Imo the bliss offers more bass than wa33. It may not have as much texture (working from memory). I think with the wa33 dryness helps it out in the texture department. As far as slam and quantity of bass, the bliss wins.
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I am an ICC Knight Riders guy myself.
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That headband does look really good. I should do that and the grill mod to mine, especially the grill mod since a friend and fellow member here gave me a setā¦
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Just want to say I am now convinced that speaker amps + transformers is the way to go or for Shang. Iām currently using Weiss 502 ā some michi AOI for a pre ā dual chord spm 1400 mkii ā woo wee ā Shang and this is head and shoulders above what Iāve ever heard these things do both in terms of detail and stage but also tonal balance and body. Unfortunayely this combo has some noise floor issues but I am now for certain convinced that transformers are the way
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Have you tried the susvara direct off tap yet lol? Or other headphones
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No. I didnāt think to bring sus for some reason and they donāt have any cans here I think woild be worthwhile.
This is making me fairly interested in levante or maybe afm-25s though tbh (though no idea what I would do for a pre)
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You could just get their dedicated preamp, or go through preamp hell where you try and figure out the best synergy possible and dump more money than you expect to into it. Although I plan to do that somewhat so in the future Iāll let you know what pairs well on the cheaper end with my afm lol
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some guy on head-fi runs a WA23 into AFC10 and says itās the best match heās ever heard for Sus
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thats gunna be a while until i do it lukily, so ill let you do the preamp hell for me with one tier higher of a chain than I would go so I can make some faily educated blind buys
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I wonder if he has heard AIC by its self. TBH i am kinda currious where wa23 stacks up pre wise.
from my time with it as pre to my genelecs it was great lol
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Both the WA33 and 3ES were pretty great preamps from my experience as well
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With the HE1000 v2 dropping down to $2000, I was wondering if anyone had a pair and also could comment on any comparisons to the HE6SE v2?
If there is too much overlap between then I probably wouldnāt be interested, but if the HE1000 is as good as advertised I would be interested. Iāve ruled out the Arya just because I think the treble might be a little too sharp for me, although I could be wrong about that.
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Iāve owned the HEKv2 (only sold after buying Susvara) and currently own an HE6se v2.
TL;DR
The fact that HEKv2 is now $2K vs. $3K does not automatically make it less of a performer. IMO It continues to sound like a $3K class headphone.
OK if you have a minute, then Iāll continueā¦
For my preferences and system configuration:
HE1000v2 = Better stage W+H+D, Better base quality, texture, tone, bass extends further and sub-bass is more prominent. Midrange is richer, treble extends further and is smoother along the way. Over-all timbre is more natural, believable with more detail coming through. Itās just a more refined piece.
HE6se v2 = I feel is a bit faster and though not as technical of a performer, it is no slouch. It does however demand more attention be paid to amplification to bring it to a competitive level, and not just enough wattage/current but quality watts/amps. HE6se v2 is a fun headphone to have but, I have others that are much better. It for me fills a void as there was much more overlap between the HE1000v2 and Susvara than the HE6se and Susvara - so that is why I have it. Plus, I got it for such good price that it is not worth me selling, tbh.
I ran the HEKv2 and HE6se v2 both from a Spring3 KTE + Violectric HPA v550 - the HEKv2 being my favorite with that setup.
I also ran both from the Spring3 KTE and Ferrum Oor/Hypsos with the HEKv2 still my favorite performer with this setup, and this is the setup that I work the HE6se v2 exclusively from still. It is much better on this one than with my Yggy + V550 setup. I credit the Ferrum stack more than the DAC for why I like the combo tbh.
Though it is obvious that I do dig the HE6se v2, if I did not have a Susvara I would have a HEKv2 and the HE6se v2 would be put away as a spare or out on loan.
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Canāt wait for you to finally peel those grills off and hear something really special 
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Hey @Delta9K, really appreciate your insight here; your experience is exactly what I was asking for.
My chain is Yggdrasil (Less is More) ā Ragnarok 2.
I hear great bass extension in the HE6se so Iām really surprised to hear you say the HEKv2 has even greater bass extension, as well as all of the other points.
And thatās another great point about the Susvara - unless I end up with $4-6k burning a hole in my pocket, I will probably never make that purchase, but Iāve heard that the HEKv2 is about 95% there to a Susvara.
