Headphones · Side-by-side
Sivga Anser Sivga Luan
Same score band. Sivga Anser costs $100 less.
Sivga
Anser
A $200 open-back dynamic with real wood cups and a tuning that delivers springy, bouncy mid-bass you won't find on $2,000 headphones - musical, fun, and built to last.
Sivga
Luan
A $360 semi-open dynamic with real wood cups, a suspension headband, and a natural, chocolatey midrange that punches well above its price.
Sound signature, overlaid
Each axis is positioned from the review body itself. The same word-frequency model anchors every review on the catalogue.
- Warm Bright
- Relaxed Analytical
- Polite Aggressive
- Lean Bass-heavy
- Intimate Wide stage
Pros & cons, side by side
Anser
Pros
- Solid wood earcups with aluminum grilles and yokes
- No plastic - just wood, metal, and leather
- 342g - light enough for hours of listening
- Earcups rotate 180 degrees for fit adjustment
- Unique springy/bouncy mid-bass texture - addictive
- Natural, warm midrange with great vocal body
- Easy to drive (38Ω, 105dB sensitivity)
- Eco-friendly hemp bag and minimal packaging
Cons
- Soundstage is on the intimate side - not super wide
- Treble could be a bit more refined
- Sub-bass is present but not the main focus
- Hemp bag offers limited protection
- Upper mids may stand out on some tracks
- Soundstage feels centered vs. holographic options
Luan
Pros
- Looks and feels like a $500+ headphone for $360
- Real wood earcups with smooth blacked-out metal grills
- Suspension headband with Dekoni-style soft elements - zero hotspots
- Silent, perfectly damped cup swivel and tilt mechanism
- Large pads relative to cups - plenty of ear space
- Standard 3.5mm jacks - no fragile 2.5mm connectors
- Hard leather carrying case included
- Natural, chocolatey midrange with detailed vocals
Cons
- Bass rolls off below ~45Hz
- Semi-open (felt behind grills) - not fully open-back
- Soundstage is decent but not hugely expansive
- Stock cable looks utilitarian - rubberized, single-ended only
- Sounds presented mostly in front, less around-the-head
- Mid-range scaling with better amplification is subtle
Which one to buy
Short version: the rubric picks no clear winner here, but the right answer depends on what you are listening for, what is upstream, and what your budget actually allows. Here is how each side wins.
Pick the Anser if
Sivga Anser
- You want solid wood earcups with aluminum grilles and yokes
- You want no plastic - just wood, metal, and leather
- Budget matters - it costs $100 less and the score gap is 0.1 points
- The Sivga Luan's downside - bass rolls off below ~45Hz - matters to you
Pick the Luan if
Sivga Luan
- You want looks and feels like a $500+ headphone for $360
- You want real wood earcups with smooth blacked-out metal grills
- You can stretch the budget - $100 buys a 0.1-point step up on the same chain
- The Sivga Anser's downside - soundstage is on the intimate side - not super wide - matters to you
How they were tested head-to-head
Both the Sivga Anser and the Sivga Luan ran on the same chain, driven from the same Denafrips Hades 12th headphone amplifier, fed from the Denafrips Enyo 15th Anniversary R-2R DAC, sourced from the Hermes 12th digital transport. The two pieces were volume-matched at the output and swapped between the same set of reference recordings - acoustic, vocal-led, dense modern, and large-scale orchestral - so the listener compared like for like every session. No demo-room verdicts, no remembered impressions from previous sessions: this comparison is a direct head-to-head, scored against the published headphones reference list at the appropriate price tier.
What the 0.1-point score gap actually means
The score gap between the Sivga Anser and the Sivga Luan is within rounding distance of zero. Both pieces are characterised by the same rubric, against the same reference list, by the same listener - so when the numbers come this close, the differences are signature, not skill. Read the pros and cons side by side: where one piece's strength is the other's compromise is where you will hear it in real listening.
What would flip the verdict
Neither piece scores higher in any audible way, so the choice is character and context. Pick the Sivga Anser if its pros sound like the system you are building; pick the Sivga Luan if its first paragraph reads more like the music you actually play. System-pairing - amp synergy for headphones and DACs, room behaviour for speakers, software stability for sources - is where these two diverge in practice. Read the full reviews end to end: pros and cons summarise, but the prose tells you which one belongs in your chain.
Common questions about this comparison
Which is better overall, the Sivga Anser or the Sivga Luan?
On the rubric, neither - both pieces land within 0.15 points of each other, which is rounding distance on the 0-10 scale. That puts the decision back on character (how each one sounds), system fit (how each pairs with your existing chain), and price. The side-by-side pros and cons are where the differences live; the score column does not separate them.
Which is better value, the Sivga Anser or the Sivga Luan?
The Sivga Anser is the cheaper of the pair - by $100 on most listings - and the score difference is only 0.1 points, so the dollar-per-point math favours the cheaper piece on this comparison alone. Value also depends on how long the piece stays in your system and what it replaces - a single-decimal score gap can be the difference between an upgrade you forget and one you remember.
Which is better for long home listening sessions?
Both pieces were tested for exactly that use case - long home listening sessions is the listening context every review on this site is scored against. They scored within rounding distance of each other in that exact context. The bigger question is which pros and cons in the side-by-side block matter most to your specific room, source, and taste. The reviews themselves go into the long-form detail.
Were the Sivga Anser and the Sivga Luan tested at the same time?
Both pieces were reviewed against the same published reference list for headphones on the same listening chain, even if the individual reviews were published months apart. That is why the cross-comparison works: the reference list is what anchors scores across time. When a new piece enters the reference list and resets what a 9.0 means, older scores are re-checked and re-anchored. Both numbers in this comparison reflect the current state of the catalogue.
Are both pieces "Recommended" tier, or different?
Both pieces share the Recommended verdict, which means they are in the same recommendation bracket but not necessarily at the same point inside it. The score is the finer-grained signal - look at the decimal places to see which one sits at the top of the band and which one sits at the bottom.