[draytonklammer]

It's not about loud, it's about quality. If you can get the impact of the music at a low volume, then you have an AMP that is driving (has the current) your headphones properly. Loudness just fools you into thinking it sounds good. If you have to turn it up loud to hear (or pretend to hear the detail) then your AMP isn't enough.

THIS POST IS NOT MEANT TO OFFEND ANYONE -- IF YOU DISAGREE, THAT'S GREAT, WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT THOUGHTS ON THE HOBBY.

Let me give you a counterexample... I agree with Junglebook3, within reason.
I do believe the Susvara would benefit from more current and power than $200 would provide, but his sentiment is something I firmly believe.

For reference, I've driven various "hungry" TOTL headphones with a Holo stack, Chord Dave + Woo/Wells, etc...
I used to say the same sort of stuff you did, but I can't anymore. Not in good faith, at least.

I'm able to drive ANY HEADPHONE I WANT, PERIOD, with Topping's flagship stack, among other "cheaper" equipment. This includes AB-1266 and Susvara.
A year ago I did a test with some of the cheapest stacks I could find and still found them to drive everything I wanted fairly well. There's definitely a sweet spot somewhere around $1,000 for TOTL gear.
Sure, you could get tubes or something with a frequency response tilt or intentionally added distortion, but that's just a preference.

I practice what I preach. I could easily own whatever gear I want but have found no reason to keep expensive equipment around if it doesn't actually do anything for me.
My various $xx,xxx speaker setups are all driven very well by excellent hardware that does the job but doesn't cost money just for the sake of fleecing audiophiles.

 

[Kevintj604]

Eh, I think people overstate how difficult Susvaras are to drive. A $200 DAC/Amp combo will get them plenty loud. I use a Ferrum Erco ($1,200 on the used market last time I checked) and they're fantastic.

I’ve personally never owned a Susvara but I’ve heard them on four different source chains at my local store and they sounded underpowered and super underwhelming on all of them. Even the store owner said he didn’t have the proper gear in store to have an accurate demo.

I’ve heard them on a Ferrum Stack (which will power them but is not optimal) and they sounded like completely different headphones. Power and more importantly current makes a huge difference with Susvara. Most owners drive them on super high end gear or speaker taps to get them to sound the way they’re supposed to.

 

[tradyblix]

I think there's a lot of craziness in the community about amp power and driving. I mean there's people out there saying some cheap 120 dollar chinese amps (you know which ones I'm referring to) that are very popular with young people that can't afford more expensive amps, because they give them a quick, cheap solution and say things like they have much more power than other amps when they are rated the exact same watts at ohms values. Or they use the watts values at the incorrect ohms for their headphone and think they're getting high numbers. Sometimes the 8 ohms watt value. Alot of those products are focused on looking really good on paper for numbers and not actually quality of sound, as well. Things like super low distortion numbers and other things.

I've seen people eat this up. And then there's people with absolute overkill like 8, 10 watts when you're working with devices that are rated at only needing less than 500 milliwatt to "correctly drive" by their manufacturers... just.. okay. man. If you feel good about it, that's great.

The only time driving has ever an issue for my full sized headphones is when using some portable devices. Plus in the old days with 300 ohm cans (like the HD600 and HD800) but very few modern cans are like that. they're mostly 1/10th that now. 32-36 ohms.

Just look at the milliwatts values for 90db, which is a "loud" level. Average is 75-85 with 90 db peaks. You shouldn't be listening to music at 105 db for long periods, and 120 db would be intolerable.

Common recent headphones here:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/dzwe1g73q6pbhnx/headphone_power_table.pdf/file

Most headphones require less than a watt until you need to drive them over 100db. Must be a lot of deaf folks out there. Some headphones have a max power rating (safe max wattage) less than some of these "heroic" amps.

It just doesn't always jive with reality to me lol

 

[marlen]

The Organics felt like someone turned on some kind of DSP to 11 and put you inside of a tiny box. It’s very in your face. I didn’t enjoy a single song on it. I have 30 days to return, but I can’t get into a single song with them on. It’s just not for me. I'll update again once I listen to them some more.

That's how my Arya sounded before it was burned in

 

[betula]

It's not about loud, it's about quality.

