Hi there, total noob here very new to the "hobby". I recently upgraded my home theater with an awesome new setup and got into the whole audio/audiophile space researching my purchasing decisions. The research sparked a lot of thinking about music and audio quality in general and besides a switch from Spotify to tidal it also sparked my interest in trying quality headphones.
For now I got a pair of Hifiman He400i that were available 2nd hand near me, to try out the planar magnetic hype.
I plugged them into my MacBook Pro M1 and they sounded very thin and didn't get all too loud. To be expected...
I went ahead and plugged them into my Steinerg UR22C audiointerface and gained some body and volume. If I turn the level knob all the way it's a tad bit over my comfort listening volume.
Overall I think they are good headphones but the "out of body" listening experience I expected didn't hit at all. My question is, are these headphones not as good as I expected, is the UR22C bad as an amp or are my ears just bad?
What would I gain from a dedicated stack for amp and maybe even DAC (Forums tell me the UR22C's DAC is fine just the Amp is average at best).
Can you try to describe to me what I would gain from spending money? Like if I am maybe at a 5/10 of what my Headphones are capable of, how much better do I get with for example a Schiit Magni and Modi DAC (available near me 2nd hand for 200E).
What would take me even higher?
I used to have a 2016 pair of HE400i's, and in hindsight, it's probably one of the most atypical pair of planar headphones that I have listened to - and the 2020 revision didn't do much to remedy this. They have a noticeable drop off in the mid to sub bass region with the stock pads, which give them a noticeably "thin" sound signature, and if you're used to sound that is not this anemic, then this may explain why you're left wanting more.
With that said, a more powerful amp could offer the headroom to apply some EQ to add back some bass. Assuming your audio interface has some power left over, you can try this now for free, which you can start with this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/wiki/index/faq
You can then find your headphones from the listing here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/wiki/index/list_of_presets
You have given me quite some homework here, almost there but a few issues remain before I can eq my headphones. The whole AUlab doesn't get input from Blackhole shenanigans on Mac...
Let's see if it is worth it in the end, can't imagine every headphone enthusiast goes through this to achieve a good sound...
Since you're on a Mac, I can definitely recommend checking out Rogue Amoeba's Soundsource:
https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/
For full transparency, I haven't felt the need to use any EQ lately, so have not touched it for a long while, however, when I was trying to replicate the sound performance differences between my Macs and Windows machines, Soundsource ended up being the easiest path forward - even though it does cost money. With that said, I purchased my license in summer of 2020, and am still getting regular updates today, which is nothing to sneeze at in this day and age. They also do offer a free trial period, so no better way then to try for yourself, especially if you're running into similar hurdles as I did.
Lol, yeah it is a pain in the ass to set up at first, but once it's done, you should be able to essentially set it and forget it. However, to that point, audiophiles are known to endure endless suffering to eek out subjectively meager gains... :)
I already tried it, I love it. But I am bound to the pre-specified frequencies of the 10band EQ right? And no q Factor…