Audiophilepure

Drop HIFIMAN HE-5XX review

The HE-5XX’s low-end sits on the leaner side of the equation. It doesn’t provide any real sense of the speaker-like bass of the HE-500, and nor is it felt in any kind of physical way. Rather, the HE-5XX offers a well-extended and articulate, snappy bass that doesn’t tend to roll away until it reaches 40 Hz. Thundercat’s hard-hitting bass in ‘Show You The Way’ is impressively deft on the HE-5XX, and doesn’t yield a hint of flab nor the ‘one-note’ bass that older HIFIMANs can venture into. It’s certainly not lacking in its ability to reproduce bass notes, but the HE-5XX is simply not a bass-head’s headphone – it’s been designed with a different sort of voicing in mind. I can’t help but think that with a different set of pads that create a better seal, that the HE-5XX would actually produce greater levels of bass – the ingredients are certainly in there. 

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