I’m in the midst of trying them out on Amazon for a bit, as with Prime membership their return policy is extremely permissive.Then that would be fine, and I'd try to find out why - through measuring & comparing. I would like to try them, and if I thought they were better than everything I'd ever listened to then I would for sure say so. I don't think I could justify buying them though, even if they blew the socks off....I don't think they would, but they probably would for pretty much any stock headphone without EQ as long as they could get past some of the closed back headphone negatives. Ha, if I ended up really liking them I might try speaking to the company directly to see if I could somehow wangle somekind of deal, whatever form that would be!
So far it is nice to not have to perform quite so much requisite bass tuning that I’ve done for all my previous headphone purchases—I specifically chose my iFi Pro iCAN Signature amp because it offers an analog bass boost that provides the punch and warmth I like without sounding overly intrusive. But for me I’m still preferring to keep it active despite this headphone’s unusually favorable bass tuning.
I also agree with Amir that the imaging and expansiveness on this Stealth are pretty remarkable for a closed-back—possibly for any headphone.
But I already own a closed-back, in the Sony Z1Rs. Not the fastest or most detailed headphone in its price range, but it’s a fun, energetic headphone for the rock/new wave/alternative genres I enjoy. And for an open-back, I already have a set of Utopias, that price-wise certainly had an ouch factor similar to these, but with EQ sound incredible for any genre I throw at them and they’re far easier to drive.
What I am (theoretically) missing in my collection is a set of planars. I’ve gone back and forth between these and the Meze Elites for months, but I chose these first because the Elites aren’t available on Amazon and because of Amir’s review. I have this nagging sense of incompleteness having only dynamic drivers to play with, but given how lightning fast the Utopias are I’m not really sure if I’m missing anything.
The real dilemma for me is deciding whether there is anything to be gained from these that I don’t already have in the Focals with PEQ—and I think that is a question for anyone who already has a “TOTL” headphone but is experiencing FOMO based on Amir’s excellent review. I suspect that cans measuring this close to the Harman target will likely be EQ’d anyway by many listeners based on the preferences they’re used to. So although I certainly admire Dan Clark’s technical achievement here and think his science-based tuning methods are revolutionary for the industry, I’m not yet convinced that there is anything wrong with headphones that need EQ out of the box.