Depending on which review you’ve read anything’s possible. Every headphone on Head-Fi is warm/cold, easy to drive/hard to drive, comes with small/big soundstage and sounds horrendous/brilliant
I think it’s down to the individual tbh. What we’ve read beforehand about X and what we expect/what type of presentation we generally go for and so forth.
I see many folks talking about the Arya as a major step up with regards to both soundstage and detail compared to the Sundara and while I definitely agree that the bigger cups do emit a much bigger sound field, I merely hear the Arya as being the brighter of the two..not necessarily the more detailed can.
Truth be told, if one disagrees with the tonality/general sound of any of these headphones, my advice is to look elsewhere. They do sound awefully close to each other. The most significant difference is the form factor when you go from the round cups to the eggs.
Edith: Congested eh? I’ve seen a lot of different tags put on the Sundara..but never a congested one. I feel it’s the exact opposite - very open and layered like...well the Ananda and Arya