New addition to the stable.
I made the decision to take advantage of the $600. price on the HiFiMan Arya Stealth, here pictured with the Meze 109 Pro. I think 2025 is going to be a really uneventful year so far as new purchases. I've also upgraded my Fiio BTR7 to the newly released BTR17 and I purchased the Earmen stack which consists of Amplifier, Linear PS, DAC & Streamer.
Dec 19, 2024
One of the common complaints was that the headphones sound "muffled", and the bass is too strong, and I can see where those complaints come from, but I feel like those are just stylistic, sound signature complaints. The sound -quality- itself is very good for the price - it is a surprisingly smooth sounding headphone, and despite some things indeed sounding "muffled" just a bit, the details are all still there.
I currently own a Sennheiser HD-650 and Grado HP-1, and have owned the Grado RS-1, Sony MDR-CD3000, so I'm not some guy who has only heard $20 headphones in his life, and is marveling at these headphones. I just wanted a cheap pair of headphones for casual listening, where I could just pop them on whenever, for moving-watching, youtube-viewing, or music-listening late at night, and I can definitely see myself enjoying these.
The concensus seems to be, not worth the MSRP of $200, and I totally agree... but at $100 brand new (there are cheaper ones on ebay, but the ones I could find were all refurbished)? I think it's a great deal.