There's an alternative point of view to this of course. It is quite possible that those headphones seemingly benefiting from mostly imaginary upgrades actually have some serious sonic flaws. But since one has just paid inordinate amounts of money this is difficult to admit. It is easier to blame...

In reality dacs do not have any effect to any headphone's soundstage. Good dacs do not alter the sound but reproduce it as is. Having heard briefly the HE-1 I would not call its soundstage small. It is not super wide either.

I do not think it is.

None. In fact, I have not even seen the Susvara.

Hardly. Acoustical transducers - no matter how high end - will inevitably be the bottleneck in any system. I understand the idea of 'scalability' makes many enthusiasts feel better about their chosen headphones (it is related to the 'amp-upmanship' mentioned earlier in the thread). However, the...

Amp-upmanship is part and parcel of faith based headphone audio. I joined this forum more than 20 years ago :scream:. HD600 was then one of the top tier headphones - and of course above any criticism. If it sounded too dark (to my ears it did) you were advised to get an amp. If it sounded too...

If climbing the ladder or special training is needed to appreciate a headphone it very often means that the sound is in some way badly distorted and/or with wonky frequency response that only a select few are then able to listen to it. Alternatively the difference is vanishingly small. Curiously...

We are discussing Susvara, are we not?

But - according to your logic the way I see it - it is futile to even listen to the Susvara. If I like it on Tuesday evening it in no way indicates that I will like it on Wednesday evening, too. Any attempt to test anything is meaningless since reality is completely unpredictable. Blind faith...

This is just speculation. We still lack the evidence.

Yet we completely lack the evidence that Susvara would measure any differently with a different amp (unless that amp happened to work as an eq).

If this is true, it makes the Susvara a hugely expensive effects box (or a pair of them) - not designed to accurately reproduce the artists' work.

No evidence then.

But do you have any evidence?

This sounds like a rather serious accusation. Any evidence?