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Itās not really that close on a good chain for the susvara, but the hekv2 and hekse are much better value unless you want to spend 3-4x the cost of the susvara on source gear to actually drive a susvara to where it preforms as it should imo.
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Iām definitely in that ābest value bang for the buckā camp I think, although Iām sure the top end headphones are worth it, but to your point, they have to be on the right souce gear.
But it sounds like the HEKv2 could be a worthy compliment on my current setup!
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Just wrote up a bit of a susvara chain recommendation guide for someone with a 20k budget and figured I would post it here as well
That is a metric shit ton, so you have a ton of options! Just TBH, I think there are even too many options for me to give you a real solid recommendation, but hopefully I can give you some places to start.
First off, I donāt recommend buying a whole chain in one go. Start one piece at a time and move up. As the place with the least options for sus is the amp, that is where I would start. With a 20k budget you can comfortably spend around half of it here and still build a well balanced chain. Here is a stellar writeup on some amp options for susvara in that range.
Next is the digital side. In this range, your digital front end will play a solid role. I would try and stream if you can, but if you cant, there are some good DDCs here to clean up the usb out of your computer as well. Streaming dacs like meitner, weiss, or totaldac are also solid ways to maximize your money. The important thing here though is to get the amp and figure out what exactly you want to balance out the sound from there. Do you want to tilt the chain warmer? More spacious? More dynamic? This will also be largely achieved through the dac and is why I recommend you live with the amp for a bit before getting a dac. You can find some awesome writeups and comparisons of dacās across several price ranges in this thread.
Last is the ancillaries. While I wouldnt budget a ton for them, stuff like cables and isolation footers for tube amps/dacs will play a role here. I am partial to Fern and Robby feet (roughly 350 for a set of 4) for tube gear, and 1k should be plenty to get you decent cables across the board (that will get you cerious graphene extreme power cables, interconnects, and digital if you go used as an example).
Here are some examples of chains that should fit in your budget even new (make sure to talk to dealers, advertised price is basically never the real one they will sell for):
Weiss 501 (streamer dac) ā WA33 (Takatsuki upgrade, but standard 2a3) ā Susvara
This is a chain that will focus realism above all else. Its honestly not my personal preference but I understand why people adore it. Smaller stage than some other options here, but incredible image clarity and placement with really stand out timbre performance. Texture can be slightly lacking compared to other options in the price range, but the chain avoids being brittle or too thin IMO and keeps a good neutral balance. This is my personal reference for āneutralā. Bass is well controlled and articulate, but its not an utter bass cannon chain.
Meitner MA3 (streamer dac) ā AIC-10 (G73R)-> Susvara
Absolutely incredible liquidity and flow. I know thatās a bit of a blow hard description, but its kind of the best way I have to describe the sound. To this day its still one of the best susvara experiences Iāve had. Leaning on the rich side, tonal density is actualy fairly neutral but texture is truly incredible. Certainly a micro focus, but dynamics are still great and bass is extremely full and hard hitting but maybe not the absolute most tactile and articulate. The one main downfall of this chain is the image separation, but honestly, even as someone who highly values separation, I just didnt care.
Holo Red/Innous ā Dave ā Egoista 845 (not sure about tubes here) ā Susvara
Spacious, incisive, dynamic, and energetic. If you prefer more synthetic music even at the expense of doing organic music a bit worse this is an easy pick. Largest stage and best dynamics every chain listed and truly incredible with more ambient neuwave as well as tactility focused EDM. Unfortunately it can lean a bit thin and brittle over all, so music focused around tonal density and vocal texture will fall a bit behind other chains (this can be balanced out with a different dac btw). This may be pushing the budget new due to the daveās high new pricing, but used it will be super doable. For more reasonable new pricing you should be able to trade off some incision and ultimate space for a bit more tonal density and image clarity by getting a wavedream edition (though I havent heard the 845 with WD, so that is a little speculative based on what I know about the amp/dacs).
Ultimately these three are just examples of chains I have heard and loved to give you a basic idea of what may be possible. I would highly recommend reading through that first thread I linked to try and narrow it down to what amp you want and go from there. Ultimately there are more viable amps and dacs in this range that I havenāt heard than combos I have, so you have plenty of options to chase whatever kind of sound you want.
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