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...

You won’t regret it.

As others may have already said, the HE1000se is already a Stealth; it was the second headphone they introduced with that magnet after the Susvaras. Since then they’ve retrofitted their entire oval pad line with it, leading some to hang on for dear life to their prior, now legacy iterations of...

After this lengthy and enjoyable discussion, I should add that it’s great fun to discover this forum, with so many fellow Hifiman fans. Everyone has so many interesting stories and invaluable insights to share. With the intent of encouraging others to share their own journeys to Hifiman and...

I bought the Ananda Nano a few weeks ago because I had found its previous iterations significantly lacking in bass for the rock genres I prefer. Rtings.com has great details on measurements and FRCs for the limited number of Hifiman cans they’ve reviewed, and the prior Ananda versions were...

I too would recommend the Edition XS as this “baby” version of the original HEKV2 you’re looking for. The Arya Organic is probably close to this description as well. The V2 is lacking the Stealth magnet, and that addition really opens up the highs (hence the HEKse being criticized for being “too...

Ba dum chik…

I agree and isn’t it so weird how little they marketed it? I couldn’t even figure out what it was called for a couple of months!

I’d take another look at HFM’s QC issues—I think they’ve really stepped this up in the past year, at least at these price points.

Definitely the Stealth. If you like the V2 I think the HEKse might be too bright for you. The Stealth will certainly dazzle you technically. Alternatively you could wait to see what HFM has coming with their flagship refresh, but I know of no headphone on the market currently that offers what...

Yes, Hifiman has proven (as many Chinese brands often do—think Topping, SMSL, Matrix Audio etc) that one of the fundamental principles of technological innovation is that with the passage of time and the optimization of resources, electronic products actually become much less costly to produce...