HiFiMAN Arya Unveiled - Measurements & Official Discussion

[Resolve]

Hifiman Arya Unveiled Headphones

HiFiMAN were kind enough to send us units for review. Here is the review video, measurements and additional notes are below.

HiFiMAN Arya Unveiled Review - Special in more ways than you realize.

Here is the Arya Unveiled frequency response:

HpTF Variation

What is this? This indicates the headphone’s behavior variation across different heads and ears, providing a better indication of how they are likely to vary across human heads as well - absent other factors like leakage effects from glasses for example.

Why is this? We have a video on the channel explaining why this type of visualization is likely necessary for headphone measurements. This should ideally evolve the more heads and ears we can test these products on, but the older paradigm of showing a single line on a graph to indicate headphone performance is insufficient.

B&K 5128 - Raw

GRAS 43AG-7 Raw

EQ:

Here is my EQ profile for how I personally like it. By no means do you have to do this, but at minimum I recommend using the 5khz filter and adjusting the rest to taste. For example, you may prefer not filling in the 1-3khz dip to keep a more spacious presentation.

Also remember to adjust pre-gain to -7dB!! I left it at zero for this to avoid confusion around EQ ruining technicalities, which is usually just a function of volume mismatch of some kind. It’s still not pink noise calibrated but better than a -7dB pregain.

LESS IMPORTANT DATA BELOW

Harmonic Distortion:

95dB

105dB

110dB

Driver damping & resonance frequency

To be added

Excess Group Delay

Notes:

• Build and design is very similar to others in this lineup, it feels a bit more plasticky than the HE1000 Unveiled but sturdy enough. Note these have fully naked drivers to the world with no grilles, which is concerning. With that said, the Arya Unveiled and HE1000 Unveiled have tighter magnet spacing than the Susvara Unveiled, making the magnets themselves function like a grille. But as always, keep the covers on when not using it, and don’t use it around screws.
• Comfort is exceptional, lots of room for big heads, not too heavy.
• For sound, there’s some excess 5khz, but apart from that this headphone is exceptional, especially for the mid and upper treble, which is rare.
• Very easy to EQ this headphone, which I recommend doing here. It’s not bad without it, but the 5khz emphasis can make things sound a bit clenched in the treble, but the combination of HpTF consistency across heads and great performance in the hardest part of the frequency response to get right (the mid and upper treble) is a very good thing. This headphone should be celebrated for that.
• For subjective qualities, while it does the spaciousness thing well, this one for me is so much more about detail and timbre - for those willing to reduce the 5khz feature. It’s almost a perfect match to the fine-grained features of my HRTF.

The conclusion here is that if you’re the kind of person who does EQ, this is one of the best sounding headphones available. If you’re not the kind of person who does EQ, I think you have to be okay with a bit of excess 5khz for the Arya Unveiled to be the leading candidate at its asking price.

[Luke]

Great review. I’m not sure if I could live with exposed magnets, I saw staff telling people to stop poking their fingers at the Unveiled lineup at Canjam so many times, it’s just too easy!

Some people compare the Arya UV favorably to the Susvara UV, in fact they go as far as “If you blind folded me and asked me to A/B, I wouldn’t be able to tell you which one is which”. Do you think you hear them the same way @Resolve ?

These seem like amazing open back headphones I’d love to try, but it’s only been less than 2 days since I dropped some headphones on the floor, so I guess maybe not to own!

[Resolve]

No Sus U and Arya U are clearly differentiable as far as their sound is concerned. Like if you know what to listen for it’s quite obvious. But that’s also without EQ. With that limitation, the Sus U sounds better IMO.

[Luke]

Cool, will give it a try and say hi when you’re back in CanJam SoCal in half a year (hopefully you’ll be there!).

The Susvara U sounded quite distinctively dreamy and delicate to me, on top of having a very agreeable FR.

[Patrick_G]

Hi @Resolve
I recently bought the He1000U and I am not far to think that the Arya Unveiled is better for a lower price. Is that right?
The comparison is not really done deeply in the video but I nearly ask myself if I should sell my HeU to get the AryaU and save some money .
Is there something that the HeU is still doing better?
Thanks

[Resolve]

It all depends on whether you do EQ. Personally I wouldn’t make such a decision without hearing them both first.

