The only trade off I’ve ever found with the SE is their brightness—if that’s really a trade off. The brightness is part of their incredible detail retrieval and I think you got one hell of a deal. If you live with it for awhile and sense any fatigue I’m sure Hifiman would take them back for the...

Eh, yeboyi just got a stupendous deal and a fabulous headphone—let’s let him enjoy it! I own both the HEKse and the HEK Stealth and auditioned the V2 for over a month—their primary differences are in tuning, not so much timbre in my opinion (and sensitivity—the former two are much easier to...

If the brightness of the HEKV2 troubled you, you should probably forgo the HEKse or the HEK Stealth. I’d consider waiting for their next flagship or find a set of Meze Elites on sale—the latter is very smooth and light on the treble and the hybrid pads have a very robust, smooth bass response. I...

Yes it’s a fabulous headphone—did they charge you for the HEKse or for the Stealth? If you only paid $1,399 you got a great deal!

Thanks for the feedback, I’m with ya in that I apply ASP bass boost that my amp has built in to every sets of cans I have—and when I tried to with my Susvaras, despite having 14+ watts balanced power to work with, I couldn’t listen at reasonable levels without clipping or bottoming out the...

I haven’t delved into ZMF, but I’ve sure had enough of my Utopia, that used to offer me a lot of unearned pride based solely on how much I paid for it, to be brutally honest. And with the HEK Stealth there’s this funny thing happening where I actually feel excited to have discovered a headphone...

This is a better explanation!

You can tell by looking through the grilles—in the Stealth magnet versions the magnet is not as visible through the mesh.

:gs1000smile:

All I feel I can say for sure, after keeping an obsessive eye on this brand and negotiating trade-in prices with them recently, is that these current prices, including the markdowns of prior versions (the HEKse, Arya Stealth. Ananda Stealth and HEKV2) are not temporary sale prices—only the...

I can’t say for certain but I do wonder about the fates of the Ananda and Arya Stealths in the coming year—if they are aiming for a streamlined lineup I could see them moving those versions to legacy status and replacing their Ananda Nano and Arya Organic price points to align with the current...

Awesome, looking forward to hearing your take on this!

Thanks, I’ll keep my hopes up that you find the right balance to make you happy. No intended condescension to your level of expertise in my last paragraph by the way; it took me awhile to catch on to the perils of volume matching and it’s just one my little notes of caution I pass along now and...

Interesting! Maybe it’s my 54 year old ears, but I found the opposite—so much so that I was tempted to ask you if you meant the Ananda Nano or the Ananda Stealth, because I do find the latter to be excessively bright and bass-light. Awhile back I weighed whether to keep the HEKV2 vs the HEKse...

Hey look it’s on sale as open box on the Hifiman storefront for $399! Full warranty, and from all I’ve heard folks have had great experiences with their B stock sale items. Plus they have a 30 day no-questions-asked return policy. Just sayin’ :wink...