Ok, so I must be blind cause i swear I found it before, but anyone mind linking me a post/giving me a slight run down on sus vs valkyria technicalities wise? I know how they generaly compare tonaly/presentation wise but cant remeber what got said in terms of stuff like detail/timbre/image sharpness/etc
As an engineer / R&D guy, I tend to rationalize a lot and be very analytical. Perhaps for this very reason, the headphones I have had and liked the most (AB-1266 TC, SR1a, SR009S, Susvara) are all considered very technically proficient.
Coming from this background, the Valkyria have been for me an interesting journey. I auditioned them twice, was not convinced but was sensing that they had something special I could not grasp, which especially manifested itself in the form that I felt something was
missing when I went back to my other headphones, finally decided to buy them.
Over the following weeks and months they fully grew on me and finally sank in as my daily driver after a relatively long acquaintance.
I believe that the reason of this is that they are tuned by their designer with very different performance parameters in mind compared to most other top flight headphones. As a recording engineer deeply into classical and jazz minimalistic, typically binaural, recordings, Andrea Ricci seems to focus specifically of making the Valkyria
experience as close as possible to listening live to acoustic instruments, in terms of that holistic perception of 'rightness' of tone, and physical interaction with energy from sound waves. He has modelled the Valkyria to be his reference tool in terms of reproduction authenticity.
I came to appreciate how successful an undertaking this has been during the last several months, where I have restarted attending live performances on a regular basis, and listening back home to the same / similar music or mix of instruments or venue type. The Valkyria mimicked - for my ears - the event better than the AB-1266 and better than the other headphones I have had at home in the meantime.
However, and this is disturbing in a way, if I had to compare the Valkyria to other TOTL gear in terms of audiophile technicalities breakdown, I would say that they lack sub-bass extension, have modest transparency, a mid-bass bump and an average-only imaging, soundstaging and detail retrieval capability. Also, speed, agility, articulation is nowhere close the best electrostats or the SR1a.
The explanation I may offer of such a contradictory picture is that live, unamplified music in real venues (unlike studio recordings, mixed and mastered multi-microphones takes, electronically created sounds) often times is delivered within limited frequency extension, relatively colored by the venue acoustics itself, and with compromised imaging for the same reason. For example, if I close my eyes when I am in the concert hall I can get a cohesive picture of the orchestra but - even with small ensembles - the exact localization of the musicians is questionable at best.
On the other hand, recognizing the timbre, the immanence of living musicians, the dynamics, are an innate, instinctive way we connect with live music, that the Valkyria are somehow surprisingly good at recreating.
When it comes to other music genres, especially those heavily loaded with synthetic sounds and effects, the best planars like the Susvara and AB-1266 are more fun and much more capable to expose details, spatial cues, sharp imaging and - of course - deliver the deepest bass notes.
In the end the Valkyria are not going to please everybody - especially at first take. They dare to be unique and imperfect, which is quite an act of bravery especially for such an expensive piece of gear, but can be remarkably addictive for
some listeners.
