Hell no, its not even as reputable as other headphone companies to justify the price tag especially since they had driver problems with the previous model, i bet some Senn HD650 sound better.
Actually the HE-5s had a very low failure rate. Only three production samples where RMAed because of driver issues. The wood was the real problem with the HE-5s, and Head-Direct admits this. Quality control was not sufficient because they relied on a subcontractor to do the wood work and select wood. And the wood (handling, quality control, or selection) was not good enough.
And no to the second part. I have heard three sets of HD650s, two single ended, one balanced from a seriously sweet Woo audio amplifier and non of them came even close to sounding as good as the HE-5LEs out of an ordinary powerful amplifier. The HD650s I owned for a short while sounded good, but never really did anything out of the ordinary for me.
I do not know where you get your info from, but Head-Direct have a reasonably good track record, I think about the only massive failure from there part has been the Jade electrostat headphones which was a hobby project rushed to the market. The HE-5LEs (HE-5s) have been two years underway and I think the results speak for themselves.
Thanks for review, very nice. Very special and nice headphones.
