[tylerindianapolis]

This problem sounds like mine that I had with the He1KV2. I returned the headphone. Trebles were to bright, everything too artificial, too exhausting. Listening for 3 hours was nit enjoyable at all.
Sometimes less is more.

When I had the lcd-x I would one hundred percent agree with you. With the ayra I like them. Many like classical music, piano, strings and not always the rock to pop and very few like the latest garbage of sick rap.

With the classical and such these headphones shine to me.

The source makes a difference too. When I use the wiim coax out to the 499 it doesn’t sound good.

I am thinking g about getting a eversolo a8 or fiio r9 down the road. Leaning towards the eversolo because it can rip cd’s very easily. Not sure if the fiio can.

 

[chris0815]

I have a LCD2 closed back and I like it too. It has perfect isolation and I can use it when the R10P can not stand the lovely noise of playing kids in my living room
I like Bach: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2 - Partita No. 1 from Hilary Hahn. It sounds fantastic!
When you close your eyes and you can literally see her fingers and the bow. All good, headphones are great.

 

[flusch]

Does it work with Roon ? Is it Roon Ready ?

 

[chris0815]

I don't have roon

 

[EitanDainn]

I don't have roon

what about foobar? does it find it on the internet? (thru upnp)

 

[chaotic_angel]

How to do streaming? @TeamHiFiMAN

 

[gooberbm]

Where the reviews at?!? Daddy needs to buy a new amp and I wanna be talked into the EF500!

 

[llysender]

Where the reviews at?!? Daddy needs to buy a new amp and I wanna be talked into the EF500!

Its a very speaker esque presentation with a slighly warm tuning and importantly its highly detailed but without the boosted trebble of the EF400. Works best with Planars but can drive 600ohm dynamics with ease as well and it gives this 3.1 home thetre effect where you can feel it in your chest.

Ok I donno how to write fluff peaces. But it has a 2D stage like presenetation where everything is pushed to the forefront in your face. Because of that it makes it inherently very fun even though its tuned to be pretty flat. I really enjoy my quad ERA-1 planar on it. As such it works best with music as generally they dont need precise spacial infomation. And likewise its quite bad for gaming.

Sound wise I would say its a touch warm but otherwise very clean and neutral sounding. Sounds nothing like the holo memes May with its fuzzyness or extra thick sound but with good special infomation bifrost 2. If anything its closer to holo cyan 2 but at a fraction of the price and with a matching class A sounding amp attached. Depending on tastes I know of a friend that says it needs tubes otherwise its unlistenable. So if you prefer a more mellow sound you need to spend extra on a additional amp.

Oh yeah one minor thing. even on low gain its potenially still too powerful for iems so you might have to adjust software volume as well but even sensitive headphones on low gain its fine.

Overall I really like it but its abit hard to rec over normal DS DAC/AMPs as its a niche of a 2D high saperation and resolution with very good dynamics but very neutral sounding so it much be too dark or too bright depending on wether you are comming form SMSL/Fiio or IFI/topping respectively.

 

[gooberbm]

Its a very speaker esque presentation with a slighly warm tuning and importantly its highly detailed but without the boosted trebble of the EF400. Works best with Planars but can drive 600ohm dynamics with ease as well and it gives this 3.1 home thetre effect where you can feel it in your chest.

Ok I donno how to write fluff peaces. But it has a 2D stage like presenetation where everything is pushed to the forefront in your face. Because of that it makes it inherently very fun even though its tuned to be pretty flat. I really enjoy my quad ERA-1 planar on it. As such it works best with music as generally they dont need precise spacial infomation. And likewise its quite bad for gaming.

Sound wise I would say its a touch warm but otherwise very clean and neutral sounding. Sounds nothing like the holo memes May with its fuzzyness or extra thick sound but with good special infomation bifrost 2. If anything its closer to holo cyan 2 but at a fraction of the price and with a matching class A sounding amp attached. Depending on tastes I know of a friend that says it needs tubes otherwise its unlistenable. So if you prefer a more mellow sound you need to spend extra on a additional amp.

Oh yeah one minor thing. even on low gain its potenially still too powerful for iems so you might have to adjust software volume as well but even sensitive headphones on low gain its fine.

Overall I really like it but its abit hard to rec over normal DS DAC/AMPs as its a niche of a 2D high saperation and resolution with very good dynamics but very neutral sounding so it much be too dark or too bright depending on wether you are comming form SMSL/Fiio or IFI/topping respectively.

Thank you for your thoughts and impressions. You did a great job!

 

[bomxtr]

The ordered ef499 has arrived.The sound is normal, but there is some dullness in the sound, in the absence of the expected smoothness from this DAC.The volume is not bad, it doesn't sound clamped.I managed to sort it out.There is only one DAC inside, so there is no balanced inclusion here.There are five operational amplifiers around the chip.They are erased, as is the dac itself.

The sound through the streamer and roon is a hundred times better than usb connection.Clean and tidy without any hint of dirt and imperfections.Questions to the DAC are removed.Extremely decent sound with this connection.

 

[taliyev]

Hmm. I wonder if USB port implementations are identical between EF400, EF499 and EF500 (and possibly EF600). Also, it appears that removing identification writings from various chips inside of HIFIMAN amps/dacs is a "standard practice". This type of manufacturing feels very shady, like HIFIMAN is using stolen or illegally obtained parts.... Not a good sign. This also means that they can alter internal electronics without any declaration of changes, which will result in different units with the same model number/name performing differently.

 

[bomxtr]

I do not know how usb is implemented, but the transport is an allwinner tech H3, nanya memory and a memory controller next to it made on a single board.It may also be responsible for usb, but the distortion spectrum is much better when connected via transport in the rmaa program.The sound of transport is much cleaner, more voluminous and more accurate.In fact, it is completely different.usb listening is just physically hard.Photo of the board and the amplifier board.The Himalaya amplifier board is apparently standardized for other dacs of the company.

 

[skfalco]

My unit was set to 220V, I corrected this and everything works great, High and Low gain are almost identical, some cracks and pops even through XLR using type C , and XLRs are line level only e, but working good now

 

[bomxtr]

This is normal, this is the quality of the company. Nails, hair on the membrane from those same isodynamic drivers, this is generally the standard) Why do you think I disassembled my DAC at all? He had something dangling inside when I took him out of the bag. Actually, I thought it was a wire or a capacitor. It turned out to be a piece of cable tie. It worked. There is nothing more convenient for streaming than mediamonkey. Connect the patch cable to the working router and DAC. Launch the program and go to settings. Selects point streaming and selects hifiman ef499 All.You can listen in batches and whatever you want. I listen to the complete labels in their entirety.

 

[skfalco]

This is normal, this is the quality of the company. Nails, hair on the membrane from those same isodynamic drivers, this is generally the standard) Why do you think I disassembled my DAC at all? He had something dangling inside when I took him out of the bag. Actually, I thought it was a wire or a capacitor. It turned out to be a piece of cable tie. It worked. There is nothing more convenient for streaming than mediamonkey. Connect the patch cable to the working router and DAC. Launch the program and go to settings. Selects point streaming and selects hifiman ef499 All.You can listen in batches and whatever you want. I listen to the complete labels in their entirety.

Thanks for your help and yes you are right, this is Hifiman's "quality", sadly I tried the Media Monkey app to connect, but it will never find the ef499 on my network, I tried with two cables and made no change