There have been minor improvements to driver technology over the last decades, but it hasn't been much. I asked basically this same question a while back and people said the driver itself doesn't make that much of a difference, everything else makes the difference. The biggest thing that impacts sound is the housing design, the shape of it is normaly determined by trying out lots of shapes and seeing what works best. This is also how headphones are tuned to get their unique sound.

The driver still makes a difference. A good driver is going to perform better than a cheaper, smaller driver. The material also matters, lighter materials are able to move faster and distort less at high volumes. The magnets make a difference too. The difference is tuning, even if 2 headphones have the same driver, companies can modify the magnet type, housing, angle, and material to get drastically different sounds.

Some people have also experimented with driver shape. Focal headphones have a M shaped driver, and the Sony Linkbuds had a ring driver. But those are expected to sound different.

Headphones allow you to listen and won't bothers other (open backs leak sound, but nothing close to how much speaks do). Headphones are portable and can easily be taken to work, home, school, other's houses. Speakers are impacted by your room and where you are sitting in relation to them, you need to be in the perfect conditions to ge their best sound, with headphones you can use them anywhere in your house. If you want to EQ, headphones are easy to EQ and almost all popular models have auto EQ profiles, to EQ Speakers you will need a DSP and proper equipment to measure the speakers.In terms of absolute sound quality, headphones are better than speakers at the same price point, but as you spend more, speakers will outperform headphones.

Are you going to sell the XS if you get Arya? If you will then get the Arya Stealth. The HD800S is great for soundstage, but isn't as good for music as Arya. The Arya doesn't have the soundstage of the HD800S, but it's still better than a lot of other headphones.

$20 for wired headphones? What year is it?

They are selling a rock for $8 that's highway robbery.

I wanted to make an eq for my laptop, but it would sound different if I'm using it at my desk, lap, or bed. So I just made an amplifier EQ. I have an EQ profile which is flat but has a +10 dB pre amp. I turn this on if I'm watching a video thats too quiet, I know the speakers can go louder, it's just the video isn't loud enough.

The reason I used to belive was they all sound similar, but higher impedance models are able to take in more power and produce a better sound. The frequency response would be the same for all models, but the higher impedance one is able to get better detail and clarity. But they are all about equally hard to drive, the 80 Ohm need more power than you expect and the 250 Ohm need less than you expect, so that reason is gone.

Speaker measurement is a lot more complicated than headphone measurement. A headphone measurement rig can accommodate basically all headphone types and or can be tested in many locations. Changing location does not impact the headphone's sound, it's going to be the same everywhere. But for speakers, sound bounces off of surroundings and the shadow of the room will impact the sound of speakers (less relevant for laptop speakers, but same points). That's why it's easy to have a database of all headphone measurements. In order to measure speakers you will need to do it yourself in your normal environment, take measurements from different points in your room, and use a specialized microphone for precise readings. You can't simply have a database of all speakers, and using those measurements for an EQ will not work.

I know the ones you looked at are in a different class than these, I'm just saying be careful when buying cheap tube amps.

Are you thinking of getting all of them, testing them, and then returning the ones you don't like? Or will you just get 1?

https://youtu.be/22kx0q5j-JA

Here's a great video where someone baught cheap tube amps and talked about them and compared them. It was to see if cheap tube amps are worth the purchase, I think he also questioned if they are real tube amps because they worked when the tubes were removed, so it could be a solid state amp with tubes and called tube amps.

He also made a fallow up when he took them apart and talked more about them. https://youtu.be/2Zt5WPdyPTw

Even if they made slight changes to the V2 Ananda, they likely aren't coming out with a V3, there isn't a drastic enough change that it would result in a name change. They have the most up to date Hifimsn Stealth magnets, and the V2 Ananda is relatively new and isn't getting a successor for a while.

The Arya Stealth listed the weight as 404g, the same as V2, but all reviews said the weight is around 440g. Weight is the easiest measurement of a headphone and Hifiman still didn't fix it. So this is most likely them updating their measurements.

It might be something more than codec, lots of people who are into audio can't tell the difference with better codec, but even normal people can easily tell samung buds sound better on Samsung phones, I think it's the same for Apple as well. Some people say they make other devices purposely sound worse and then say it's just the codec, or they apply a slight eq which makes everyone perceive them as better.

Also the battery and software part was very easy. For software I paired them to my phone and turned off touch controls because I was going to unplug the touch sensor and didn't want it freaking out, turned off transparency mode because it would freak out as well if this worked. And the battery was easy, there was a positive and negative contact pad, you have to solder the positive and negative end of the USB wire to them, the only hard part was soldering them individually and connecting them together into 1 USB port. One bud didn't work so I had to remove it and solder again until it worked.

It was a huge pain to work on it, something so small and I have very little experience and lacked the propper equipment for the job, probably the most janky soldering set up anyone has ever seen.

This is probably the easiest thing to fix on headphones, and I might even try fixing them myself if i don't want to wait and they will still look good after, but if it's anything bigger, like a damaged driver or housing, then in not even going to try.

I actually tried a ambitious project a few months ago, and it didn't go as planned. I took off galaxy buds plus and wanted to make them into a bluetooth receiver because it's good quality compared to the cheap one I was using and because I have a samsung phone it uses a higher quality bluetooth codec and everyone who has tested said they do sound noticeably better with a samsung phone. There was a a YouTube video I was following, but thatcwas for the original galaxy buds, and looked relatively easy, but for the Buds plus the driver is glued into the housing, so I couldn't take it off, and I couldn't desolder the speaker and expose the contact pads because they were on the other side. I tried for a while but couldn't do anything. Before that I converted them to run off USB instead of the battery and that was successful, I plug them in and they both show up on my phone, but then the project dies there. I already had the wire stripped and ready to solder to the sound output, so I just gave up on it.

I have a cousin who still uses the original galaxy buds, I'm going to wait until the battery on them die and he might just give them to me. Then I might try again. I even made a housing for them.

It is pretty simple to fix, but if it has warranty from Sennheiser then I would just get it fixed by them instead. Don't want to make the problem even bigger.

The face of this subreddit at this point.

They never heard soundstage like this.

That is an actual possibility. I remember a reviewer once said "Hifiman headphones aren't the best looking, they aren't the best built, they aren't the most comfortable, but they do have best in class sound quality." And your statement does actually this.

I've said the $30 Samsung Type C earbuds are some of the best you can get ad that price point, and definitely the best mic out of earbuds at that price. Also phones are losing the headphone jack and more devices are using Type C, making them way more convenient.

It better be real wood, you are spending $2000 and they can't include real wood. Also it better be real wood because if you're buying something that ugly you at least know it's real wood. No one in their right mind would use fake wood and have the option to make it look like any type of wood and choose that one.

The color choice is so bad, they could have learned a thing or two from the interior of a 2015 Chrysler 200.

At that price they should be.

Maybe is just this picture, the renders didn't look this bad.

Everything except a car sub strapped to your head.

Everyone will make fun of AKG headphones for being made of cheap plastic until they put on large planar headphones made of metal and want to go back to the AKG which just float on your head.

I used to store my Sundara in their original box. One day I opened them after 2 months of sitting and they had a really weird smell, it was coming from the earcups and the box itself. It was a weird smell but I put silica gel packets in it and the smell went away the next time I opened them. This should be fine.