though, which could explain the minor differences, though I don’t know how to interpret that.

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Yes, all of them. So far, the only thing I have learned about EQ, is that I very much don’t like it. Even things like oratory’s profiles made most headphones sound really awkward to me. And many of them couldn’t really deal with much bass elevation without distortion.

Now, the he6se was a slight exception to that. I actually liked what happened when I used the profile or even EQ’ed a bit myself. However to get the sound profile I want, to EQ correctly, basically you reduce levels everywhere and then increase the required parts frequencies. On the HE6se, I got to something I liked (basically a bass boosted oratory profile), but I needed even more power to make it work. Hence trying the speaker amp and a90/d90, and then the HE6se died. So, that adventure ended really fast. (right cup died while playing on the a90 at moderate volume, with no EQ present, just so we are clear. as far as I know, they just broke)

On most headphones, when I used the oratory (or similar) profiles, it felt like fake sound to me. I can’t describe it. And finally, my use case was mobile from an iPhone, and needing to EQ just became nightmarish, so I gave up.

I will not claim I did a good job on EQ. In fact, I found out later that at least some of the EQing may have been using 10 band profiles instead of parametric. And the ones that sounded better were almost certainly parametric. Either way, EQ wasn’t practical for me. So letting it go was fine.

That’s my 2 cents. I’ll try EQ again if I ever go back to over ears. But for now, it’s unnecessary.

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Thanks man! Yeah, where there are differences in the FR they look like it’s probably within the margin of error of your mics / ADC. I’m scratching my head trying to make heads or tails of people’s subjective reviews of amps (latest rabbit hole was researching various OPAMPs slew rates, dead end that).

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Fair enough. On the HE6se front, it’d take a special sort of corporate asshole to blame you for blowing up the drivers on headphones that they sell a speaker amp adapter for…

One thing I’ve noticed about EQ is it always sounds wrong to me, at first. I need a break between EQ changes (otherwise everything sounds like a mess of digital distortion). Maybe I need brain burn in? I ended up getting EARS so I can get an EQ mostly dialed in before listening to it.

Glad you found a transducer that you like though!!

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most of oratory’s presets are defaulted to Harman’s preference target which in my personal opinion isn’t the best. I think he has started putting out other target profiles which are a little better.

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did an earthquake hit when measuring the high treble?

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haha no, thats just the raw response… it’s not smoothed out like what you typically see

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I had been considering a planar upgrade to compliment my Focal Clears and Stax LS300 for a while now. When my Sundaras took a dive on me right before the Holidays I had my excuse. Then after a New Years Flight for Life trip to Denver and two emergency surgeries to save my life I had both the perspective and motivation I had lacked.

A quick digression… When I got home from hospital for recuperation I obviously had not listened to any music for a couple weeks. It was a few days before I even felt like putting a set of phones on my head. When I finally did and clicked that play arrow in Roon, I found myself crying!?! It had nothing to do with the gear or the specific songs. It was just THE MUSIC. The food for the soul!! The opiate for my mass.

So, back to the subject at hand, I pulled the trigger and have been getting to know the HE6se V2 for the past few weeks. I thought a couple of my amps had enough power to drive them properly. Did not enjoy them at all out of the 4W ifi iCan Micro SE - to my ears they sounded quite harsh and very in-your-face forward. Ran them out of the 6W SMSL SP200 - I enjoyed them, they sounded good but they weren’t “special.” I have now picked up a Flux FA-10 with it’s 16W and I am listening to what I would call special, very special. Great synergy with these two.

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Glad to hear you’re on the mend and listening to music again! Get well!

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I hope you feel better soon. Keep listening to the music and take it easy. Best wishes.

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I don’t think that’s it for me. I think the harman curve probably works well based on the headphones I like. But, the same fake plastic feeling happens when I touch anything in EQ myself.

@aldarrin yeah, i think EQ offline, or apply the preset before listening may make a difference. I didn’t spend more time on it because my use case (all mobile) basically rules it out.

Next time I play with it, I will experiment in a more complete manner.

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If you use Android, checkout Wavelet. You can load AutoEQ settings (Google it) or whatever EQ preset you want. I haven’t used an iPhone in over a decade, so no idea what the options are there.