Hey I'm curious. Has anybody sold the Stealth in favor of the new E3 Closed ? Or does anybody has the two HPs in their listening rig currently ?
Interesting, as your take is pretty much the opposite of mine. I've owned the E3 for a few months, and recently did a comparative audition with the Stealth and Expanse. All in all, I've now auditioned the Stealth on 7-8 occasions and the Expanse on a few. IMO, the flagships decidedly do not perform at a higher technical level than the E3, and I actually thought the E3 had the best (deepest) soundstaging of the lot. In terms of tuning, the Stealth was the outlier for me, given its comparatively woeful bass dynamics. The E3 is brighter in the upper midrange than the others, which can be borderline strident on some material, on some chains. That might be a deal-breaker for some listeners.
While I respect your subjective opinion, I wanted to highlight that DCA headphones seem to have a wider-than-average divergence of individual user experiences, and I'd encourage prospective buyers to audition and come to their own conclusions.
Let me elaborate some more since the world around me is now asleep and my initial response was on my phone as I was dealing with normal life things.
I previously took a massive deep dive into IEMs which thankfully has passed and for a few years I have been diving deep into HPs as well as HP chains/systems and also 2ch systems/chains. My dive is intense and involves many hours of listening, analyzing and comparing. That is a huge part of my audio joy. I like to buy HPs from the same company and dive deep. I have done it with the Sennheiser HD series, the ZMF line of HPs and with the DCA HPs. I like to try and figure out the differences between the different HPs within the same company. I end up reviewing some for fun using an odd style that I enjoy. I did the same thing with different IEM companies.
The E3 is probably the best closed back HP out there for 2K. And a huge plus is that it is easier to drive than the big boys i.e. Susvara, Expanse and Stealth among others. When I listened to my E3 on a Jot and Bifrost or on my DX300 Max or DX 300 then the difference between E3 and Expanse/Stealth is not that great. The difference is there but not easy and quick to decipher.
My post earlier today was based on (which I did not mention) the chain I built for my Stealth and Expanse. With this chain the differences were extremely obvious and easy to pick out. The Stealth and Expanse take things to a whole other level of engagement, clarity, texture, and layering when on a system specifically built for them. The exact same goes for Susvara. I have a different chain built around the Susvara.
IMHO the Stealth, Expanse, and Susvara sound bland when not heard on the right system. All three of them are extremely hard to drive. They do not shine when not driven correclty. Yes music comes out of them with most amps and DACS but they are not sounding like their true selves. When they are driven appropriately they shine amazingly to pure visceral levels of enjoyment.
For Stealth and Expanse I am happy with Yggy OG-Holo Bliss- and Khozmo Passive Pre. For me Susvara sounds best with Holo May-Ferrum Stack (Oor and Hypsos)- and Holo Serene.
Such a chain is absurd and ridiculous and cannot be justified one bit. All done to get the best out of Susvara, Stealth and Expanse. There are many other chains out there that would sound great but for now I have settled on those chains for my purposes.
Without a chain bordering on psychosis the E3 is an amazing sounding relatively affordable HP that sounds wonderful with a relatively affordable chain. No question about that.