Hifiman Sundara - 2020 revision

Duhh, I'm a fool.... I forgot to mention the sale price, which is $649.00. This particular headphone is notorious in the 'audiophile' community. Just like the OG HE6, it's a very inefficient set of cans. They're planar magnetics, the resistance is 50Ω which is not the issue really but rather the efficiency... is 83.5 dB/mW. They require massive amping, a bare minimum of 3.5W and as much as 12 or 13W depending on the source.

I fucking caved and went ahead and ordered the Hifiman HE6SE from Adorama. It's normally $1,799 however they've been running a massive discount on it for some time because they teamed up with Hifiman to get the HE6SE rereleased. It's listed on their site as the V4 so it has had several previous runs.

It’s uploading

Oluv'Sone

I agree comparison with Verum and HE4XX would be interesting

The comparison withe the Verum and the HE4XX would be very interesting

Beyond the treble issues, I think they also lack deep bass.

Thanks Oluv, interesting.

no, haven't heard them yet, but I think they are just like most others simply too busy above 2-3khz. up to 2khz many headphones are pretty good, even very cheap ones, it starts up from there where the differences become huge and even some very expensive headphones can sound so off in timbre that I couldn't stand them. I think it's just a question of how little I am willing to stand.... I have not heard a headphone yet which would really sound somehow "flawless". And I guess the only way to really achieve this would be to equalize it exactly to your own ears. everything else won't work and it will never sound "right".

Oluv'Sone

Great video, thanks Oluv. Look forward to the listening session. I’m only just getting into headphones, but I’m surprised how few headphones seem reasonably neutral without overly elevated/flawed treble (unless you eq). From some research the audio technica ath-R70x seem like they might do this though. Can I ask if you’ve heard them? Thanks.

You know what's interesting, until I met your channel, I thought there is something mystically wrong going on in my life - things were (and are) just breaking constantly, all the time. Now I think, that most reviewers are probably just escaping such a fate, receiving pre-tested units and, secondly, changing the units before they will achieve the point of failure!

Ha! really nice comparison, the 2020 edition is way better to my ears!