Man, I still rock my XS all the time. Itās paired with my vintage setup in the bedroom. The synergy it has with the Denon amp is freaky good. Yes, the build is crap, but I have put a nice pad on the headband and have tweaked this and that to get them to fit better. And Iām just a little extra careful with them. Still a great headphone sound wise. That said, I went up to the HEK and felt like that was an appropriate ānext setā.
2 Likes
That is a sweet headphone. I have the HP-2 which uses the same driver and itās fantastic. I think the GH50 is a slightly better overall set.
1 Like
I really enjoyed it, definitely a different presentation than other closed back cans of heard but sadly they are onto a new home.
1 Like
Something I find odd is that Hifiman tends to revamp their models a lot. Look at the Ananda and Arya. Could very well be an update to the Edition XS coming. They donāt need to change the tuning or anything, just fix the headband and it becomes the new king.
1 Like
First weāll get Edition XS Stealth, then Edition XS Nano, and finally Edition XS Organic!
2 Likes
@InvisibleInk
You mean: Edition XS Stealth Double
The OG already has stealth magnets 
It could def use a better headband, sure. Wonder what we, the existing owners, should do though.
a concern I have is that if you start scaling the quality of your headphones before you scale the quality of your sound chain, youāre not going to get the expected performance from your cansā¦in fact, you may form negative opinions and wonder why others speak so well of a particular set because they didnāt sound special in any way to you.
to illustrate, you wouldnāt buy a Ferrari only to swap the engine out for something a lot smaller and impair itās performance. you want to drive it, race it, let it hit its stride and enjoy the experienceā¦not putt putt putt.
2 Likes
I was under the impression that amps and dacs are largely placebo besides the power capabilities of the amp and some perceived tonality changes which is why I say I am fine with the atom stack until it canāt run something I purchased. It is also known to be clean and neutral which I am a fan of. Please correct me if I am wrong.
If you are happy with your setup, then thatās great!
I liked to experiment. I found a little color suits my gear. The Magni
Piety was the thing, and Sony DAPs.
itās definitely not placebo for amps though itās more nuanced for DACās and nuanced for amps when you get up to TOTL parts. for instance, my Zen CAN cannot drive my HE6se v4 so I havenāt gotten to enjoy them yet. while I got them at a screaming price, these used to be $3000 headphones and the recommended amp is an integrated amp that sells for a grand. they need power in order to perform. another example would be electrostatic headphones. the more power you feed them the better they soundā¦but if you put high end estatās on an entry level energizer, theyāre no fun because they were not built with a lower end sound chain in mind. it doesnāt make sense to drive $5000 headphones on a $300 energizerā¦nor does it make sense to use $700 estats on a $3000 energizerā¦even though the $700 estats would really sing if you did that. 
1 Like
Yeah I wasnāt really looking to go up a tier exactly and more so just looking for a different flavor that could potentially be an upgrade as it is in certain aspects. Otherwise I would just go Arya/HE1000.
2 Likes
The only reason to upgrade the JDS Atom stack is if you need more power to equalize and still stay in low gain for best performance after a preamp reduction. Iām using a Topping A70Pro/E70 now and the last JDS Atom+ stack was just as impressive sounding, just not as much power of course. I used the Arya Stealth on it and it sounded great (I donāt equalize that pair so itās good). I get stuff for the business all the time, and these Hifiman Deva Pro wired are my new daily drivers, really impressive. The Ananda Stealth was a good job updating from the original, but the Arya Stealth is the best headphones Iāve heard. They re-tuned the upper mid shoutyness from the original and perfect for me out of the box. Deva Pro Wired is hands down my new winner in value for money, improvement over the HE5XX which was my daily driver for a year.
hi hot, I was trying more to point out that if you upgrade your amp, and perhaps your DAC, you should expect much better performance from your Edition XSā¦something similar to what you experienced the first time you listened to good cans and started to hear things you never did from music you knew on a personal level, only to find you really didnāt. it will be a bit more nuanced, but if you have high quality music to listen to, it would refresh all your headphones. perhaps look at some of the newer amps from HFMā¦there are several I dream to demo!
Not to get too far off the track, but I can vouch for upgrading the chain. The gains can be pretty dramatic; they were for me. That said, we all know the dangers of going down the rabbit hole. We all need to figure out what we want to get out of this crazy hobby and apply the required discipline!
As for the XS, I am not sure we will see a next version of it. They have a good enough product line that they can evolve those. This one did its dance. I was pretty negative on this headphone for build quality considerations, But they were having a saleā¦
Bottom line, the build is crap, they sound amazing, and Iām glad I have 'em. That said, I would not replace them if they were to ever fail.
1 Like