HIFIMAN Susvara Headphone Review

[Rhamnetin]

Then my friend I feel bad you for, when I listen to music i'm enjoying the music, i'm listening to it and not only measure it. When I eat food I don't only look nutritional properties, I just taste it.
Every headphone has it's own colouring and flavor for everyones taste and ear. No instrument does reproduce frequencies are perfect as possible, there no such thing as neutral, Harman is just a idealized frequency response. Most music producers won't even know Harman, it's a niche. Wake up

No need to feel bad, it's quite nice not spending $6,000 on headphones and enjoying the music rather than enjoying the feeling of having blown $6k on a fancy looking product.

If there's no such thing as neutral, what would you call a linear frequency response on loudspeakers?

I’ve been using this site for a couple of years as I dig my frequency responses raw…and I really like the more scientific approach to audio (even if I lean more towards IEF neutral than Harman).

Back when I first bought the Susvara I honestly liked it very much. It was all I listened to for a couple of weeks. A true honeymoon.
I then put back on my trusty HD600 one day and couldn’t believe what I heard. I started doing some quick a/b listening between the two and quickly realised that I had upgraded the bass and subbass qualities of the 600 via the Susvara..but at the expense of the mids and treble. This felt so counter intuitive that I started questioning my senses. Slept on it, did the same experiment the day after and ended up with an even greater appreciation of the 600…and genuinely disappointed with the Hifiman.
This lead me to a/b the Sus with my Sundara and HE500 and curiously enough I ended up prefering both.

Now try explaining this to anyone over say Head-Fi or anyone enamoured with the more…errr…elusive and nonsensical parts of audio. They’ll quickly throw you in the pillory and fetch their rotten tomatoes. Tastes are ok as long as they don’t interfere with flagships and holy cows.

Anyhoo, after reading most of this thread I realised that I’m not alone and that common sense does exist in a few dusty corners of the hobby. Made me smile and consequently sign up.
Thanks for the review Amir, much appreciated.

I've been there as well, having owned and compared really expensive headphones to cheap ones and preferred the cheap ones for sounding more natural. Just a few weeks ago before settling on the DCA E3, I was looking for a new closed back headphone but the AKG K371 kept beating all the other contenders or at least not losing despite costing much less than everything else. Usually the super expensive one has some good attributes but not always (e.g. Audio Technica fancy wooden headphones). I got called crazy, although not insulted to the degree that ASR as a whole gets insulted because I didn't bring science into it to prove the point.

Sennheiser HE-1 with all the tube sound injected into it

And the Sony MDR-R10.

 

[TurtlePaul]

Zach probably won't sent any headphones…

Most ASR samples are not company supplied.

 

[Tachyon88]

jazz, classic, progrock, acoustic music, classic rock, i would say anything but Metal

Nice, I like all those too, but.........Metal !?

 

[Soria Moria]

Sennheiser HE-1 with all the tube sound injected into it

That headphone does measure well though. Are there measurements of the amplifier?

 

[majingotan]

Nice, I like all those too, but.........Metal !?

He's missing out. Metal is probably one of the best genre that Susvara does best and as such it's the genre I listen to it the most. Megadeth on Susvara is pure bliss IME

 

[majingotan]

That headphone does measure well though. Are there measurements of the amplifier?

It might conform to Harman, but there's nobody that measured its dynamic range at 114 dB SPL

 

[Jimbob54]

That headphone does measure well though. Are there measurements of the amplifier?

Im not sure you can split one from the other. The amps sole purpose is to power the cans (some of the active part is in the cups) . I am assuming all HE1 measurements you see are with the base unit/ dac amp .

 

[majingotan]

Im not sure you can split one from the other. The amps sole purpose is to power the cans (some of the active part is in the cups) . I am assuming all HE1 measurements you see are with the base unit/ dac amp .

