ApologiesâI thought I responded earlier, but I got distracted.
I am really impressed by Arya. They do feel like a âbaby Susvaraâ to me in a lot of ways, and they could very much be endgame for a lot of people. Theyâre a compelling option for their price point, and upgrading from there to Susvara requires truckloads of cash and a lot of effort.
Arya has the same effortless delivery of sound as Susvara; it feels like music is just breathing out of the air around you vs being pounded out by drivers that youâre wearing. Frequency response is perfectly coherent with no sense of anything being over- or under-emphasized. Clarity is top notch. Both headphones have superb bass response, managing both a lot of slam and extreme control in low frequencies. Certain electronic music with nuanced but hard-hitting bass is just fantastic with either headphone. However, both really do play nicely with all kinds of music and theyâre pretty forgiving (moreso than the 800s, for example).
Since posting that photo of Arya w/ Kann Cube, I have also tried it with my SP1000 + amp, which is markedly improved. The sense of space from my DAPs is collapsed somewhat compared to listening from a desktop setup, but the fact that I can even bring Arya out of the house and drive it portably is impressive. A buddy of mine tried it on his Fiio M11 Pro and that worked as well, though he pretty much had to redline it to get enough power, lol.
Susvara does basically everything Arya does, but with better detail and timbre so real itâs spooky. Arya sound like headphonesâexcellent headphones that do pretty much everything very well, but headphones nevertheless. Susvara sound so convincing that itâs easy to forget that theyâre making the sound youâre hearing. The sensation is similar to watching a 3D movie in a theaterâslip on the glasses and everything comes into focus, but itâs not the glasses that are projecting the movie.
Of course, the cost of entry is sky high, and then itâs a trick to power Susvara. A90 powers them quite well, surprisingly. A lot of people turn to speaker amps. Iâm in the process myself of enabling a chain that uses âZone Bâ of the McIntosh 8207 that powers my loudspeaker surround sound setup. That amp does 200W per channel at 8 or 4 ohms; McIntosh estimated it should deliver about 25W at Susvaraâs 60 ohms (thatâs roughly 8x what A90 does, FWIW).
In any case, the cost of ownership for Susvara can quickly spiral out of control not only because of the initial cost of entry, but for the sake of building an entire chain thatâs precise and powerful enough to do them justice. When all is said and done, Iâll be using a Holo May into a Goldpoint level control and then the 8207 for an ultimate SS chain for Susvara. All told that chain will have cost me almost as much as I paid for my truck. 
