Review of the HiFiman HE-500

[h264]

As this is my first headphone review and I get a general feeling I might do a few more, I'd like to talk in general about what my goals would be in reviewing headphones in the first place. As I understand that the main reason for reading, or writing for that matter, such a review is that the intended audience would like advice pertaining to whether or not they should buy the item that is being reviewed. I do not intend to be an advertiser for brands that need an extra sale or two, and I'll never take a free item to review. I also don't intend to tell you whether or not to buy a product. You are not me, nor are you all alike, so making sweeping generalizations about what you should or shouldn't buy are like saying you will hear things the way I do, the way it was meant to be heard. I finally intend to pull no punches on things that I think are generally wrong with any product, in either design or construction.

A lot of attention has been paid to headphones recently, mostly in the fashion industry as the new accessory to wear around your neck. The "headnecklace", if you will. While the unibody design has done wonders for the residual sex appeal of the modern rapper, headphones have been designed entirely for a totally different purpose until this point in the audio industry: accurately reproducing audio signals for monitoring, mixing, or listening purposes. The biggest names in the audio industry have championed headphones designed for all sorts of specific subsets of these disciplines.

As much variety as there is in the industry, the one normal similarity between all these headphones is the way they produce sound waves. They contain a thin membrane wrapped with a very long and thin strand of copper into a coil around a central magnet, which reacts to the load that flows through the headphone from the amplifier. Very much like a middle school science project with a nail wrapped with a copper wire that, when connected to a battery, becomes a magnet which strength is a function of the current and the amount of winds of copper around it. However, this is not the only way to reproduce sound using a vibrating membrane.


Source: headfonics.com

The planar magnetic, isodynamic, magneoplanar, or orthodynamic driver as it is usually called when it's in a headphone (so many fun marketing terms), is one such alternative concept. Two large magnets in the shape of discs with small holes are placed around a membrane which is charged when a signal is sent to the driver through the amp. The signal interacts with the magnetic field, and air is forced out of the holes and produces the sound waves. There are many tradeoffs to this design, one being that the sound reproduction can be more accurately controlled, if designed properly. Since the driver has no moving metal parts, the frequency response can be very controlled on both the low and high end up well beyond the frequencies perceivable by the human ear. However, since you need two large metal plates, especially on a headphone, it significantly increases in weight, cost, and the power needed to drive the headphones to adequate volume. As you'll see in the review, the He-500 is mostly true to this theory.

However, from the reviews I have seen online and from the company's claims, the HiFiman He-500 and He-400 differs from the rest of HiFiman's planar magnetic line in one very stark way, they are meant to be driven by standard audio amplifiers.

So, can HiFiman deliver a headphone with a flat frequency response that gets loud enough even in my O2? There's only one way to find out


Construction and Comfort




The HiFiman HE-500 features a VERY open design with the sort of construction you'd expect from a $700 headphone with a very expensive driver. It's solid plastic with metal holders for the cups and a solid metal band for the top of your head. Cheap looking metal. There's no finish or gloss like other headphones. It looks like the pieces were simple cut and slapped together in the most inexpensive way possible. One of the rings that surround the mesh on the outside of the headphone cups flexes slightly and the other one doesn't. The general theme for this headphone is that it's a bargain expensive headphone, a very oxymoronic concept. The metal on my Beyerdynamic DT900pros is much thicker than any of the metal on this headphone, but it's not like it has to be, because this headphone does feel very sturdy, although I'm not going to drop test it or anything to find out just how sturdy. Plastic clips hold the band to the cups, and you can adjust it on your head by pushing up and down on the band and the cups. There's no click, but it seems to hold position. The cord is a giant pain since it's braided. If you've ever had a braided cord you've probably had enough frustration getting to go any direction other than the way it was originally wrapped in. No difference here, except you've got to get it straight each time you put it on. The terminating plug is obnoxiously and unnecessarily huge. It's a good thing the cable is removable via the micro-coax connectors on the headphone, although sometimes the stiff cable causes the connectors to loosen when you move around. I'll have to get one of the fancy aftermarket cables someday, not for the sound quality, but for flexibility alone.

This is actually the version 4 of this particular model. There have been some serious design improvements since the first model, mostly in the driver design and manufacture. The biggest difference is what they put the headphones in when they ship them to you. Returning in version 4 is the silly wooden box that a lot of particularly fancy headphones come in. As far as I can tell, these boxes are popular ways to display your fancy headphones to your fancy audiophile friends so they can drool over them. This would be great if the case was lined with red velvet and the headphone was gold plated. In this case it's cheap foam. The slot on the left can even hold the obnoxiously huge plug if you really wrap it up good, which is hard. I wish it came with the travel case instead, but I liked these headphones so much I ponied up the extra $30 and bought it too.




