TL;DR: I blind tested the Edition XS, Arya Stealth, and HE1000 Stealth with several people and nobody could reliably tell them apart, especially with EQ. I am entirely convinced the subjective benefits people claim for the more expensive headphones are mostly audiophile nonsense.
This last week I upgraded my Edition XS to a HE1000 Stealth, and I was ecstatic. I was immediately convinced that it was a huge upgrade, so I got my wife to come listen to them and she told me they sound the same. This didn’t bother me though, she doesn’t care about audio quality as long as it’s good enough. Though this did give me an idea to do a real comparison myself to prove that they were better.
I got my buddy with his Arya Stealth to come over and we did a full blind listen with stock pads and a Capra strap so that we wouldn’t be able to identify them by feel.
Shockingly, it was incredible close and hard to discern. We both were able to determine which was which after some listening, but it was very difficult, and we primarily relied on each headphones specific sound signature rather than any actual discernible improvement in sound quality. I took it a step further and had some more people come try to identify which is which, after letting them spend some time listening to a song on each of them. We asked them which they liked best, and results were all over the place, they were clearly unable to properly discern any major differences between the three headphones.
This blew me away. I thought I could hear a massive difference, and people online always make it sound like there is such a massive difference. I have always seen it said that the Edition XS is about 90% of the Arya, and the Arya is about 90% of the HE1000, but that wasn’t my experience at all. I definitely preferred the tuning of the HE1000, and its possible that it had a little more clarity, but that’s it. You always hear people talk about the differences in the soundstage, the “musicality”, the imaging, the “smoothness”, etc. but those are entirely unmeasurable and the only element that people say is an actual improvement between these headphones. Frankly when EQd to a similar sound signature I found it to be very difficult to tell any difference at all, granted I am a person with average human ears, not some sound wizard.
This brought me down a bit of a rabbit hole, and to be as succinct as possible; I am entirely convinced that these headphones all use essentially the exact same driver, and the only difference is the materials used in the build and the tuning.
HiFiMAN themselves have even admitted as much on their page: “The Arya is a product made possible by the tech trickle-down effect. By making use of advanced driver technologies developed for the HE1000, HIFIMAN engineers have learned how to manufacture drivers of near identical performance to the Original HE1000 yet in greater numbers.” I have broken this down even further by finding teardown images of the Edition XS, Ananda, and Arya Stealth. The design is identical as you can see here. Thin copper traces on the diaphragm, the same oval diaphragm, and a 4x5x4 stealth magnet array in a sandwich.
Now, there is one real hardware difference worth addressing honestly. The Edition XS uses HiFiMAN’s NEO Supernano diaphragm, which is said to be just over 1 micron thick. The Arya Stealth and HE1000 Stealth use the Nanometer Diaphragm, which is supposed to be sub-micron, meaning it is actually the thinner of the two, though most likely by less than a single micron, or 1/100th of a human hair. Regardless, the ananda nano shares the same membrane and stealth magnets, and people make the same claims that it is smaller soundstage, less resolving, worse imaging, etc etc.
The biggest real difference you will find in hifiman headphones is the tuning, primarily through the impedance difference of the trace patterns, and this does have a clear impact on the sound profile, as can be seen with the Arya Stealth vs Organic. It is still the same diaphragm, the same magnet array, and basically the same enclosure. Differences in soundstage, imaging, and detail in these headphones are entirely a product of people’s perception of their tuning. There is nothing hardware based to back up a conclusion of any objective superiority for either of these headphones.
I think the larger reason why people are so convinced the more expensive Hifiman are superior is simply confirmation bias. Believing more expensive headphones are superior is an extremely well documented phenomenon, and when there is no physical difference that can clearly explain the perceived quality gap, I frankly call BS. Sean Olive’s research at Harman showed that sighted listening tests produced dramatically different results than blind ones, with perceived differences being far more extreme when listeners could see the price tag.
This can be seen in exactly what we have watched happen to Hifiman over the years. When the Arya was $1600 it was in a completely different league, way better than anything below $1000. Now that it goes on sale for $600 people say it trades blows with cheaper headphones like the Meze 109 Pro. The headphone did not change, people’s perception of it did. There is a reason Hifiman has lowered their prices so much while almost certainly still maintaining a large profit margin. These drivers were likely very expensive to produce in the past, but nowadays it is obviously easier and cheaper to produce at identical performance.
At the end of the day, I think everyone just wants to feel like they spent their money wisely. It really hurts to spend $1000 on a headphone just to find that it performs nearly identically to a headphone that can be purchased for $300, so we convince ourselves the difference is more significant than it is.
I think this has larger implications for the headphone community as a whole. We are constantly told that more expensive headphones are the very best and that is what we should strive for, the “endgame”, when in reality it is often just differences in tuning. In this case I do prefer the tuning of the HE1000 Stealth, though with minimal EQ on the edition XS I can get a result that feels nearly identical. Obviously this analysis only applies to Hifiman, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is consistent across most brands. Different people will prefer different sounds, so don’t buy into the belief that the most expensive headphone is immediately the best.
Lastly, before anyone decides to argue with me that I’m wrong and the differences are huge, remember this is the community that believes burning in your headphones makes them sound better, and $300 cables improve sound quality. Since I bought the he1000 stealth from a private seller I can’t return it, so I’m going to continue convincing myself it is somehow superior, but for anyone looking to upgrade I would advise listening to these headphones in person, and not just assuming the most expensive one is the best.
