[kingdeezie]

That's one big reason why I haven't purchased anything from HifiMan. The poor build quality is a common theme among their line, especially with the rollout of the HE-400 when it first came out. Have just seen too many horror stories in the forums from their customers. To their credit, they seem to handle returns well, but not a headache I want to deal with if I can avoid it.

This is all anecdotal, but I purchased a pair of Hifiman HE-400s, because I wanted a decent everyday carry around pair of headphones to use off a phone. I bought them two years ago, and have kicked them around, and other then the cables splitting at the headphone end (the cables still work), they work great.

I am thinking of adding headphone capability to my main home rig, and would probably consider Hifiman again. Like to see how these turn out. 

[gnuyork]

I'm not a headphone buff, so I have not tried much else than my own SONYs, but I had a chance to try these at CES on Thursday.  They did seem big for my ears, but the sound was fantastic.

[eclein]

I had a pair of HE5-LE's, they sounded great but had a bunch of build issues. The fact that they sounded so nice just negated the build issues for me.
 

[ajzepp]

This is all anecdotal, but I purchased a pair of Hifiman HE-400s, because I wanted a decent everyday carry around pair of headphones to use off a phone. I bought them two years ago, and have kicked them around, and other then the cables splitting at the headphone end (the cables still work), they work great.

I am thinking of adding headphone capability to my main home rig, and would probably consider Hifiman again. Like to see how these turn out.

I've never owned those or the 500s, I'm just basing my comments on the activity I've followed over at head-fi. There was an entire epidemic of issues with the 400s in the beginning...pages and pages of people complaining, Fang Bian (owner of HifiMan) threatening to "ban" people as customers, etc...it was a mess. Haven't seen as many complaints about the 500s, but the HE-6s seem to have issues, as well. Every company has a certain failure rate, of course, but it was enough that it scared me away at the time.

[ltr317]

Hi all,

Last weekend I attended a demo sponsored by Dr Fang of the new HE-1000 headphones and EF-1000 hybrid amp at the Trump SOHO hotel.  I posted specifics and general sound impressions of both on Head-Fi, but will address some issues you raised here. 

First, "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder."  Having said so, for my aesthetic taste I have seen better looking cans, but want to stress they are better looking in person than the available photos.  Second, what you see and what I heard are prototypes.  I spoke to Fang and he stated both the cans and amp are at least two iterations from production.  He hinted they probably won't be in production for at least several months and maybe longer.  Changes in refinement of sound, construction and material, build quality are all on the table.  Part of the reason for the demo was to get feedback from the attendees.  The build quality of the prototype is very good though a little flimsy in my opinion.  I'm sure Dr Fang took that criticism to heart. 

Pricing has not been determined but it is the top-of-the-line model, and will compete with other TOTL models of other companies.  Fang has not decided yet whether to sell the HE-1000 separately, or, only as a combination with EF-1000 amp.  The EF-1000 is an interesting hybrid (tube input, ss output) design, which will deliver between 8-15 watts depending on the impedance of the headphone when used as a headphone amp, and 50 -150 watts per channel when used as a speaker amp because of its A and A/B design.

Cheers,
Paul Mah