:O This is going to be fun.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/mez...official-thread.959445/page-303#post-17509345 #4,541 covers the details of the journey of auditioning the Arya Stealth and within three months auditioning the Meze Elite, mainly because the HE1000se which I was more enamored by from reviews wasn't available for demo at any local shop.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hifiman-he1000-se.886228/page-320 covers my initial findings of the HE1000se.
My "summary" from my present perspective:
So I started out with cheap desktop speakers that I had at least arbitrarily toed in since I thought that was how you were supposed to position them, then switched to earbuds through latter high school and early university, then cheap Sonies, and finally in latter university got the ATH-M50xBT which I found needed EQ in order to sound right, the lower midrange dip having caused it to sound dull, wrong, and effectively "worse" than my Sony at least for piano tone. Likewise, something special with the EQ profile I set up on my Kawaii ES8 still has that headphone sounding magical for the EX Concert Grand samples. Two years later for working from home during the pandemic, I got the Jabra Elite 85h as my first "neutral out of the box" headphone, and it indeed sounded excellent, though I had to get used to the pad seal. I had seen the Arya and HD 800 S on RTINGS.com and had always thought such exorbitant.
Arya Stealth:
Two years later, a bit past exactly a year ago, I came across Joshua Valour's video about the Edition XS and entered the rabbit hole of review videos. By then, I was "swimming" in cash and a bonus mainly thanks to my typewriter collecting hobby having died down (the remaining machines I was looking for becoming more sparse to find), so I within two weeks finally entered a headphone shop equipped with everything I had watched and read up on (including an assumption that cables most probably don't matter; I had finished a computer engineering degree). So I see this now $1.3k USD or $1.8 CAD headphone before me, no longer so mystical, just a venerated object (same deal up to my encountering the X9000 and HE-1). I was probably fascinated by the comfort. I then played my favourite YouTube recording of Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2. Lo and behold, I could not hear "soundstage". Everything was imaging on or between the drivers just as they did with my Jabra Elite, and when volume matched, I felt like my Jabra Elite 85h could sound just as big and detailed. Same deal with the HD 800 S they had. This was off of the Chord Hugo 2, then off of the Mojo 2 after that ran out of batteries. I think the Mojo 2 had rather discrete volume controls. It took two hours of back and forth amid the desire to not walk out of the store empty-handed, my eventually "fooling" myself into hearing more "definition" in piano tones through the Focal Clear and then Arya Stealth. So the first lesson was that I could not hear "soundstage", at least nothing "vastly wide", and that between multiple for the most part neutral headphones, the Arya Stealth only subtle sounded the best to me.
So I got home and straightway made an Equalizer APO variable-band graphic EQ based on the headphones.com GRAS measurements, resulting in an immediate improvement in clarity, no "burn-in" needed. Further improvements were obtained after learning how to adjust treble EQ by ear. I suppose there was a point where I felt content that the Arya Stealth was indeed "clearer" sounding than the Jabra, at least with EQ. I would later learn/measure that my Jabra actually had a whole lot more bass than I thought, probably from substantial pad compression after those two years, contributing to the perception of less clarity. I appreciated the larger presentation of the Arya Stealth, but with closer listening felt like imaging differences were meagre in terms of positioning and size, the only difference being the extent to which the headphone pads' size causes them to intersect with or make way for that image. It required special mixes like Yosi Horikawa or others playing with HRTF effects to get properly out-of-head sounds. Then I finally tried out software crossfeed, whose experience I've already described, such having been a revolution in itself. I was probably still quite skeptical in regard to perception of headphone "resolution" and other claimed "technicalities".
Meze Elite:
The Meze Elite audition was a lesson in how using other test rigs like headphones.com's measurements to produce EQ profiles is absolutely no guarantee that the headphones will actually have the same response on your own head and ears. In this case, the Meze Elite ended up having a 600 Hz elevation that made Rodrigo y Gabriela tracks sound "sweeter" in a wonderful and impressive way that yielded my first experience of being truly astonished. There was then this HRTF-effect track where I for the first time heard the distant panning sound source sound "ridiculously" far away; this only happened once, the differences in perceived distance growing smaller with later comparisons. The only "soundstaging" differences I heard were related to the sense of the slight differences in driver distance and the amount of space around my ears. I also did not hear any advantageous "impact" or "slam" out of the Focal Utopia. I also learned that the DCA Expanse despite being effectively Harman-tuned was at the time less preferable than the result from EQing the Meze Elite. I likewise learned that I preferred large planar presentation and tactility, the Meze Elite sharing a level of openness with the Arya Stealth though the latter seemed more incisive. Regardless, I have no regrets since the Meze Elite Tungsten version is freaking gorgeous and exquisitely comfortable, and I have in the past few months with my in-ear mics uncovered this headphone's absolutely exceptional distortion performance even when EQing up the wide upper midrange dip. I while A/Bing found that I could listen to pure tones in order to EQ the headphones to roughly the same response frequency by frequency, whereby I was able to transfer the sweetness of the Meze Elite's EQ to the Arya Stealth and the clarity of the Arya Stealth's EQ to the Meze Elite. By then, I was convinced that all matters of tonality are founded in frequency response and can be transparently adjusted with good digital EQ. I had also found that EQing down the 6 kHz to 8 kHz region in a slope of relatively equal loudness greatly improved clarity and the cleanness of my sound.
I didn't like the feel of the Angled Alcantara pads and didn't hear any soundstaging or imaging improvements. They do measurably and audibly drive things a bit toward neutral, but I much preferred EQing the sweet lambskin (I think) hybrid pads which could feel wonderfully cool on first wearing and likewise had better bass extension and hence distortion.
