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I had a long and very interesting conversation with Dr. Fang Bian, CEO and Founder of HiFiMAN, earlier this year in which I learned Bian had two strong tracks in his life: audio and inorganic chemistry, specifically nano-technology. It seems to me, the HE1000 is the first time where Fang has been able to express these two disparate disciplines in a single product.

The HiFiMAN HE1000 ($2999) has a "nanometer thickness" diaphragm. I've asked Dr. Bian how thick that is exactly...but unfortunately that's a trade secret at the…

Sound Quality
So seductive. I don't remember when I've had a headphone that sucked me into the music this much. And not just one type of music...almost any and every track I punch play on stops me in my tracks. The exception would be loud complex music like metal mass orchestral crescendos where the HE1000 seems to become a bit too confused in the mids and treble.

The best word I've found to describe the overall sonic impression of the HE1000 is "soft." At first, after hearing them for a bit, I thought this soft nature would end up reducing dynamic impact. It does, a bit, but…

Raw frequency response plots show a headphone with very little change due to positional differences. Bass response is remarkably flat and well extended. Mid-range response from 200Hz to 1kHz is nominally quite flat, but significant features reside here. Not sure of exactly what to make of it, but will note that these feature coincide with spikes in the THD+noise plots. My WAG (wild-assed guess) is that they represent some diaphragm modal resonances, possibly due to the very thin diaphragm. The treble hump…

This is not a review of the headphone, but rather just a good opportunity to learn about a bit of headphone acoustics—and let my curiosity run amok. I wanted to see what the measurements of the Torque t402v looked like. With two pads having four filter settings each it took me all day to acquire the data and make the comparison worksheet. It didn't quite turn out as I expected.

The Fostex T50RP Mk3 ($159) is the latest iteration of this famed planar magnetic family of headphones that reaches back to 1978 with the introduction of the original, but fairly different, Fostex T50. The more similar T50RP however, first introduced in 2002, bears a strong family resemblance.

These headphones have long been a staple at recording studios due to their clear rendering of the mid-range, and bullet-proof construction. But they've also found a home with headphone enthusiasts as they respond very well to…

The room was crazy loud at CES last year, but even through the cacophony the new dual-driver (dynamic/electret) Enigmacoustics Dharma D1000 ($1190) had something special.

I've heard a fair few dual-driver headphones, and basically they all sucked. Well, maybe that's a little harsh...but just a little. The AKG K340 was a similar headphone, but to my ears not nearly as good sounding as the Dharma. It's hard enough to get one driver to sound good in a pair of headphones, getting two drivers to seamlessly mesh is task fraught…

Sound Quality
Like the build quality, the sound quality of the Dharma is a bit of a mixed bag that in the end is a bit better then the sum of its parts. The thing that struck my ears when I first listened to the Dharma D1000 is its fairly good tonal balance. I would say it gets closest to neutral of all the cans heard at BigSound 2015. Relatively, the Ether and HD 800 are a bit brighter; the HE1000 is a bit laid back in the upper-mid-range; the LCD3 is a bit muffled in the lower treble; the Abyss mid-range is too withdrawn; and the PMx2 is a bit too polite lacking extension on either…

Raw frequency response plots show the Dharma does fairly well matching the Harman response curve. It does fall short in not having a straight-line bass response below 100Hz, but this is quite common for an open dynamic driver headphone. The wide dip in the mid-range centered at 400Hz would be better if centered at 200Hz.

The climb from 400Hz to 3kHz has a fairly good profile, but should begin to fall off afterward rather than rising to a peak at 5-6kHz. It does seem to me that this peak may shift…

I know it's anathema to audio purists, but wireless headphones—in principle—are terrific. No, I'm not going to give up on wires for my reference level listening; heck, I don't even give it up when i'm traveling (Bose QC20,25) or mowing the back yard (Westone ES5, JH Audio JH13FP). But when I'm around the house needing to take part in a conference call or when I watch a movie on my iPad I much prefer life without the wire. When sound quality isn't critical for me (phone calls and video) the added convenience of wireless headphones…

The above plot shows the Crossfade Wireless raw frequency respons plots compared to the raw response plots of the Crossfade LP, LP2, and M-100. Using the dip between 400-500Hz as our baseline reference point, we can see that the LP2 has the largest differences with the deepest dip around 6kHz and characteristically different dip at 2kHz. Disregarding the LP2, the remaining curves are fairly similar, with the Crossfade Wireless having the most elevated response in both bass and treble (it's the most "V" shaped); the M-100 has the next highest bass response (though better extended), and is…