HIFIMAN Susvara Headphone Review

[CleanSound]

Six grand? It should be perfect in every way. If the price point was two grand it would still be too high. Six grand is a money grab. This is not much better than five grand interconnects or pyramid feet for your amplifier.

This six grand would get you a top of the line Ascend Acoustic or a Revel F226Be.

I confess that I will never understand headphone culture. So I'll give sit on the side line and wait for the updated Benchmark measurements.

 

[amirm]

What is there to update, was there an hardware revision to the AHB2?

No. I have since added new tests to amps that I did not run at the time.

 

[Ajax]

Hi Amir,

Only a few days ago you reviewed the $300 Anune AR5000, which is only 5% of the cost of the Susvara, and had this to say:

"Out of the box tonality lacks some bass and treble, which is easily remedied with equalisation. Once there, combine with its very high sensitivity, you have a delightful headphone to listen to .... the overall response was to die for on reference tracks. Bass response was solid and deep. High frequencies combined with very good spatial qualities put a smile on my face. Importantly, this thing runs on candle light amount of power. This means that you can drive it hard and get excellent dynamics and fidelity.

The AR5000 is incredibly nice looking. Modern yet stylistic. What's more, even though it is made out of metal, it is extremely light. So much so that when I grabbed the box, I thought they had forgotten to include the headphone! This makes it comfortable to wear."

Aune AR5000 Headphone Review

This is the review, listening tests, EQ and detailed measurements of the Aune AR5000 open back headphone. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $299. The AR5000 is incredibly nice looking. Modern yet stylistic. What's more, even though it is made out of metal, it is extremely light. So...

www.audiosciencereview.com

The price / performance ratio between these two products could not be greater and your review demonstrates just how dysfunctional the audio industry has become and the incredible disparity between the competency of manufacturers and their engineers. Can't they measure?

It reinforces the need for ASR to continue it's good work informing and educating consumers and manufacturers. I'm sending you $50 today.

 

[CleanSound]

No. I have since added new tests to amps that I did not run at the time.

Please sweep the SINAD for power vs frequency, I really want to see how it compares with NCx500.

 

[majingotan]

I would like to try the susvara some day, even though I know the tunning I might not like.

To me this always seemed like a product for the chinese luxury item buyer, just make it expensive, add some gold, and you have a winner.

Also a lot of people are going to come crying that you didnt have the right amp for the review, and that you needed "X" 10k+$ amp that would make this headpphone very musical.

If you still have the Hifiman Edition XS on your sig and you actually like its tonality without EQ, they sound tonally more alike than different regardless of amps you use to drive it. You'll hear more reverb with the Susvara though which can be considered as more detail lol due to massive group delay issues

 

[SeasButter]

Those hi-end headphones tend to use low-fi technology to increase resonances. Such as abyss1266, susvara. So why not using DSP instead?

 

[ALaylowguy]

yes and yes and yes. Let's all see thing as they are

$6000 headphones bested by $22 IEMs. Classic. This is what ASR is all about. Thank you, @amirm!

 

[Human Bass]

They are just analogic transducers. It is like asking why passive speakers being fed power and analogic signal dont have dsp

Those hi-end headphones tend to use low-fi technology to increase resonances. Such as abyss1266, susvara. So why not using DSP instead?

 

[amirm]

Please sweep the SINAD for power vs frequency, I really want to see how it compares with NCx500.

Yes, that is one of the tests I need to run.

 

[anan南]

If nan7 used the same ear muffs as Susvara, the test results would be more similar. Unfortunately, nan7 used the 1266 ear muffs, which had poor measurement results.

 

[CleanSound]

Yes, that is one of the tests I need to run.

Awesome!

I sometimes wonder if some manufacturers are designing their amps to measure great specifically at 5w/1kHz just to game the system since ASR uses that measurement to stack rank amps.

Hence, I find that particular test very insightful on the overall amp's design.

 

[Palladium]

This six grand would get you a top of the line Ascend Acoustic or a Revel F226Be.

I confess that I will never understand headphone culture. So I'll give sit on the side line and wait for the updated Benchmark measurements.

Forget about the price and the disastrous FR/THD first, how do you even make a headphone that is less efficient than a bloody speaker?

 

[anan南]

Dear amirm, if you have an old he6 ear cup on hand, similar to the one used by Beyerdynamic, using this ear cup will greatly improve the test results.

 

[CleanSound]

The price / performance ratio between these two products could not be greater and your review demonstrates just how dysfunctional the audio industry has become and the incredible disparity between the competency of manufacturers and their engineers. Can't they measure?

It reinforces the need for ASR to continue it's good work informing and educating consumers and manufacturers. I'm sending you $50 today.

Bravo, bravo!

 

[phoenixdogfan]

If you make a $6k headphone that sounds like it's named after an ED medication, it had better be able to get it up (volume wise, that is).

Headless panther!

 

[majingotan]

Forget about the price and the disastrous FR/THD first, how do you even make a headphone that is less efficient than a bloody speaker?

From marketing standpoint, Susvara's cult status promotes spending on overpriced and overbuilt amps costing 26K and upwards. They're favorite amplifier for it is this below:

 

[testp]

yeah, it seems like these are designed to be listened with cord disconnected..

 

[phoenixdogfan]

This is also another case of the subjective critics leading everyone completely astray. Basically, every one of them slobbered all over these, and, unless Amir got a defective model, they simply have too many things wrong with them to outperform even a $300 pair of HD 600's. So how did that happen? It's really the equivalent of opening up a $10k bottle of a Grand Cru Vin and not noticing the wine had turned to vinegar. Needless to say I would never trust anybody who recommended a pair of these. Very apparently, all you have to do to be a headphone reviewer is have a Go Pro and a You Tube channel. I won't name names, just go to the reviews of these and the incompetent (corrupt?) will stand out.

And they require a Benchmark AHB2 to drive them? WTF!

 

[staticV3]

And they require a Benchmark AHB2 to drive them? WTF!

The Apple dongle will drive these to healthy volume levels (90dB SPL).

 

[Oso Polar]

they simply have too many things wrong with them to outperform even a $300 pair of HD 600

The funny thing is that they measure way worse than Hifiman's own entry level $109 planar HE400se: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/hifiman-he400se-review-headphone.28771/