You cannot run the HE-1 other than its base since the actual amplifier is actually on the earcups and the base is configured to send the correct amount of preamplified signal to the amp inside HE-1 earcups

 

[solderdude]

I wonder if anyone can spot the Susvara tonality in this 'test'

headphone tonality test

Here is a fun test for you to try. 5 x the same excerpt of a live recording. All MP3 VBR0 48kHz. (I know... should have been FLAC but that is 3.5x the file size) the differences have been preserved. 1 of them is the original 4 of them are the same excerpt but have undergone the exact same EQ as...

www.audiosciencereview.com

I am assuming all HE1 measurements you see are with the base unit/ dac amp

Yes, they can only be used that way. It is one system

 

[Brubaker]

Yes, they can only be used that way. It is one system

HE1.... do you think sennheiser's technicians made some DSP (EQUALIZATION) by the internal DAC software to approach the Harman Curve? If I were them I would have done it... like for Mark Levinson 5909... I think they changed the curve when they work wirelessly... it's so close to Harman that it's a miracle ...

 

[amirm]

Zach probably won't sent any headphones to him

He already has....

 

[DFW]

To all the HIFIMAN Susvara owners out there: Had you read this ASR review before you bought the Susvaras would you still buy them?

 

[the_brunx]

After spending 6 grand on a dud they should at-least gift you (ad-fiers especially) one of these in the Hifiman box.

 

[caught gesture]

you can change your sound alot with EQ but you cannot change power, character, instrument timbre and texture, clarity, sense of space, airyness with just EQ.

What else do you need to create these sound attributes?

 

[amirm]

What else do you need to create these sound attributes?

Reading a lot of reviews and online posts saying those things exist....

 

[amirm]

I also wouldn't consider the topping A90 as a boring sounding amp, just with the Susvara to my ears there were much better matches.

Why should we trust your ears? If my ears are different than yours, what possible value is there to tell us what you hear??? Or anyone else saying anything about Susvara?

This reviewer who I post earlier said this at the start of his review:

"When I’ve received the mighty Hifiman Susvara, I felt overwhelmed by…disappointment. I said to myself: “This is really it? This is how the world’s best headphones are sounding?” As something was gravely missing its mark. Detail retrieval and a much higher transparency were in place, but as a transient response nut, I couldn’t feel my tunes speaking to me, I was almost maxed out on a Benchmark HPA4 and still, musical notes wouldn’t fly away and envelop my entire body. Engagement factor was nowhere to be found, all that remained was a thin, lifeless and boring sounding metallic carcass that sent my thoughts into the abyss."

You agree with his characterization in bold?

 

[SteveL]

I always love the rhetoric about audio products sounding "boring" or "exciting". Being the simple-minded person that I am, I just want the most faithful reproduction I can get of whatever signal is fed into them. If it's a boring performance / recording it should sound boring! So then I'll listen to something I like better, happy in the knowledge that the equipment won't "improve" it into sounding bad.

 

[ObjectiveSubjectivist]

I just want the most faithful reproduction I can get of whatever signal is fed into them. If it's a boring performance / recording it should sound boring! So then I'll listen to something I like better, happy in the knowledge that the equipment won't "improve" it into sounding bad.

Amen.
Unfortunately many are confused.
If the music is boring or unengaging just change the freakin music!!!

 

[SteveL]

Also the thing about "you people don't care about music"- I'm a musician (serious amateur, classical). There are few things I care more about than music. But then too I can get tremendous "emotion" and "envelopment" and what have you from a recording a great performer made 100 years ago in primitive sound. I think it's audiophoolery that actually has nothing to do with music.

 

[ivanobe]

Oh my,

Somehow you think performing a measurement precludes us from listening to music. I can assure you that we listen to quite a lot of music here.

If you are just going to sling insults because of a negative review, why don’t you go read the 50% of the audio press who never give negative reviews at all (but I personally don’t get much value from that).

The fact is that this place trashes the best headphones in the market just to make happy its audience, that loves to hear their 100$ are better than those 6000$'s, puerile bimbos.
Just say 'are too F... expensive!'