HIFIMANHE400SE Stealth Magnets Version Over-Ear Open-Back Full-Size Planar Magnetic Wired Headphones for Audiophiles/Studio, Great-Sounding, Stereo, High Sensitivity, Comfortable, Sliver

These really do offer a wonderfully clear and detailed sound at a low price. They are very well made too. They do take a bit of power to get to a decent sound level. A bit heavy but comfortable.

I'll keep this short. The frequency measurements are very good. The imaging and depth are fantastic. The soundstage is wide and spacious. The clarity and detail retrieval are as good as hp's costing quadruple the price. They need a bit of power for them to shine - atleast 1 watt. There's loads cheap hp amps out now that will cater for these.Extremely comfortable and light.Ive owned 5 different Hifiman hp's and these are my 2nd favourites after the Ananda's. But these actually measure better in regards to FR and balance.No brainer.

I've only had a couple hours with it, no burn in. At the moment, I'll say it's good, maybe I expected more. In the UK we pay £150, I know on the Hifiman website it's under $100 right now (or was).Positives - they are clear and more musical than I expected. Mids and treble are lovely. Good speed, notes have good weight and are quite organic and life like. Mid bass is good and can make up for the lack of sub bass. Very nice stereo effect.Negatives - sub bass as I said is weak. It may be quick and had decent enough speed, but that total lack of depth makes that redundant. Soundstage for an open back is sadly lacking depth. Width is okay, maybe just outside the head. If it wasn't for the great stereo imaging and weight of the sound, I'd be disappointed.Comparison - they remind me of the akg k701, but more controlled up top, more fun, but they lack the depth and openness of the k701. They're less fatiguing. The k701 sound a lot thinner. Sub bass is similar in both. I prefer the he400se.If you like the Hifiman house sound and wanted more microdetail and much better bass and don't mind earphones, the re800 silver is like the 400se but better... And the same price.Their re800s is one of my favourite IEMs which improves massively after burn in, ESPECIALLY bass which at first sounded as weak as the he400se, my main gripe, tho I knew from reviews it wasn't going to be massive. In Queen's We Are The Champions those opening bass notes are very weak, no body or depth.The he400se are detailed, but not overly so, that's where I expected better, maybe the fact the soundstage is pretty average, more like a closed back. The re800s IEMs are more detailed (tho IEM comparison not helpful).Compared to the original he400S, they're more immediate and less soft sounding. Similar bass. The new one has more body and better treble.They're more comfy than I expected and they come with a black cable and not that white one.

The Left Channel refuses to work.I know it's not the cable's fault as I swapped the Left/Right cable around on the working Right Channel played around with the Left/Right Volume control.Terribly disappointed.Though I must I add, the right channel sounds absolutely amazing.

Poor quality headphones, bad sound, cheap build.

Sound quality is great, but there did not seem to be any manual or spec sheet in the box. Should there be? I want to get a balanced cable for it and do not know if the dual inputs are 2.5mm or 3.5mm.

At first I wasn't impressed with these headphones, I didn't find them to be much different to my Philips Fidelio X2HR's, similar soundstage and sound. These do seem to place instruments slightly more precisely. Considering I only paid £99 for the Philips from Amazon they would win just on value. At the time of writing this review the Philips have gone up in price but still nearly £50 cheaper.Then I changed to a 2.5mm balanced cable and what a difference, it was if they had been opened up and a veil lifted. I am mainly using a phone as my source with a HIDIZS S9 PRO DAC and a EarStudio ES100 MK2 Bluetooth DAC. I've never really noticed too much difference in sound quality changing to a balanced cable before but these Hifiman headphones are an exception. Playing wired by the S9 and by LDAC via the Earstudio both saw a big improvement in sound quality using the balanced cable.I did test them with a Graham Slee Solo headphone amp playing SACD's from my Marantz SACD player too. These tests were done with the supplied cable and were no better than the Philips.

Very good value for money. Good sound, if connected to a good source that can adequately drive them. Hence, if used with a run-of-the-mill source .. needs going through a (preferably decent) DAC/AMP.