So i've had plenty of time to get to know the susvaras now, and I absolutely love them, but thought I'd share my thoughts on them here.
The Headphones Themselves
Detail:
The susvara is perhaps the most detailed headphone i've heard short of some electrostats. And more to the point, it doesn't get this detail by simply pushing the treble forward like some other headphones do to give a false impression. Its just there, and its fantastic. Even in comparison to other very detailed headphones, such as the HD800 the susvara is quite clearly superior in terms of detail retrieval and resolution. And it does it with such a sense of ease and effortless delivery.
The HD800 is incredibly detailed, but unless you have it paired perfectly with both the source chain and the track itself, it often feels as though its trying too hard. It's german engineering forcing detail into your ears with little sense of actual musical enjoyment. Its a microscope for music, whereas the susvara is a 20x10 foot painting. Every little detail is still there for you to inspect as close as you'd like but the overall presentation is just so much more enjoyable.
The aryas are also a wonderfully detailed headphone, but some of that is due to a more pronounced treble region. And so the susvaras exceed the level of detail of the aryas while also avoiding any harshness, sibilance or "forced" detail.
Stage/Layering:
The soundstage is huuuuge....really huge. But it still retains the ability to present elements of the music in close and intimate, without at all sounding forced or compromising timbre. And so it is big, whilst also having an excellent range. Avoiding the "everything sounds big" trap that some other headphones fall into.
The layering is also absolutely excellent. With the headphones able to present vocals in close, drums booming across an arena and warm strings or synths somewhere inbetween and any mix of anything you could ask for. All while clearly separated, natural sounding and transparent without being clinical or overly warm in the slightest.
I'm hesitant to say its as good as the arya in this regard though. The soundstage on susvara is bigger, and bigger than HD800, but Arya is still the layering king.
That's not to say the susvara isn't fantastic in this regard, its simply an affirmation that the aryas have the best layering and range of soundstage presentation of absolutely anything i've tried.
HD800 in comparison while big, has nowhere near the layering capability. Everything is some level of distance away and so anything that is SUPPOSED to be presented close to you sounds off and diffused.
Timbre/Presentation:
The susvara really seems to have taken the Rolls Royce approach to how it presents your music rather than the performance supercar direction.
The timbre, detail, stage, layering and impact is excellent, but it makes no attempt to "show off" any of these aspects. Its refined, controlled, and just....does it.
Once given sufficient power, the susvaras can rumble, shake, pound, or present the slightest, smallest detail in such a transparent and effortless manner that its incredibly hard to find any faults at all.
Strings sound simply beautiful, as do most instruments. The only downside is that I have a slight preference for a little bit more prominent vocals, however its so close to being right that I have not felt any need to EQ or modify them at all.
The susvara is a headphone that you can listen to for hours and hours and hours and never feel fatigued or strained, and yet it doesn't sound "laid back" either. Its the closest i've heard to my 'perfect' personal preference for sound signature. Though if I were to really nitpick, i'd say that the "perfect" headphone would be somewhere between the susvara and arya. With the timbre and grandeur of the susvara, but with eeever so slightly more forward vocals.
The susvara is incredibly natural sounding. Acoustic recordings are presented beautifully, and don't sound skewed towards a "laid back" or "exciting" signature at all. Timbre is second only to some ZMF cans or estats. And it also does this while still being able to put plenty of excitement into lively electronic music.
Build, comfort and fit:
Hifiman is a company that has....a less than ideal reputation when it comes to quality control or build. I personally have never had an issue with any of my hifiman products, but others stories may differ.
The susvara however is clearly built extremely well. The metal construction is solid, clean, and everything about the headphone looks and feels premium. The wood is indeed veneer, but it doesn't at all come across as a cost-saving choice, simply that using actual wood on this design would be impractical.
The aryas in comparison while not having any issues, didn't feel substantial. The extensive use of plastic made it feel like a lot less than you'd expect for a $1600 headphone. The susvaras however I cannot complain about the headphones at all.
The fit of the susvaras is fantastic. I have always loved this hifiman headband design and it works brilliantly on the susvara as well. They aren't quite as comfortable as the Aryas simply by nature of being heavier, but the pads feel great, the headband is great, and they do feel like they are going to last quite some time.
So for the headphones themselves, the build looks and feels fantastic and I love it.
