Thank you for the thoughtful response! I actually find the two completely different, and there is a historical precedent for this—if you’ll bear with me as I offer my take on Hifiman’s fascinating and storied history:
Hifiman is an audio design/manufacturing company that is certainly distinguished by their innovation, with an ambitious, visionary and unusually humble PhD in nanotechnology at their helm in Dr. Fang Bien. In 2016, the Susvara was Hifiman’s first ultra-premium presentation of the planar magnetic technology they had been perfecting since they launched, in 2009. Audeze actually pioneered this new audiophile segment in 2008, and got some notice for their original LCD-2 in 2009; prior to that planar magnetics were primarily cheap alternatives to dynamic drivers, sold most notably by Fostex, and at that point they were ignored almost entirely by the audiophile set.
This is somewhat paradoxical, since planars were eventually recognized as a practical, portable and far less costly alternative to electrostatics, which had been the audiophile gold standard for years. Liberating the magnet from the diaphragm, without the burden of a costly energizer and dust-susceptible internal elements offered a way to make that diaphragm move with extraordinary speed and precision, with linear impedance across all frequencies—a technological breakthrough that should have been an audiophile’s dream from the beginning. But at the time this was a highly conservative, dogmatic consumer base that was tightly attached to their ways, for whom change was welcomed parsimoniously.
But the Susvara wasn’t Hifiman’s first flagship; that was the original HE1000, which debuted a year earlier in 2015. It was truly an astonishing achievement, and it was really the first planar to make actual waves (so to speak) amongst the classist, highbrow audiophile purists (think Stereophile). The original Edition X dropped less than a year later, as a mid-priced, lower impedance option that was arguably a predecessor to the Arya (the Edition X series was eventually repurposed as a TOTL budget option). Then, somewhat strangely, HFM dropped the Susvara, only a little over a year after the HE1000, just as it was gaining steam—and rightly or wrongly the Susvara completely eclipsed it (I would argue primarily due to its outlandish price tag as much as anything, which was without question a gesture of oneupmanship over Focal’s Utopia, released a few months earlier at a then-shocking asking price of $4,400. Those two cans established the $5,000-ish TOTL price point standard that we are still suffering with today).
Both the Susvara and the HE1000 offered their own signature innovations that have both since defined Hifiman’s brand to this day—the HE1000 with its peerless oval pad design, asymmetric magnets, nanothin diaphragm and window shade grilles; the Susvara with a round incarnation of those technological advances but now with its celebrated Stealth magnet. Since at the time the audiophile community was still overwhelmingly dominated by classical music enthusiasts and similar “tastemakers”, the Susvara, with its ultra-conservative, round driver design and “reference” (flat) tuning (and $5,999 price tag) was the one that met Stereophile’s seal of approval, and secured the reputation as the “best”. The HE1000, with its far more rock-friendly tuning and avant garde, oval pad design (which eventually prevailed as the far superior and infinitely more popular one of the two) got relegated to the “nice try” category instead.
But then Harman released their final two compelling revisions in 2018 and 2019, and slowly (agonizingly slowly) started to be taken seriously for its intended purpose—to define a true industry tuning standard to supplant the prior Wild West tuning anarchy, that had built an endless list of PEQ databases to aid folks in tweaking their headphone collections to suit their listening preferences. In other words, it began to create a standard where one previously did not exist.
And Hifiman, being the innovators they are, were one of the first brands to catch on to this idea that the audiophile market was diversifying—that along with the aging purists, there were also legions of young folks brought up on rock and roll, hip hop and other modern genres who cared about premium sound quality options too—and the music industry was responding as well by releasing more and more hi res digital masters of those genres, along with a burgeoning array of increasingly accessible gear coming to market that could play them. Not just in wood-paneled home libraries and cigar lounges, but on computer desktops, in playrooms and on nightstands. Some were even portable.
To put Hifiman’s innovative spirit in perspective, there are still stalwart brands that remain completely oblivious to this trend to this day—consider how Focal or Sennheiser continues to boast about the impeccable art pieces they keep cranking out, all with logarithmic bass rolloffs that start diving around 80hz, making any enjoyment of rock music impossible without gobs of PEQ. Now let’s revisit that original HE1000, which a year before the Susvara was offering respectable bass slam and physicality when the contemporary, gentile audiophile standard-bearers still scoffed at the mere concept of those terms.
So in 2017, HFM let the Susvara rest on its old school laurels, and totally redirected their focus on that powerful oval driver. That year they launched the HE1000V2, with a sensitivity of 90 compared with the Susvara’s positively impossible 83, and with an even more genre-versatile tuning—an achievement so remarkable that it still sits comfortably at number three on Crinacle’s all-time ranking to this day. Despite the Susvara’s success, HFM recognized the enormous capital it had with that HEK design—one with peerless comfort, fit, imaging and forgiveness of head placement—to become their iconic signature.
So in 2018, along with debuting the oval pad Arya and Ananda to complement the Edition X v2 at lower price points, they attempted to combine all of their signature achievements into a single flagship, with the HE1000se. This one had it all—the oval design, the nanothin diaphragm, the asymmetric magnets, the window shade grilles, PLUS the Susvara’s stealth magnet and an anything-can-drive-it sensitivity of 96. They weren’t quite ready to stir up the stuffy audiophile standard bearers and call it their newest TOTL flagship—they priced it a bit more modestly at $3,500, and didn’t give it a definitive category at all.
