HiFiMAN Arya Full-size Over Ear Planar Magnetic Audiophile Adjustable Headphone

Product Information

Don’t get me wrong – I still love the 800’s giant bubble of sound. Sometimes. But I think the Arya is more honest and more accurate, and definitively better at bass. At times when listening to live recordings I’ve found the Arya’s presentation to be so dead-on accurate that I swear it sounded like the musicians were in the room with me. The 800S, to me, always sounds like you are listening to speakers in a room. Really good speakers in a well-treated room, but still it presents to my ears like near-field speakers. The 800’s sound is more lush, more euphonic even, but less real. I am told that the magnet array is not asymmetrical in alignment does it deploy large and small magnets contrary to the original Arya driver construction. That makes it more or less the same design principle as the Susvara internals. The clamping is just right also on the Arya Stealth. Not too much like the LCD-5 can get for my head and not too loose either that it hands uncomfortably on your ears.

There’s nothing really new with the design of the Arya Stealth, and the metal and high grade plastic built headphone features the typical shape of earcups and headband as we have seen many times before.

Although I do not have the original Arya here, simply by comparing it to a lot of the previous generation HIFIMAN headphones and the Edition XS you can tell right away that the company has made a serious effort to deliver a weightier and slightly smoother house sound signature. Isolation is nihil, so much so that you can still clearly hear you cat purring with music playing (true story!). That also applies in reverse and people can hear your music, so the Arya are definitely not headphones to use in offices, libraries and other shared spaces.

And the final part of the sound description is the soundstage, the Arya OG was called the planar version of the Sennheiser HD800 due to its soundstage. With Arya SE HiFiMAN dropped this legacy, the soundstage became smaller and less spacious. And now came out Arya Organic with a bit more airy soundstage, but it’s still placed somewhere in between the first revision of Arya and the one with Stealth Magnets. What’s worth mentioning is the positioning of the sound sources, which is extraordinary. Some time ago I used the Audeze LCD-X as my primary gaming headphone and it did the job great, but with the Arya Organic, the positioning of sound sources is on a completely different level. While playing Hunt: Showdown I can easily say from which direction my opponent is approaching. And when someone kills me I usually perfectly know from where the shot was taken, so the only issue that stops me from being a better player is my aim, but unfortunately I can’t blame the audio gear. Or can I? Naah, I need to rely on Paweł to carry me every single time...tough life. I reached out to Hifiman for out of warranty repair, and they replied saying that the ARIA V2 (non stealth) is discontinued, so no service is possible. They will provide a replacement stealth model for 80K and the old headphones. Furthermore, Arya’s noise leak is great, and you won’t be able to use them if you’ll need to keep your environment quiet, so no taking them to a library or in public. Also, no using them while your loved ones are sleeping, if you don’t want to wake them up. Mostly everything you love about the HiFiMAN Arya is still intact with the Organic. However, there are certain tweaks offered here that make things fresh, such as elements of the sound profile and build. The Arya Organic seems to cater to bass heads more than the previous iteration, but that doesn’t take anything else away from the Arya’s established sound. I think that will be its selling point both for those who haven’t tried the Arya yet or are looking to upgrade to something similar. Maybe I have a very strange taste but to this date, I thought the every single of them were really bad.

HiFiMAN Arya vs HiFiMAN Ananda: the Ananda and the Arya are somewhat similar, but the differences are enough to justify saying that they’re also quite different. The Arya have better bass extension as well as better layering and detail, plus they also have more bass in general; speed is better on the Arya as well, while physicality is comparable. Midrange is much brighter on the Ananda, where it has less presence in the lower region as well as more in the upper one – save for the peak in the upmost region of the Arya, where it is in fact brighter than the Ananda’s. Detail is slightly better on the Arya, which also has the upper hand when it comes to speed. Apart from the peak in the lower area on the Arya, the Ananda have more emphasised treble, although extension appears to be better on the Arya which also have better resolution. All technical aspects – soundstage, imaging and especially instrument separation – are better on the Arya. The soundstage, the element of Arya that I probably spoke the most about, is also a very strong characteristic for them. Arya sounds pretty much like a Sennheiser HD800S done right, with a similar size for their stage, but with an actually good amount of instrument separation, clear intention to sound crisp and clear, and with a much more natural, warm and friendly tonality that makes everything musical and rich. The materials are a mix of plastic and steel and whilst by no means the lightest full-sized planar headphone on the market these days, the 430g weight is properly distributed and a fair result for a dual-sided magnet construction. listening on monitors or headphones. But if you’re listening on a laptop or a phone, there’s no way you will hear Amplifiers are required to provide adequate power to your headphone or IEMs to perform at their best. Simply put, amplifiers allow a weak audio signal to be boosted to a powerful one.

These headphones are designed for discerning music lovers. If you are someone who cares about audio quality "deeply," you'll want a pair of headphones like these.Stealth Magnet technology improves upon earlier magnet designs by reducing interference beyond a point that wasn’t thought possible only a few years ago. The Arya Stealth’s bass tuning, particularly sub-100Hz has a strong 50-60Hz dB elevation and less of a roll-off compared to the likes of the Ananda.