[Patrick_G]

I dont really like to EQ. In fact I really see two different worlds with these headphones : music and songs. I never feel anything is wrong with instruments. Some troubles appears only with songs. Some are totally ok, some others are « treble agressive » and bother my ears. I found that the 8khz region is the zone to EQ with songs.
It is pretty easy to fix but I always find I loose a bit of something about the instruments olaying with vocales then. Well, at the end, I find very difficult to get the best experience from both worlds with one tuning. So I have an EQed setup for songs and stock setup for music. Maybe it is the way to go .
Anyway, my question came from the video when your teamate says that the AryaU EQed is better than the HeU. For 1200$ less I was a bit perplex (and maybe a HeU EQed is better than an Arya EQed ). Yes hearing both is probably necessary. I could loan the HeU, a bit more difficult for the AryaU

[Patrick_G]

Well, if you go on car forum, you will find poeple with Porsche and Ferrari stuff. It is part of passion. On headfi you can find poeple with maybe 80000€ of gears with 30 headphones and 10 amps. I saved money for a long time to get the HeU and I can’t have 10 headphones like these ones. Passion leads to be a bit silly sometimes. Some would not spend 2000€ on headphones but 3000€ in a 1 week trip. Poeple are free, some of them are rich. Good for them.

[abm0]

Diggin’ the HpTF variation band, but a question occurs: why average the channels for each rig and not show a shaded area between all 4 curves (2xL, 2xR)? Should be closer to the real variation people are likely to see with their units, no?

[Resolve]

Well… you could go even further, why not show all the positional variation as well. This is something we’re still working on. It’s a balance between showing as much information as possible while still making it visually intelligible.

[pyalovega]

It depends what they meant by “better”, better in what? And if eqed Arya sounds better than HeU, what about eqed HeU? I have HeU too and didn’t listen to Arya. However I tried Arya and He1000 Stealth - Arya was inferior in every way to me, although I didn’t like both. These “betters” and “worses” are just marketing tricks… I will certainly listen to Arya U, but I doubt I will find them sounding “better”… and all this plastic for $1500, maaan…

[Patrick_G]

Well, that was the question in fact. Where the HeU is still better.
But I guess the Arya is a better all-rounder than the HeU. Graphs seem to show that they both have a very nice 6khz-10khz area, which can be EQed easily.
It is always the same issues I have in fact. Average recordings can sound shouty with the HeU. The Arya is probably better in that regard but you probably loose the sense of « air » and 3D you have with the HeU. Anyway it is what I get if I try to reach the Arya FR curve. More tolerant but damn, there is something missing I « regret » (for music I never have any complaint and never EQ anything). Would be fun to compare but I agree that plastic for 1590€ is surprising. And only one cable.

[giov05]

Been a bit since I’ve been on these forums, but ordered these last week (From headphones.com) along with the Mega5EST…
Have not listened to either yet, but looking forward to seeing Resolve’s EQ Filters for the Aryas.

Update: Sound very nice out of the box, TBH… but then just tried some EQ and wowee!

Honestly a bit afraid to push the sub-bass higher…
Update 2:
So far cannot tell much of a difference from reducing 5k a few db, listening to some different types of music. They sound very good through the treble to me though either way. Maybe the best I’ve heard? Just immediate first impressions. They are very nice though. Definitely an easy upgrade over any of the past Arya or HE line IMO. Have not heard either Susvara.

[pyalovega]

Maybe try tube/nutube amp to smoothen things up?

[Resolve]

Updated with my EQ profile. As always, this is just how I personally enjoy it. Only ever use EQ profiles as a starting point.

[giov05]

The EQ settings are nice. I mean, I don’t want to overhype them, but these sound really really good to me. And I love that they can take so much sub-bass. Though I’ve personally settled on +8 for the low-end boost. I’m just too used to the texture I get out of the Dunu Devinci and the little bit extra gives me that here too. It’s super nice, IMO. Filling in that bit around 2k also does not take away from the spaciousness as much as I was expecting it too. But it does bring vocalists closer. When I’ve tried to EQ other Hifiman Eggys to Harman in the past, I generally felt like it took away from the spaciousness too much. Maybe it could just be it was a bigger shift altogether on those headphones.

Anyways, I think I could see maybe someone saying it doesn’t have enough energy in the top-end, which I think might be fair, but I personally like a smoother not fatiguing treble response. And the clarity and timbre just feels kind of natural, not overly airy, IMO.

And after really enjoying these for several hours now, I plugged the EQ settings into another measurement of these headphones over on Squiglink and the result came out like this.

And compared to the measurement without the EQ Filter

That’s a pretty tight adherence to Harman… Like there is something really impressive about it to me. That’s a pretty clean line. It reminds me of an IEM response.

[MichaelJames]

As someone who really enjoys the Arya Stealth, I think the Arya Unveiled is the most exciting new release in a long time. I hope to one day own one, though it will probably be a very long time in the future (including because I have young children who would not hesitate to shove something through a grill-less driver). I would also be interested in the extent to which it might be possible to EQ the Arya Stealth to sound like the Arya Unveiled (and whether this would be difficult due to more variation at higher frequencies on the Stealth).