What I DO want to complain about though....is the cables. Ohhh god hifiman please fix this. I know you're "not in the cable business" but seriously, this cable MAKES NOISE BY ITSELF!
https://streamable.com/n92kbk
At first I thought I had a driver tension or build issue, because whenever I moved my head I heard a scraping/ticking type noise. As it turns out, its simply the core of the cable scraping against the ridged insides of the loose fitting rubber cable sleeve. As well as being pretty horrible and cheap feeling overall.
The cable is quite frankly unacceptable for a product of this cost. But, I've purchased a custom cable which I'm now using instead.
As to the box and presentation, wow, hifiman sure knows how to make a nice box! Included within are the headphones, cables, a lovely hard-cover manual, and a bag that while I doubt anyone will actually be using, and may appear cheap at first, others may realise it is a nod to the bag included with the original HE-6, so I quite liked it.
This is undoubtedly the best "unboxing" experience i've had with any audio product.
Amplification:
People often say that the susvara needs a speaker amp to shine, and ohhhh boy do they mean it. I had initially started running them on the 789, as I felt that this would be the fairest possible comparison to the also THX based Benchmark AHB2.
These amps for a lot of "normal" headphones sound identical. Using HD800 as a dynamic headphone reference, sounds as close to identical on both amps as I can hear (with the 789 running max pot/gain 3 to avoid the input opamp bias issue. With the pot not at 100% there is a difference due to the badly biased opamps).
So, therefore these two amps should be able to show me the difference that more power and current alone can make, without any actual "flavour" difference from the amps.
And what a difference there is!
On the 789, the susvara is still an incredibly detailed headphone, and in many situations sounds great. But whenever there is a requirement for lowend impact, it just cannot deliver. And with warmer/more lowend heavy songs, it causes the timbre and presentation of the rest of the track to somewhat fall apart. Vocals suddenly sound veiled and the layering suffers as soon as the driver is required to try to present any sort of low frequencies.
Putting them onto the AHB2 however, they spread their wings and sing. The lowend is fast, responsive, warm and grand. The mids are buttery smooth and the treble is such a brilliant balance of detailed and prominent without the slightest touch of sibilance.
Its very clear that wattage alone is not a sufficient metric for how well an amp can drive the susvaras. These things need current, LOTS of it. Even at quiet volumes where wattage alone wouldn't be an issue for the 789, they still sounded not quite right. And so if you don't have an amp capable of delivering the current headroom needed then I honestly would not consider them. They just do not sound right without it.
I have not had the opportunity to compare them on the HPA4, though at somepoint in the future I plan to replace my 789 with an HPA4 that will also be acting as a preamp for the AHB2, and so once that happens I'll post a comparison. (Going to get the holo spring 2 first though so may be some time).
Conclusion:
The susvara is an immensely capable, beautiful headphone that its hard to find fault in for anything other than subjective preference.
The only downside to the sound of these headphones is that some may prefer a more v-shaped or "forward" presentation. Which if that is something you're wanting, having a pair of aryas or HE1000v2 to go along with these would be wonderful.
As for everything else, detail, soundstage, timbre, layering and tonality are simply sublime and I do not think I will ever be selling these headphones.
They absolutely need some serious amplification to shine, and will not be able to reach their true potential on even high powered headphone amps, but given the right amp, these headphones are perhaps the closest i've heard to "perfect", whilst still managing to be comfortable, well built, and beautiful. No abyss scaffolding here.
Test setup:
For this test I was using the benchmark AHB2 with a custom silver banana plug to XLR-female adapter. The susvaras themselves I tried with both the stock cable, and a custom balanced cable that I had made for them. Both cables were made by "Skedra".
I was also using the THX AAA 789 amplifier. Both on Gain 3 and Gain 2 (gain 2 can actually get louder due to the higher input voltage limit, 7vrms vs 2.1vrms, but has a 'leaner' signature to my ears)
For the dac, I mostly listened with the RME ADI-2 dac, fed local flac by Roon.
I tested both with native samplerate playback, as well as with HQPlayer upsampling to both DSD and PCM with a variety of filters, as on a headphone as capable as this the different filters are much more apparent than on other headphones.
I did also try other options and an ESS based dac, but the RME is the one that I am most familiar with and so I stuck to that because it would allow me to give the fairest comparison between the headphones themselves without being swayed by differences of the dac.
I've not had the opportunity to run them on a good R2R dac but once my Holo Spring 2 arrives I will post my thoughts.