I think there's a lot of craziness in the community about amp power and driving.

Both of these statements are true. It is not about loudness but control, tone, grip, extension and so on. There are also a lot of misconceptions out there regarding amp power. Sure, you need some headroom when it comes to output power, but with some exceptions 1W-2W will be more than enough for almost any headphones. Better amps in most cases are not about more power but better design, circuitry and better quality ingredients. All headphones (especially TOTL headphones) benefit from higher quality amplification, without a question. Some will sound good from lesser gear too but still noticeably improve with a better chain (Meze Elite), others will sound poor with cheap gear and need more serious equipment (Susvara). To my experience with the Susvara you need at least the same amount of money for DAC/amp if you want to get close to their ideal performance.

 

[kRed]

THIS POST IS NOT MEANT TO OFFEND ANYONE -- IF YOU DISAGREE, THAT'S GREAT, WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT THOUGHTS ON THE HOBBY.

Let me give you a counterexample... I agree with Junglebook3, within reason.
I do believe the Susvara would benefit from more current and power than $200 would provide, but his sentiment is something I firmly believe.

For reference, I've driven various "hungry" TOTL headphones with a Holo stack, Chord Dave + Woo/Wells, etc...
I used to say the same sort of stuff you did, but I can't anymore. Not in good faith, at least.

I'm able to drive ANY HEADPHONE I WANT, PERIOD, with Topping's flagship stack, among other "cheaper" equipment. This includes AB-1266 and Susvara.
A year ago I did a test with some of the cheapest stacks I could find and still found them to drive everything I wanted fairly well. There's definitely a sweet spot somewhere around $1,000 for TOTL gear.
Sure, you could get tubes or something with a frequency response tilt or intentionally added distortion, but that's just a preference.

I practice what I preach. I could easily own whatever gear I want but have found no reason to keep expensive equipment around if it doesn't actually do anything for me.
My various $xx,xxx speaker setups are all driven very well by excellent hardware that does the job but doesn't cost money just for the sake of fleecing audiophiles.

I personally did A/B testing with volume matching (this is VERY important) within less than a second to switch from one amp to another (JDS LABS EL AMP 2 vs HFM EF400) and there was a significant difference with the Sundara... I can only imagine what a Susvara could bring along.

I do agree that there may be a sweet spot and going further is a matter of taste and specific needs, not something you have to do.

 

[gabriely]

THIS POST IS NOT MEANT TO OFFEND ANYONE -- IF YOU DISAGREE, THAT'S GREAT, WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT THOUGHTS ON THE HOBBY.

Let me give you a counterexample... I agree with Junglebook3, within reason.
I do believe the Susvara would benefit from more current and power than $200 would provide, but his sentiment is something I firmly believe.

For reference, I've driven various "hungry" TOTL headphones with a Holo stack, Chord Dave + Woo/Wells, etc...
I used to say the same sort of stuff you did, but I can't anymore. Not in good faith, at least.

I'm able to drive ANY HEADPHONE I WANT, PERIOD, with Topping's flagship stack, among other "cheaper" equipment. This includes AB-1266 and Susvara.
A year ago I did a test with some of the cheapest stacks I could find and still found them to drive everything I wanted fairly well. There's definitely a sweet spot somewhere around $1,000 for TOTL gear.
Sure, you could get tubes or something with a frequency response tilt or intentionally added distortion, but that's just a preference.

I practice what I preach. I could easily own whatever gear I want but have found no reason to keep expensive equipment around if it doesn't actually do anything for me.
My various $xx,xxx speaker setups are all driven very well by excellent hardware that does the job but doesn't cost money just for the sake of fleecing audiophiles.

Do you own a Susvara? I agree with you on most headphones, the Susvara being a very rare exception however that sounds very different to me depending on what dac/amps my shop hooks their demo unit to.

 

[andjar]

Some sources say 2000mW at 60ohms should be plenty to drive the Susvara very loud. So something like a 400$ Topping L70 should be powerful enough with very low distortion.

 

[tradyblix]

Pretty interesting. I love all these Hifiman headphones. Organic definitely is more of a looker than the original. it's grown on me. The all black on previous versions still is quite neat tho, especially if you're not a fan of the uh, simulated wood.

