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✒️ Author: Leong | 📷 Photo: Willy

 

Hifiman Susvara, the flagship of the Hifiman Planar Magnetic Headphones. The final frontier of Hifiman's offering for it's Planar Magnetic headphones, the absolute pinnacle of what Hifiman represents. You may have read the reviews online, you may have seen the videos, you may have thought how good it will be, but the only thing you need to do is to experience it yourself.

It is the first to apply the Stealth Magnet Technology and the Nanometer Grade diaphragm with extremely low mass, not to mention the gold plated conductive diaphragm. The Window Shade System, aimed to reduce any resonant frequencies and offers a pleasing aesthetics. All these technologies and designs only serve one purpose, creating the best headphone in the world.

Before we venture on how it sounds, please forget some people may have say how easy they can push Susvara loud with any headphone amps or digital audio players. The Susvara impedance comes to just around 60ohm, but the sensitivity is just 83dB/mW (your bookshelf speakers might be even more sensitive than this). Although some might argue that no matter how much power you feed into the headphone it will sound the same. It is correct, up to a certain extent. You see, by measurement, we only feed a constant sine wave into the headphone, no fluctuation, no sudden surge of amplitude. Measurement does not convey the dynamics, the soundstage and the overall performance, measurement is only a small part of the whole story.

Now we venture into the whole new world. The Hifiman has reached a balance of true-to-life naturalness and superior technicality performance in one package. The detail retrievals, the micro-details in the music is so well presented, it's like upgrading your old CRT monitors with a brand spanking new 8K UHD TV, with all the sharp images and colour contrast you have never seen before. The soundstage is pretty wide for headphones, although not sounding as wide as a pair of near-field speakers, but it is open, airy and velvety smooth. You can definitely have the out-of-head feeling for the music, instruments and all the notes surrounding you. You can say that it is natural, vivid to the source even when pin-pointing the positioning of instruments, and the transient response around the music. The layering, depth and imaging is one of the strong suits of Susvara without sacrificing speed and accuracy.

The midrange is very natural, possibly the most life-like you have ever tested within the realm of headphones. The vocals are velvet smooth, with a lusher feel to it when compared to the HE-1000SE. It does not push the music to warm, cold or bright sounding. It is just...Natural. The top end is extended, but never fatiguing. It always has an airy feel to the sound, but not the treble fatiguing one. The treble response does not burden the listener, even with busy tracks filled with drums and cymbals. Compared to the HE-1000SE, the HE-1000SE tries to bring the cymbals and crashes forward, making it clearer than it might have been; while the Susvara is merely showing the instruments, as closely as how it performs in real life.

If you are a basshead, Susvara might not be the cup of tea for you, but the linear response and elastic bass is quite enjoyable. Even on more bass demanding tracks, it sounds fast, deep and dynamic with true to life texture as well.

The Hifiman HE-1000SE has a slight peak in the upper high region, which makes the top end feel extended and more defined. Susvara on the other hand is smooth sounding, having almost a straight line like response with accurate but non-fatiguing extension. If you would compare Sennheiser HD800 or HD800s, the Susvara will still have lesser treble peaks while still preserving the existing treble details and information. Even if you are pacing the Susvara with metal or rock songs, filled it with hard clashing cymbals and drums, it will still preserve as many details as possible and re-create them as they sound as close to real life as possible.

Well for the price tag of RM24300, “Is this worth it?”, you may ask yourself. It will only be able to answer it if you experience it with your own ears.

 

◆ Acoustically Invisible Stealth Magnet Design
◆ Gold Plated Nanometer Grade Diaphragm
◆ Frequency Response : 6Hz-75kHz
◆ Impedance : 60Ω
◆ Sensitivity : 83dB
◆ Weight : 450g

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✨ SHOPIFY | https://bit.ly/Susvara-S |
◇ Retail : RM24,300 | Promo : PM for best price⠀

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