I thought your video review was great - and I generally think your headphones content is the best out there. But I have to say that for such an exciting headphone, I don’t think the review was quite as good as others have been. I have some feedback for your consideration as a consumer of your content, if that’s something you find useful:

• In terms of the format, I really like the 2 person conversation / interview format, and would welcome more of this style. The back and forth between you guys is what makes your livestreams so compelling.
• In terms of the content, I think your analysis was simultaneously excellent and also slightly frustrating, particularly in relation to the sections titled ‘subjective sound’ and ‘comparisons and discussion’.
• On the one hand, I welcome the framing of the discussion in terms of the earlier video about the truth about sound quality. For example, you drew a distinction between perceiving the headphone as being very good for detail, timbre and resolution because the fine-grained features above 6kHz agree with your HRTF, versus perception of greater detail on the HE1000 in the sense of tasteful coloration, due to that headphone being brighter. Another example is the discussion of HpTF variation. This is great stuff, and I like that this is pitched at the level of people following your channel and paying attention to what you say.
• On the other hand, I feel this has perhaps strayed a bit too far into more objective language and discussion of frequency response, to the point that I didn’t actually get a clear impression of what the headphones sound like in big picture terms, or relative to headphones not in the Arya/HE1000 line. For instance, a lot of the discussion in the ‘subjective sound’ section was framed in terms of frequency response directly (e.g. elevated 5kHz which is better to reduce for improved timbre and detail, 3kHz dip, smooth and consistent treble above 6kHz), and the subjective descriptors (e.g. detail, resolution, timbre, spaciousness, richness) that were used were pretty much in terms of being relative to others in the Arya/HE1000 line.
• As a viewer of a review, while acknowledging the private language problem, I do really want to hear about your subjective impression of how the headphones sound, including relative to non-Hifiman models, and particularly in stock form. How would you describe the bass? Is it tight? Punchy? Does it slam? Is it dynamic? How is the midrange - is it forward? Rich? (There was a general statement that the unveiled models are richer than non-unveiled, but what about compared to headphones known as a reference for rich midrange, like the 6x0 line?) Laid back? Does the low end have a sense of body and weight, or is it more thin? Is it warm? What do the frequency response features you mentioned actually mean for how instruments sound in the mix?
• Related, I would love to see more discussion of the frequency response with reference to actual examples of songs and instruments. Your Softears Volume S video that dropped earlier today was great for this! Talking about tracks you’re listening to, you say the bass is intense and punchy, and has a sense of dynamism! There is a lot of body and warmth to the sound. But there’s also a region of the treble with an imbalance that makes it strident, with extra growl. I want to hear your subjective impressions of the Arya Unveiled like this!
• Also, it would be great to get a sense of where the Arya Unveiled sits in the current market, and how it compares to non-Hifiman headphones, both in terms of price/value and also sound. By way of example, Josh Valour’s video review described the Arya Unveiled as a deviation from the Arya/HE1000 line due to its reduction in brightness / treble, and said it could be considered an interesting successor to something like the HD600. There were a couple of mentions in this video that there were better things out there if you don’t EQ, or that you need to be comfortable with 5kHz if you don’t EQ, but I don’t think particular headphones were named outside the Arya/HE1000 line.
• Finally, appreciating the importance of EQ and the potential benefits to sound quality, most of the discussion here seems to assume that everyone’s use case involves a situation where EQ is possible, and anyone not using it is choosing not to use it, or not willing to. I EQ my headphones when listening at my PC, but I also listen to a hifi setup through my integrated amp’s headphone out, connected to a CD player, turntable and streamer (Sonos port), with nothing in the chain that has EQ functionality. I imagine there are a lot of headphone listeners with a similar use case. This is part of why I really value discussion of the headphones’ stock sound. And that’s not at all to say the discussion of EQ was not useful, I think it was really valuable. My only point is that the language of ‘not willing to EQ’, the talk of the ‘ease’ of EQ and ‘you should be EQing headphones’ puts me off a bit. Particularly where the language used turns negative. See e.g. at about 23:12 where Golden says ‘the 5kHz region is objectionable, but it’s so easy to fix that, If you’re spending this much money and you’re not willing to do that to get, in my opinion, an outright better headphone when you have done that, then that’s kind of dumb’. I don’t think insulting your viewers is a good approach.

To reiterate - I really enjoyed this review, and would love to see more content like it (and also more content about the Arya Unveiled in particular). I just think there is some scope to improve, and perhaps you might wish to consider these things.

[Resolve]

I appreciate the feedback. And trust me, I get it… people want a sense of the subjective effects - that’s what this hobby is all about. I actually have somewhat of a perspective on this that’s currently brewing and might do a video about it.

In short, while I still give these indications, like in the Softears vid, in large part this has to do with the way this kind of language is used, and the enthusiasm with which it is expressed. More to the point, the varied ways in which we attach meaning to different qualities of the experience can lead to a lot of false positives and false negatives that it does become irresponsible to express this stuff in any declarative manner in reviews, especially when someone’s money is at stake.