I am noticing that it's really going to be a matter of taste between who likes V2, SE, or Organic more (I don't hear a lot from Arya V1 owners, there seems to be less of them these days) which is really reminiscent of HEK v1, HEK v2, HEK Stealth and HEK SE, where it's really down to what you prefer and seems to vary from person to person. I do appreciate your opinion in that review tho.
It just seems like there's probably not gonna be a consensus as different people will prefer different things in these similar headphones.

I'm not sure i agree with you about the packaging (this is from the HE1000 Stealth review on the site, not Arya Organic).

I mean, let's face it, most packaging is a waste, and bad for the environment. It comes from a time where it would need to appeal to people on a store shelf and that's not really necessary in the post-Amazon world. Even manuals are not worth killing our trees for when you can download and view PDFs on devices you own.

I usually throw it away. Even on headphones with really expensive leather cases (like Utopia) or that came in metal briefcases (like Empyrean and Elite) I sometimes would move them to my own case or travel cases anyway, because they were more practical, so honestly I'd prefer that companies focus on giving us hardshell or semi-hardshell travel cases so we can throw these things in backpacks when taking them to another location. And also, When I bought my HE1000se and came face to face with the new packaging, I was shocked at first but then I appreciated that I at least got 3 different, decent cables (1 for XLR, 1 for SE 6.5 and 1 SE 3.5) which was really nice and certainly would have liked to have gotten that with Arya Stealth instead of the rather pathetic cable it came with.

Although the new packaging Hifiman uses is very old school Grado "pizza box" like in it's austerity, I also do appreciate you get a piece of hard foam that you can use, in a pinch anyway, as a stand. Still, most people are gonna use the Omega style stands I guess, since most people have those.

 

[Fegefeuer]

They could at least have added a 4-PIN XLR cable. Won't cost them a lot.

As for Omegas: I find them quite awful, not leaving pads to cool and dry out well enough and also creating pressure on them. I use a Woo Audio stand. Fits two of these easily, hanging by the metal part.

 

[Kevintj604]

Great review from the Headphonia team as always. Would it be crazy for me to own two Arya’s at once?

 

[betula]

I guess, the question is how troublesome that slightly uneven treble is to someone who wasn't quite happy with the Arya treble to start with.

 

[szore]

THIS POST IS NOT MEANT TO OFFEND ANYONE -- IF YOU DISAGREE, THAT'S GREAT, WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT THOUGHTS ON THE HOBBY.

Let me give you a counterexample... I agree with Junglebook3, within reason.
I do believe the Susvara would benefit from more current and power than $200 would provide, but his sentiment is something I firmly believe.

For reference, I've driven various "hungry" TOTL headphones with a Holo stack, Chord Dave + Woo/Wells, etc...
I used to say the same sort of stuff you did, but I can't anymore. Not in good faith, at least.

I'm able to drive ANY HEADPHONE I WANT, PERIOD, with Topping's flagship stack, among other "cheaper" equipment. This includes AB-1266 and Susvara.
A year ago I did a test with some of the cheapest stacks I could find and still found them to drive everything I wanted fairly well. There's definitely a sweet spot somewhere around $1,000 for TOTL gear.
Sure, you could get tubes or something with a frequency response tilt or intentionally added distortion, but that's just a preference.

I practice what I preach. I could easily own whatever gear I want but have found no reason to keep expensive equipment around if it doesn't actually do anything for me.
My various $xx,xxx speaker setups are all driven very well by excellent hardware that does the job but doesn't cost money just for the sake of fleecing audiophiles.

I wonder how my Jot 2 would drive Susvara? I think well.

 

[betula]

I wonder how my Jot 2 would drive Susvara? I think well.

It will probably be loud enough, but pretty far from the Susvara's full potential.

 

[Reputator]

Thanks for the review! Man it's taking forever to get thorough reviews of this headphone. Wonder what the hold up is?

At least we have this one now, and by the sounds of it this may not be a great fit for me. A smaller soundstage and spicier treble doesn't seem like good trade-off for punchier bass. You can EQ the latter, but you can't add back in soundstage.

I'd love to hear the two side-by-side for myself but I don't see that happening.