You get one pair of plether, and one pair of fabric ear pads that come with them. It comes with the plether pads attached, however, if you're like me you'd like to replace them with the fabric pads because the plether pads get sweaty. Replacing the pads is extremely easy, all you have to do is assemble a team of expert NASA scientists to develop a tool to remove the small, easily breakable clip from underneath the slot where the ear pad sits in, and then pull out without breaking any of them. Good luck with that. No wonder HiFiMan sells extra ear pads. Then reverse the process, again calling on your well paid NASA team to create a tool to get that last clip in the slot without breaking the ear pad. Twist off? Wrap around? Would it be so hard? There's a tad more bass with the plether pads, but no major differences.

Once you've got it in comfort is excellent, however. The headphone, even as heavy as it is, sits in place on your head. You can wear it for hours. It feels like the AKG K702 but without the bumps on the headband. The band on the top could use a bit more cushion, but the cushion on it is excellent memory gel.

Sound Quality




Well, now that I got my rant over about how $700 headphones with a $30 casing and $600 drivers feel cheap, let's talk about what you get from the expensive part of this headphone. I'll go ahead and use the sort of glittering generalities you've come to expect from headphone reviews. I of course do all my listening on my O2 from my last review, so perhaps not having a tube amp will make my opinion very cold.

The bass is perfect. I can even back that up with the frequency response graph above. It's very close to a "perfect" headphone signature. The bass is slightly elevated but extremely flat overall all the way to 1,000 hz. This is definitely my subjective opinion as well. The bass, while it doesn't jump out and rattle around, goes very deep, much deeper than headphones that claim deep bass or EXTRA bass. Generally, it's a bottomless pit of bass.

Treble on planar magnetics has a nagging flaw, mostly caused by our human ear. Frequencies over 20 Khz are easily produced by an electrostatic headphone, but the human ear can't hear them, unless they bleed back down into the audible frequencies as noise. Earlier models of HiFiman headphones may have had this issue, but I can confidently say this issue is very much fixed. Only in a few songs with very high frequencies do you pick up any of that tinny noise.

I think the middle range has usually been described by others as "lush", whatever that means. I usually describe things like scenery and carpet as lush, not audio. The middle range is quite pronounced though, and definitely overtakes the bass on most songs which would usually be very bass heavy on other headphones.

The sound is definitely "up front" or "unveiled", that old worn out Sennheiser adjective. Detail is astonishing, but it's still not as good as the AKG K702. Honestly, no other headphone save the Sennheiser HD 800 is probably as detailed as the AKG K702, mostly because it was designed specifically to be unforgiving. The sense of space is really bad, though, since these sit parallel to your ears, but the overall sound is as you would expect from a giant driver, very large and powerful, especially when you turn it up. Not a headphone well suited for Dolby headphone, but it was definitely never designed for that. My Kill/Death ratio is still pretty good even without it.

These headphones are COMPLETELY open. The audio people hear around you is literally the same volume as the audio you hear. I'm able to take them off my head, and crank them up all the way if I want someone near me to hear a YouTube video through the headphone. As for their difficultly to drive, with no gain and full volume on my computer my O2 volume knob is at about 10 o'clock and the music seems blaringly loud to me. Why? It's probably because even though the drivers are relatively inefficient, their impedance is only 38 Ohms. Some people on head-fi have been known to try to plug them into full stereo power amplifiers to see if they can get "more out of them". It's a good thing this headphone's driver is rated all the way up to a whopping 1.7W maximum load.

In conclusion, these are by far the best sounding headphones I've had the pleasure to own. I'm simply impressed. However, I'd like to note that it's only about 5% better than an AKG K702, even if the last 5% is amazing. This is definitely the style and balance of frequencies I'd been looking for in a headphone.

Conclusions




First of all, it goes without saying that I'll definitely give this headphone my seal of approval. It's definitely the cheapest way to the high end of audio reproduction, but look at all that is sacrificed in order to make a $700 headphone with full circular planar magnetic drivers: ear pads, plastic construction, and no finishing on metal parts. A really expensive driver is pretty pointless if the casing wears out and breaks. I'm not saying my headphones will break in a year, but you've all broken headsets and headphones that were billed as having superior audio quality.

At the end of the day maybe it's a testament to just how driven the audiophile community is to audio quality above all else. If you want a headphone that will serve you well, I think it's a good idea to consider everything else BESIDE sound quality first. Headphones have to sit on your head, so they should be comfortable to listen to, and a major part of that comfort is how they feel on your head. Headphones should be sturdy enough so that they don't break either when you run them over with your chair or bump them into things. I think these things matter. Audio quality matters too, but I don't think it should be at the cost of comfort and durability. Consumers who are looking for audio quality demand price and audio quality and forget that you definitely GET what you pay for.

[t0wer]

did you ever get an aftermarket cable?

 

I don't know how much they've changed the packaging over past few years, but mine came with an extra pair of coax connectors.

you could try making your own.

I just used some cheap speaker cable I had laying around, it's much more flexible and much less cable bump noise.(I read microphonics was the wrong term or I'd use that word)

[h264]

did you ever get an aftermarket cable?

 

I don't know how much they've changed the packaging over past few years, but mine came with an extra pair of coax connectors.

you could try making your own.

I just used some cheap speaker cable I had laying around, it's much more flexible and much less cable bump noise.(I read microphonics was the wrong term or I'd use that word)

 

I've just learned to deal with it.