But in so many ways it was such an advance over the Susvara—there are some that call it “95% of the Susvara” but that’s nonsense—it’s every bit as resolving as the Susvara, yet this time they managed to make that Stealth magnet move the diaphragm far more efficiently (efficient enough to run off a portable). Its only other difference is its more V-shaped tuning, and perhaps a tad narrower soundstage—but certainly not by much. I say none of this with any intended disrespect towards Susvara fans; my point is that both the Susvara and the HEKse are extraordinary achievements—it’s just that the Susvara is an optimal choice for the niche that prefers reference tuning, while the HEKse is the more democratic of the two.
The HEKse was versatile enough to work wonders for any genre of music, and it was as astonishing as anything else that yet come to the audiophile market, but it also revealed one of the weaknesses of the Stealth magnet that has only recently been solved in recent releases—namely the way it opens up frequency ranges from 10,000 hz and above, which brilliantly augments detail and clarity, but can cause some to find it fatiguing on certain tracks, especially when the bass isn’t tuned up a bit to compensate for the extra brightness.
It received a fair amount of praise and continues to sell well, but in subsequent years, Hifiman put aside work on these two flagships and set about instead adding refinements and additions to their lower price tier models—all oval pad designs—and the majority of those refinements were about moving closer and closer to Harman tuning, and retrofitting the Edition X, Arya, and Ananda with their design innovations that had proved the most successful.
Most recently, they’ve updated all three to include the Stealth magnet, which was clearly a signature asset for their brand, and by last year they had established a proper unified line of models with consistent features, at different price points—the Edition XS—>Ananda Stealth—>Arya Stealth—>their existing flagships. In the midst of this they added a very misunderstood closed back oval option with reference tuning, that was specifically designed and marketed towards recording professionals—namely the Audivina. It proved a disappointment for those seeking the ultimate rock and roll headphone, who hoped the closed back design would even further emphasize the bass response and offer noise isolation, but that just wasn’t the market Hifiman had in mind when they designed it.
This flurry of releases might have led some to perceive Hifiman as unfocused, and might have bred some resentments among folks who had just bought an Arya incarnation only to find a new model released less than a year later—but I don’t see it that way. They’ve always been transparent about their willingness to allow their customers to trade up any lower priced model for a newer one, for only a portion of the list price difference, and I see this evolution in their product line as progressive and purposeful—they were continuing to innovate new technological advances, listening attentively to consumer feedback, and updating their entire product line with those features that worked.
So where are they now? Most recently, they’ve settled on a suite of successful features that are stock options in all products across an array of price points—the Stealth magnet, the asymmetric pads, the nanothin diaphragm and the window shade grilles have now become their signature feature set that is proprietary and unique to their brand. This is just savvy product differentiation, and I know of no other headphone manufacturer that has distinguished themselves with innovations to the degree that Hifiman has.
Most recently, over the last several months they’ve quietly modernized (and I would say, perfected) their entire oval pad line with the release of the HE1000 Stealth, Arya Organic, and Ananda Nano (the Edition XS, arguably the finest headphone under $500, dropped on New Year’s Eve 2021 and arguably marked the beginning of their contemporary design strategy). All of these feature considerable aesthetic improvements, and substantially improved QC (which has been their one salient flaw to receive near-universal criticism for years), and there’s an option for those on just about any budget (the Sundara is still going strong for the average consumer seeking better than usual sound quality, but I don’t really consider it an “audiophile” product).
Most importantly, with these three releases they’ve edged even closer to Harman, by kicking up the bass shelf across the board—to join Dan Clark in being perhaps the only other major high end audiophile headphone manufacturer to offer a pleasing, versatile, and rock-friendly tuning right out of the box. Except that Hifiman offers it at a fraction of the cost, and with far greater sensitivity.
This entire evolution of their brand tells a compelling story, at least to me. And I think it’s worth mentioning that their price points are now unusually honest and fair, and in my view representative of the ultimate sign of technological progress—with the passage of time, it becomes less and less costly to mass produce the expensive R&D innovations of the past.
Finally, it is clear that there is one remaining step to this journey, that based on recent moves (moving the HE1000V2 to legacy status, slashing the flagship HE1000se price by $1,500, and dropping the Susvara from Amazon, their largest consumer storefront) seems imminent—and that is an upcoming refresh of their flagship model(s). Having the HEKse now available for $1,999 is certainly a tempting option at the moment—it is still one of their most remarkable achievements in my view, and one of my end game headphones I own (although I’m listening to my HEK Stealth, with its thrilling bass slam and slightly less fatigue, almost exclusively these days).
But I would counsel anyone with that amount of cash to spare to consider holding out just a little while longer. Because if there is any validity to my characterization of Hifiman’s past modus operandi, I am very inclined to anticipate the release of a new, game changing flagship in the near future—a headphone that includes all of the assets I’ve mentioned above, but even more aligned with Harman, and that just might introduce a new innovation none of us has ever seen.
We shall see!
—Steve
