Thanks that would be great, I’d be very interested to see those results. Yes to confirm the effect of the revised Sundara pads a swap with the old ones would be ideal. Maybe Oratory has access to both, seeing as his job is pretty much to measure headphones.
I literally said “everything matters”. Of course swapping pads will change things.
My point was you can’t draw conclusions about internal construction and how that relates to the entire line by doing some pad swaps.
I’m not saying it won’t make a difference to FR, it almost certainly will (whether they will be similar or completely different I do not know) but it will not improve the parts were the driver doesn’t perform as well on the HE400i as on the Deva (speed, detail etc.)
I’m curious. Why do you think it is likely oratory1990 measured the original pads? The measurement is dated Dec 2019.
Because his measurements differ significantly from @Resolve’s below (raw uncompensated, using the same GRAS 43AG rig), which we know were with the new revised pads.
And they differ in the ‘right’ way too. Although not as accurate, Resolve’s original measurements using his old rig (compensated) showed the Sundaras with the original pads having more pronounced dips at 1-3kHz and 6kHz and a peak at 3-5kHz, relative to his measurements of the new unit with the revised pads, see below.
Original:
New:
These more pronounced dips and peaks with the original pads are just what you see in Oratory1990’s measurements compared to Resolve’s of the new Sundara with revised pads using the same measuring equipment as Oratory (first graph in this post), strongly suggesting Oratory’s measurements were using the original pads. Oh and the dates on his graphs don’t really tell you anything - that’s just when he measured them, and since he mostly just measures headphones people already own and send in to him, they’re not necessarily recent purchases.
Again, we don’t know when the pad structure changes happened, and we don’t know if that’s solely responsible for the changes to the tuning. If anything, the differences here just support the initial suspicion that some reviewers got old stock units - although I’d have to ask him where he got it from. Regardless, unless one of us has them both side by side, with both pads (and/or potentially the pads that are sold separately from HiFiMAN directly), we won’t know what’s responsible for it. It’s just speculation otherwise. I’ll keep an eye out for an older unit to see if that’s doable because I’d personally really love to do this comparison and get to the bottom of it.
But at the very least, if you follow the purchase advice noted above (i.e., buying from a reputable dealer with a return policy and not through used sources), you should feel confident you’re getting the better measuring headphone.
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I just wanted to mention that the above red line HEQ compensation curve of the Sundara is exactly how I hear them, even though the Gras measurements are probably more accurate. It is just ever so slightly elevated from 4 kHz and above, along with a bit of forwardness around 11-12kHz. Compared to the Clear, the Sundara is definitely brighter, and surprisingly has more air and midrange detail to my ears. The Clear is still my favorite, but the Sundara actually competes in many areas, and I often prefer it with all my favorite classical/instrumental music.
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So I asked Oratory1990 and it does seem like the Sundara he measured had the original pads. He also responded to my hunch (my emphasis):
What do you think about my hunch that the main differences in frequency response between the Sundara, HE4XX, HE400i and Deva are down to their pads, especially considering the very similar FR of the newer Sundara version with revised pads to the Deva, as I showed above, which use very similar pads?
Pads certainly affect the sound a lot more than people would often think. I’d go as far as to say they’re as important as the actual driver.
For anyone who doesn’t know Oratory1990, he’s a highly knowledgeable professional acoustic engineer who measures and helps design headphones for a living as part of the company he works for. So from his answer above I think there’s good reason to consider my hunch as plausible (or at least possible).
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So this is something I completely agree with. I don’t think anyone has said anything to the contrary, merely that it’s not the only thing involved in the tuning. Moreover, pad tunings are often unique to a specific headphone. This means that while the pads make a huge contribution to the tuning of a headphone, you can’t just swap pads around to different headphones and expect it to sound like the original headphone.
By the way, yeah Oratory is a very helpful person in this community and he’s responsible for much of my knowledge base as well. Definitely someone to look up to and learn from!
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And I completely agree too 
Swapping pads around will not make different headphones sound exactly like the original. However, in some cases, such as within a generally similar ‘family’ of models that may have very similar driver base tunings, swapping pads may get you pretty close, that’s all I’m saying. My hunch is that the headphones I mentioned are one such close family, but of course that can only be confirmed or denied through measurements of pad swaps.
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Yeah definitely there’s a chance it could end up being primarily (if not solely) in the pads, but we don’t know until we test it. I need to get my hands on an old revision to do that because there’s also a chance the driver revision that happened a long time ago is responsible for the FR changes we see. I do think it’s more likely that it’s to do with the pads, but I’ve seen some counterexamples where it wasn’t clear. This could be down to other factors as well, like positioning on the rig or test environment - so the bottom line is that we can’t be sure yet. The other big question in my mind is what’s being sold for the standalone pads, whether it’s the new version or the old version.