At the moment I’m not sure what the right course of action is for me when it comes to providing information on things. I actually don’t think I’m a particularly good reviewer when it comes to expressing enthusiasm for subjective effects, in part because that’s just not my default way of experiencing these products anymore. Like… yes I can hear all of these things, yes I can attach meaning to them, but to me it’s not “wow the dynamics”, or “wow the detail”, it’s “wow, this FR relationship works really well for me and my head/ears”. And yeah… that sucks for those who don’t get that same excitement from good FR.

But with that said, yes I do think it’s worth injecting some subjective language back into things, I just need to find a way to do so responsibly. I think it may be to do more initial impressions of things - I certainly hope people aren’t making purchase decisions based around those.

[MichaelJames]

Thanks Andrew for the extremely prompt response. Sidenote, it’s great how you and the others really engage with the community through the forum, and I appreciate your accessibility.

As is clear from my feedback, I would encourage you to continue to express your subjective views and use that kind of language, and to do more initial impressions videos (they’re great!). I would add also some further points in relation to your concerns about being responsible.

Regarding creating false positives and false negatives through declarative language - headphones produce audio - it is inherently difficult to relay that sensory experience to another person using language (if you think that’s problematic, perhaps you should stop reviewing headphones at all). If you’re concerned about this, you could mitigate this risk by including a concise caveat either ahead of or at the end of the subjective sound portion of your reviews, or perhaps creating a full caveat video and pointing to that (in some ways you already have done this with the ‘truth about sound quality’ video, and notably, you already cross-referred to this in the video). The former could be a simple statement along the lines of “this is my experience and I’m using the language I have to describe it - your anatomy and experience of the sound quality may differ, and you might use the same words in a different way”. Or in very short, “this is how I hear it, your mileage may vary”. You already tend to include language like this, so I don’t think anyone could say your experiential descriptions are irresponsible in any way. The private language problem will be well known to followers of your channel. Plus it’s not like other reviewers are doing this - and there are plenty out there - so you are already being more responsible than them. Besides, it seems doubtful that you alone are controlling the zeitgeist, or creating hype trains. That takes scale across different reviewers and content producers.

Related to this, part of the reason I thought your Volume S impressions video was so great is because it was your immediate and real reaction, using the language that first came to mind. That is how I suspect most of us viewers / consumers of your content actually listen to and compare headphones - we are thinking about it in terms of: I like the warmth and body, I don’t like how splashy the cymbals sound, I find this brightness fatiguing, I find this muddy or veiled. We’re not at your level yet in terms of understanding what it means for perceived sound quality when there’s a 3kHz dip or a 5kHz peak. Most of us don’t have measurement rigs, and we don’t know if what we’re hearing is because of a particular FR feature. It also means when you say the Arya Unveiled has these things, I don’t know what that means in practice unless you relate it to particular songs or instruments. So leaving that out actually makes your reviews less useful to the viewer.

On that last point, I think you and the team are in a unique position of actually being able to relate your experience to the frequency response. Because you have that understanding, you can say that the relationship between the bass and treble makes the headphones come across as punchy, or that you infer that the 3kHz dip makes female vocals slightly recessed (nb. I’m making this up, no idea if this is accurate), or whatever. Far from being irresponsible, you’re actually in a position to lead the discourse in terms of contributing to establishing or bedding down the meaning of subjective terms by reference to objective phenomena or features of sound quality. While yes, a lot of this has not been the subject of peer reviewed science and technically remains conjecture, it is informed conjecture (and can perhaps be confirmed playing around with EQ), and regardless, you’re able to caveat that aspect too in the same way you did in the Arya Unveiled review. And again, you have to recognise that you alone will not be the determinant of the meaning of words used (i.e. such that you must be so precise as to only publish something if it’s 100% correct); you will only be one voice in a sea of voices. And in any case, unlike many others, you guys acknowledge when your views change, including in the face of different evidence.

Regarding people using reviews to inform purchase decisions - I very much doubt consumers are blind buying products based solely on your reviews, and I don’t think you need to worry so much about this. (Maybe sales go up when Crin says blind buy the Moondrop Space Travel, but apologies, my impression is that your status is perhaps less cult-like). As a purchaser of headphones, I get information about my prospective purchases from a very wide range of sources, including other YT channels and written content. I imagine most others do the same, if they actually value the dollars they are spending. For those (I assume few) that are prepared to blind buy based on limited information - that’s on them, really. They must either have enough disposable income to not care, or themselves have an irresponsible level of confidence about their handle on the information you provide, despite all the caveats you give.

I look forward to hearing more about your perspective on this (and yeah, a video sounds great).