Then came my in-ear mics and the HRTF and free-field EQing results I had described. It so happens that the Meze Elite may just be the perfect headphone for binaural head-tracking since the headband is carbon fiber and makes it really easy to slot in the head-tracking unit, and the magnetic field happens to be very well contained within the drivers so as to not interfere with the head-tracker's magnetometer, at least my cellphone app showing that even my two previous dynamic driver headphones exhibit stronger magnetic fields at the headband. In the delay between receiving my in-ear mics and receiving my HRTF SOFA file, I discovered that my EQing by ear (and making the initial profile using GRAS measurements) was extremely inaccurate in the midrange which actually came to be very wavy for my in-ear measurements, my refining this into the "V3 PEQ" which wasn't far off from the smoothness of my measurement of the HE-1 and X9000 for which I was able to say that I preferred the sound, cleanness, and presentation of my EQed Meze Elite. My in-ear speaker measurements also revealed that neutral speakers actually have decently more ear gain than my Harman EQ, whereby some of the "vividness" I had been looking for was to be found in EQing in more ear gain consistent with my HRTF and of course getting used to such, whereby the V3 PEQ now sounds a bit relaxed by comparison. Now, at this moment, I am somewhat surprised that this free-field EQ allowed Zubin Mehta's 1977 recording of Mahler 5 whose second movement I particularly enjoyed to sound more competitively clean and vivid against my reference 1996 Boulez recording on Idagio whence I had previously felt that it didn't sound as "hi-fi" as the best recordings I had encountered.
HE1000se:
I only got this in December as a result of my finally deciding that the X9000 wasn't for me both in terms of comfort and presentation as well as its despite the estat reputation measuring to not have much better distortion performance than my Meze Elite. I was still ready to possibly be impressed, and was technically hoping that the reviews were true or that this different magnet array would feel more open. I was also at the time becoming discontent with the Meze Elite's comfort and wanted to explore pad-rolling the HE1000se partly to optimize its EQed distortion and CSD measurements.
And so it arrived, my as part of a burn-in debunking plan playing a Room EQ Wizard sine sweep as the first signal. Measurements showed very similar frequency responses, but at least better control of the 4 kHz peak and perhaps more consistently good driver matching where my Arya Stealth wasn't well matched in the ear gain region. I was happy to see better distortion performance through the HE1000se, though I later learned that this was only the case for the left drivers, its being switched around for the right drivers, and now lately per
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/totl-disappointments.925164/post-17949397 (post #936), at least units from November exhibit clear distortion defects albeit not particularly audible in practical music listening, but still not so nice of a thing to come across for the supposed "best" out of the HE1000 line. I personally don't believe in burn-in or believe its effects to be psychological in nature. Regardless, I so have found the HE1000se to sound very similar to the Arya Stealth, not doing any magically soundstaging or imaging stuff, the Arya sounding just as detailed and textured. Now maybe without crossfeed, there were cases where something through the HE1000se would sound like it were positioned a bit higher, but this may have rather been a mismatch in the vertical positioning of the cups since the two headphones have different headbands. I personally prefer the wider and more cushioned headband of the Arya Stealth. They also both feel equally open and transparent to external noises, and probably similarly tactile for large bass transients. I measured similar impulse and step responses, and also hear similarly incisive transients when listening to isolated impulses, though I am now inclined to believe that such differences in the quality of extreme transients (playing
http://pcfarina.eng.unipr.it/Acustica-samples/Dirac.wav really loud) are due to nonlinearities showing up, whereby in practical listening, differences in transient quality decrease. Otherwise, the main things to like are the looks and the lighter clamping force, though I can still feel pressure points when wearing them for long enough. Worn HiFiMan pads, even for just a few months, have a rather nice, soft, and cool initial feel compared to fresh pads.
Given this, the main reason for having the HE1000se is as a
comfort and presentation alternative for the same tonality, and for it to feel like a more "worthy" complement to my Meze Elite than the Arya Stealth with its measurable driver matching issues for my unit. I've already devised a free-field EQ which I document in
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...n-susvara-headphone-review.50705/post-1853760 (post #1,137), whereby my HE1000se with these huge pads (though pads are exceedingly easier to swap on the Meze Elite, with the HE1000se, there are a lot more pad options, mind the ability for full customization through NTRAX Mod Design (NMD)) effectively sounds tonally identical to the Meze Elite, but with a whole lot more space around my ears. The problem is that it has a metal headband and a powerful magnetic field that currently makes it impossible to use with magnetometer-based head-trackers, a problem I am currently trying to solve. The custom pads feel excellently snug and comfortable, though even with the lighter clamping force of the HE1000se compared to the Arya Stealth, I can still after enough time feel pressure points or like circulation to my auricles is being constricted (same deal with the Meze Elite after enough time or on certain occasions; some days, the Meze Elite just feels perfect and I don't want to take them off or stop listening because they feel so darned snug). I suppose the HE1000se with NMD pads for the same EQ and very similar in-ear response can still feel a bit "airier" while switching back to the Meze Elite can have such feeling a bit smoother.
tl;dr: Meze Elite for exquisite distortion performance (also a pretty good CSD for a planar magnetic, but not as good as dynamic driver or closed-back CSDs) and sweet, soft, and initially cool-feeling lambskin pads. HE1000se for worse distortion, especially for multitone IMD, but with
huge custom pads and maybe more incisive transients at the extremes. You can see
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/rec...r-speaker-virtualization.890719/post-17955514 (post #1,801) for my latest multitone distortion comparison.