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When it comes to headphone amps, I’m looking for something specific. Sure, I want something powerful enough to easily drive whatever headphones I’m using. A good DAC is vital as well. But I also want something that, well, looks good. Headphone amps are rare products that will draw the eye of anyone curious. So looking cool is certainly not a requirement, but at the very least it’s a strongly requested bonus.
As much as I liked the Schiit Audio Magni—and its small size and understated appearance definitely matched its no-nonsense performance and price—it didn’t exactly wow in the looks department (though the orange tube-mimicking LED inside helped). HiFiMan’s EF400 doesn’t have the flamboyance of a tube amp, nor any flashy LEDs, but it does have a solid, somewhat Saarinen-esque classiness, with a brushed metal faceplate and two chonky dials on either side.
And it has some innards that seem to justify the price—$529 (all prices USD). There’s a big toroidal transformer, some beefy capacitors, a claimed 4.4 watts per channel, and HiFiMan’s Himalaya R2R DAC inside. Does it perform accordingly? We shall see.
Use
The EF400 has a wide variety of ins and outs to cover an equally wide variety of headphones and other gear. On the front there are connections for 6.35mm (¼″), 3.5mm, 4.4mm balanced, and four-pin XLR headphones. On the back are RCA and three-pin XLR line-level outputs.
There are only digital connections to get audio into the EF400, both USB-B and USB-C. I’m happy to see USB-C here, saving me a hunt for the square-ish USB-B hiding somewhere in the box of cables every adult has. An analog input would have been cool, for a turntable say, but you’ll have to step up to the EF600 to get that. That amp is normally $200 more expensive but does include other features like Bluetooth.
The right knob controls volume, and it has a smooth rotation. The four-position knob on the left has low- and high-gain settings, with oversampling (OS) and non-oversampling (NOS) options for each. There’s some wiggle to the knobs separate from their movement, which isn’t ideal for a product at this price, but it’s not egregious. The black-plastic 3.5mm connection also looks out of place next to the gold-ringed 4.4mm and far larger XLR and 6.35mm. Again, not a huge deal, but $529 is not pocket change.
One of my only complaints with the Magni was the power button being on the back, and that’s the case here as well. Again, this isn’t a huge deal, but I prefer making things easy to turn off. The EF400 isn’t very big, only 9.7″ deep, so in most cases it’s easy to reach the rear panel to click it off. Still, being able to press one of the knobs to turn it off would have been welcome.
I appreciate the minimalist design, but some indication of sample/bitrate, or file type, would have been cool.
Sound
In the weeks leading up to my review, I swapped between the EF400 and the Schiit Audio Magni. Mostly this was with the HiFiMan Sundaras ($299), which have become my go-to casual listening headphones. They aren’t particularly difficult to drive, so to push the EF400 a bit I swapped in the much larger Audeze LCD-3 headphones ($1945). Even in the Low Gain mode, I got a comfortable listening volume not even a quarter of the way around the volume knob.
I was in the mood for some straightforward rock, and Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats have some of the best going right now. “Remember I Was a Dancer” from South of Here (24-bit/48kHz FLAC, Stax Records / Qobuz) is a soul-rock barnburner. The EF400 kept the LCD-3s under control even at higher-than safe listening levels. Even at decidedly uncomfortable volumes, the LCD-3s had minimal, if any, distortion.
For something a bit more acoustic, but arguably no less bombastic, I cued up the fifth movement, marked Subito allegro–Presto, from Aaron Copland’s ballet Appalachian Spring, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic (Copland: Appalachian Spring, El Salón México and Music for the Theatre (Remastered), 24/192 FLAC, Sony Classical / Qobuz). The EF400 supplied the LCD-3s with enough power to give the dynamics of this high-energy track their due. The initial attacks and transients from the orchestra were well controlled and immediate.
I switched over to Meze Audio’s Advar IEMs ($699, review coming soon) and played “Father and Son” from Cat Stevens’s 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman (192/24 FLAC, Universal / HDtracks download). The acoustic guitars had delightfully realistic strums and plucks. Individual notes had excellent fidelity and realism. The oversampled mode sounded a little smoother in the treble, but the difference was slight. There was no way of verifying the volume was identical either, so I wouldn’t put money on there being a huge difference.
If anything, the EF400 has an issue with creating lower volumes. Even in the Low Gain mode, if you just want some quiet background music, the EF400 can reduce the volume to a point, and then it all shifts to the right channel before bowing out completely. If you have easy-to-drive headphones or earphones, you might have an issue with achieving low volume levels—though if you have such efficient headphones, I’m not sure why you need a $529 amp.
If you really want to go nuts, or you just want to listen to something with another audiophile, you can connect multiple headphones to the EF400 at the same time. You’ll be splitting the power between them of course, but there’s plenty of power to spare in most cases.
Comparison
At $189, including an internal DAC, the Schiit Audio Magni costs 65 percent less than the EF400, and it’s a fraction of the size. But it performs exceptionally well and punches well above its weight (which is also a fraction of the EF400’s).
To give both amps something to chew on, I went back to the LCD-3s and cued up “Derezzed (Remixed by Glitch Mob)” from TRON: Legacy Reconfigured remix album (16/44.1 FLAC, Walt Disney Records / Qobuz). A bit of a tangent, but as disappointed as I was to learn that Daft Punk is not doing the soundtrack for the next Tron movie, being broken up and all, I am extremely interested in what Nine Inch Nails is going to do with it. Both amps were able to power the Audeze headphones to well beyond a safe and comfortable listening level. At the upper limits, the EF400 seemed to be able to supply a little more kick to the drums and a bit more bass at the extremes. Is that difference worth $340? If your headphones are exceptionally hard to drive, maybe.
While volume controls don’t tell much of a story, it’s worth noting that, at as close as I could get to matching volume level between the two amps, the Magni was at about 70 percent of its maximum rotation when the volume was as loud as I could tolerate, while the EF400 was at about 50 percent, implying that while they both had more to give, the EF400 likely had more than the Schiit. They might have had more, but my ears sure didn’t.
Conclusion
My biggest issue with the EF400 is the price, but as of this writing that’s a little less of an issue. While the list price is $529, it goes on sale for $399, which seems much more in line with its features. No doubt the sound is great, with plenty of power. I didn’t hear any issues with the DAC, though these days that’s far more common than not. Overall, I think the EF400 is likely overkill for most headphones, but there are certainly some big, power-hungry over-ears that deserve whatever you can give them, and the EF400 can do that while looking classy sitting on your desk.
. . . Geoffrey Morrison
Associated Equipment
- PC: iBuyPower Windows 10.
- Headphones: Audeze LCD-3, HiFiMan Sundara, Meze Advar
- Amplifier: Schiit Audio Magni.
HiFiMan EF400 headphone amplifier–DAC
Price: $529
Warranty: One year
HiFiMan Electronics
2602 Beltagh Ave.
Bellmore, NY 11710
USA
Phone: (201) 443-4626
Website: www.hifiman.com