 

electromagnetic induction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction by result of an electrostatic discharge would be the way I'd describe it.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphonics would be a vacuum tube issue resulting from vibrations.  Thus those old (and... sigh... new) sand-filled hi-fi stands with the pointy feet.

[t0wer]

its not a signal problem or induction problem that im talking about.

its the sound of the cable bumping into stuff that resonates(i think thats the term i want) through the cans.

the softer speaker cable i use, isnt nearly as obnoxious as the stock when it rubs on my desk or chair.

[MiracleMan]

Isn't the HE-500 a magnetostatic headphone? 

Pretty sure it is. Despite from that nice review. Really liked the sound of the HE500, sadly the build quality is not in that price range :( 

[h264]

Isn't the HE-500 a magnetostatic headphone? 

 

An othrodynamic driver, as I described above, IS an electrostatic driver made to fit into a headphone cup.  Electrostatic speakers use the same design but usually needed power amps and never really caught on in the mainstream market until recently rare earth metals made them a lot more efficient.

 

I'm not sure where you got "magnetostatic" from, there is no magnet inside the driver, it just uses the charge to move the center membrane.

 

its not a signal problem or induction problem that im talking about.

its the sound of the cable bumping into stuff that resonates(i think thats the term i want) through the cans.

the softer speaker cable i use, isnt nearly as obnoxious as the stock when it rubs on my desk or chair.

 

Oh, no, I never had that problem with the stock cable.  Only when I rubbed my feet on the carpet and messed with the cable did I sometimes get a pop or two.

[MiracleMan]

I'm not sure where you got "magnetostatic" from, there is no magnet inside the driver, it just uses the charge to move the center membrane.

Sorry for the late answer, totally forgot about this thread :D

There are 2 types of non dynamic drivers, the electrostat and the magnetostat. 

The magnetostat has a huge, thin plastic membrane with conductive coating and behind that, there is a permanent magnetic field. If you now run electricity threw the membrane in moves in the magnetic field. 

It is much easier to drive since you don't need to build up an electric field. Electrostatic headphones can only be used on special power amps. 

Hifiman imho produces only planar magnetic headphones, no electrostatic headphones. 

 

The driver you explained in the review can be found mostly in Stax headphones

[h264]

Sorry for the late answer, totally forgot about this thread :D

There are 2 types of non dynamic drivers, the electrostat and the magnetostat.

The magnetostat has a huge, thin plastic membrane with conductive coating and behind that, there is a permanent magnetic field. If you now run electricity threw the membrane in moves in the magnetic field.

It is much easier to drive since you don't need to build up an electric field. Electrostatic headphones can only be used on special power amps.

Hifiman imho produces only planar magnetic headphones, no electrostatic headphones.

The driver you explained in the review can be found mostly in Stax headphones

http://headfonics.com/2011/05/dynamic-vs-orthodynamic-vs-electrostatic-which-is-which/

Ah! Upon further investigation we are both wrong. The correct term for the hifiman transducer is "isodynamic", although you are correct it should have a permanent magnet in it. I'll update the review later.

[MiracleMan]

Magnetostatic, planar magnetic and isodynamic are basically the same thing. 

Every company uses another term

 

I belive Innerfidelity had an article about that, i'll see if i can find it.

 

//Edit

Here it is http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/how-planar-magnetic-headphones-work

[h264]

Magnetostatic, planar magnetic and isodynamic are basically the same thing. 

Every company uses another term

 

I belive Innerfidelity had an article about that, i'll see if i can find it.

 

//Edit

Here it is http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/how-planar-magnetic-headphones-work

 

I see.  Sounds like a million marketing terms are intertwined on this one.

 

EDIT: Alright, fixed!  Thanks for pointing that out.  If anyone actually cared about headphones over $300 I'd have to explain that in the audio FAQ as well.

[bchampion96]

.

 

I enjoyed reading your thorough review despite the fact that these headphones are miles out of my price range :P I still struggle to imagine how epic headphones like these sound compared to my AKG K550s or Grado SR60i. 

[MiracleMan]

Well, the sound improvments get drastically smaller the higher the price range is. 

Up to ~300 bucks the differences are huge, like, really huge. But if you upgrade your 300$ (i am talking about headphones with average price/performance ratio of course) with a 500$ headphone the improvement is much smaller. 

So sadly the 'WOW' effect that you had when you got your first decent pair of headphones will be much smaller. 

 

And at a certain point you don't hear any improvements at all, for me it was/is ~1000 bucks (for some it is more, for some less though) everything above or around that price range just sounds different, not better. 

For example, the LCD2 costs 1k€. The LCD3 is said to be around 5-10% better, guess what they cost. 2k€

[h264]

I enjoyed reading your thorough review despite the fact that these headphones are miles out of my price range :P I still struggle to imagine how epic headphones like these sound compared to my AKG K550s or Grado SR60i. 

 

About 2% better.  That's the real truth.  The AKG K702 and Sennheiser HD650 are a bit more detailed.  Not to mention much lighter.