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I did speak to one person who says they got a replacement pair of pads and they were the same as the ones on their revised Sundaras, and I’ve actually ordered that pair of pads I posted photos of myself now (Hifiman call them ‘Pali Pads’), so I’ll see what they’re like in hand.
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Ok so I just got the Pali pads and they’re not even exactly the same as each other…so that’s yet another possible variable in play now haha. Really stupid question, but some people elsewhere are questioning your measurements of the revised Sundara due to the large frequency response changes from the original so I just want to allay their skepticism - are you 100% sure those measurements are correct? There wasn’t any possibility of accidentally leaving some EQ on somewhere (as they very closely follow the Harman target), or even mixing up graphs with another headphone’s measurements (e.g. the Deva, as they are very similar to Oratory’s measurements of the latter as I showed before)? I’m only asking so I can put their doubts to bed really.
Well, two things on that. I’ve measured it a number of times - I still have it here, and I get the same result. The other thing to look at is that even on the old MiniDSP EARS rig, you can see a difference as well. This is a bit surprising to read that people aren’t trusting these measurements, but that may also be due to the fact that I was previously using a MiniDSP EARS rig - and that’s definitely something to only use for comparison purposes. With the GRAS43AG-7 rig this is something that we can be a lot more confident in.
And lastly, I don’t actually EQ the Sundara, so I don’t think that’s a possible error. When doing measurements, you want to make sure you have all enhancements disabled so there’s no chance of that happening.
I’d also like to point out that Metal571 and a number of other reviewers have heard the new revision of the Sundara exactly the same way, and reported the same findings I did even before we had the GRAS rig. So, I’m not sure who is skeptical about this but there are enough reports of it both measuring and sounding this way that corroborate one another.
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Great, I’ll quote this to the doubters
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The plot thickens. Crinacle has published his measurement of the Sundara using the GRAS 43AG-7:
Looks similar to oratory1990’s measurement to me. If so that would indicate either they both measured the original Sundara, there’s unit variation, or there’s something inconsistent with the way the revised Sundara has been measured (slightly different equipment, ambient conditions, headphone position, etc).
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It’s the same measurement rig, but we do have it set up somewhat differently. I’ve been comparing with him for a number of measurements and they all generally look pretty close - at least within unit variation tolerances. For FR, there shouldn’t be that much difference, I know he’s measuring in a mall but that doesn’t really impact FR that much when testing at sufficient volumes. With the Sundara, I measured both the old and ‘new’ revisions before, back when we had the old EARS rig and not the GRAS, and this did show an important difference. Same rig, same environment for both units (I had three units total, two old and one new).
So really the question on my mind is, which is old and which is new. Chronologically for us in NA, the better measuring unit was more recent. But this could also just be stock allocation, and what we’re calling ‘new’ here could potentially be the old one. But this wouldn’t line up with any other reviews chronologically either. So I may just need to get another unit and test that.
If you’re wondering, I’ve measured the other channel here as well:
And lastly, we also don’t know how old the Z & Co demo unit is. I’ll see if Crin can find out.
EDIT: Looking more closely at Crin’s measurement, I’m actually uncertain if this is the previous version. This is almost close enough to this one that it explains the differences - and that’s definitely not as bad as the previous revision for bass roll-off and midrange unevenness (we’re talking on the order of 5dB deviations for the old one, and both of these aren’t as bad). I mean it very well could also just be unit variation that accounts for all of this, and maybe this one unit I have here is the lucky one. I’ll see if I can get another one in to confirm.
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This is really fascinating to me. Thanks for the additional info and not taking my comments as a critique.
I tried to compare the FR curves using the same scale, but it’s tricky. I need to find or make a tool that can overlay them. I wish I had access to the data instead. Then it would be easy.
I can send you my Sundara if that helps.
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Keep in mind also that the targets are different, and the normalization is likely also different. I’m still using the Harman combined target (2013 bass with 2018 mids and treble), Oratory is using Harman 2018, and Crin is using the IEF target that uses Harman 2018 for mids and treble but is flat all the way down from 900hz. So really you have to look just at the raw measurements and compare that.
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Hi, i recently bought my pair of sundaras from amazon two weeks ago, and i´ve been listening to them in a daily basis, what i can say is that i´m very pleased with this headphones being my first pair of real headphones, i listen to all kinds of music and it is like if a lighning has struck me because of the quality and detail these ones give, i´ve read about the issues the brand has with qc but in my case i dont think there is any problem, the only concern i have that i would like to share is that while any genre sounds fantastic in this cans, even classical, i´ve found that in the highest pitched female opera sounds, piano and very high strings tend to distort o clap i dont know it´s name, it sound like grainy, i use a dragonfly red from a lenovo thinkpad with spotify, if anybody knows what causes this, because with any other types of music including much of the classical pieces, it stands marvelous, only this detail concerns me because of the qc background the brand has, i thank you in advance to you all for the advice.
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