HiFiMan SUSVARA Headphones

Recommended Component 2024 – Stereophile

Reviewers' Choice Award – SoundStage! Network

"A Radically Different Way of Listening"

Hold onto your hat. Better yet, slip off your hat and slip on the HiFiMAN Susvara headphone instead. There's a new flagship in town, and the Susvara planar magnetic headphone pushes the envelope of the performance you might expect from a headphone, thanks to HiFiMAN's dogged determination to continually make new strides in headphone technology.

Among the technological breakthroughs, Susvara boasts HiFiMAN's new advanced "Stealth Magnet" design, used here for the very first time on a pair of headphones. The highly evolved, rounded planar magnetic drivers are acoustically transparent, dramatically reducing wave diffraction turbulence, which degrades the integrity of the sound waves. The result is reduced distortion, yielding a purer, more harmonious sound.

"Recommended Component" Honors

Stereophile honored the Susvara by awarding it the magazine's coveted Recommend Component status for 2024.

According to Stereophile,"The HiFiMan Susvaras are over-the-ear headphones with planar-magnetic drivers, built around gold-coated Nanometer Grade diaphragms—their thinnest ever, the company claims. The drivers also use HiFiMan's Stealth Magnet grids, the individual magnetic strips of which have rounded edges to reduce interference with sound output. The Susvaras weigh 15.9oz and offer an impedance of 60 ohms and a sensitivity of only 83dB. HR later wrote that he thinks the Susvara is a contender for the world's best headphones."

"New, More Intimate Insights"

"Jeez, it's hard to think of something about this sound that's not perfect," observes Brent Butterworth in his SoundStage! Network review for July 2017. "The Susvaras really did bring me closer to my music. Lots of audio products can uncover previously unnoticed details in your favorite recordings, but they usually do it by emphasizing some part of the audio band. The Susvaras gave me new, more intimate insights into my favorite recordings simply because they're better."

"An Absolute Joy"

"The Hifiman Susvara is an absolute joy to listen to almost anything with," raves Marcus, Headfonics, December 24, 2017. "It is one of the most immersive and technically capable planars that I have heard to date and fully justifies its summit-fi status in terms of sonic capability. The speed, imagining and control is more electrostatic in nature than planar at times and there is never a moment where I start feeling weighed down by fatigue. They bring a delightfully involving dimension to most every source track I throw at it."

"Where the Susvara truly shine compared to the other two reference cans is coherence. They pack the most convincing top to bottom extension, with exemplary uniformity throughout the range," notes Panagiotis Karavitis, Part-Time Audiophile, February 24, 2018. "So, yes, this is what HiFiMan can do, a full blown assault on the state of the art in headphones. Remember, you pay for the technology but what you buy is the sound, and what a sound this is. Susvara!"

Wave Bye-Bye to Sonic Degradation

It's difficult designing headphones that don't cause a degree of sonic degradation. Limited factors include inherent problems with conventional headphone design along with the limitations of conventional technology. HiFiMAN's Suvara shatters these restraints.

Degradation of sound quality in a conventional planar magnetic headphone is caused by the magnets getting in the way of the sound wave. The same thing happens with conventional electrostatic headphones, where the degradation of sound quality caused by the stator's interference. Dynamic headphones have distortion problems, too. A conventional dynamic driver's frequency response can be muddied due to distortions and vibrations across the diaphragm surface.

Susvara doesn't fall prey to these shortcomings, thanks to the "Stealth Magnet" driver design plus other innovations pioneered by HiFiMAN founder, Dr. Fang Bian. Unlike the sound waves created by a conventional magnet, the special shape of the "Stealth Magnets" employed in Susvara enable the waves to pass through the magnet without generating interference.

Nanometer-Grade Diaphragm

The incredible thinness of the Susvara's driver contributes to the dazzling realism. According to Brent Butterworth in his SoundStage! Network review, "Another innovation is the Susvaras' 'nanometer-grade' diaphragm, which is claimed to be less than 1µm thick. (A typical human hair is about 100µm thick.) In theory, this means better high-frequency response and more sonic detail."

This amazingly thin, highly responsive diaphragm can produce tremendously low distortion levels while still offering a highly dynamic response. By combining this diaphragm in harmony with the "Stealth Magnet" technology, the audio produced by Susvara is of a remarkable tonal quality and clarity.

Listening to the title track of Metallica's Master of Puppets, Butterworth notes, "It felt like a radically different way of listening. I could hear tiny, previously imperceptible imperfections in the abrupt, practiced starts and stops in this track's intro, which made the rhythm guitar, bass, and drums seem no less precise but far more human and musical."

Window Shade Sonic Serenity

The "Window Shade" grille on the Susvara has been painstakingly optimized to avoid any resonant frequencies. This leads to superior aural purity, tonally clean and unadulterated yet provides practical protection for the ultrafine diaphragm and additionally offering an appealing visual aesthetic.

The special ergonomic design of the Susvara offers superb comfort and extended listening. You'll forget you're wearing headphones and sink even deeper into the music.

Two cables are provided: a cable with a standard stereo 1/4" plug and a cable with a four-pin XLR connector for headphone amps that offer balanced connection.