HIFIMAN Arya Stealth Review: A Warm $759 Planar Flagship

Pick #6 of 10 in our Best Planar Magnetic Headphones guide.

Audiophile headphones involve preferences. Some of them are detailed, some are wide, some dynamic, deep, or extend well. The Arya Stealth has it all for just $759.

The most comfortable HIFIMAN at the price

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It's built to be lightweight, not premium. That's probably why you don't immediately feel that it's a premium product when you pick it up. On the other hand, it's the cheapest headphones from HIFIMAN that's so comfortable.

It features their highest-end headband style, which has a suspension strap design. It allows for full 360-degree cup rotation, tilt, and size adjustment. This, combined with these large earcups, and low weight, makes it extremely comfortable, even for extended listening sessions.

This headband, unlike lower-end ones, is a bit different. Besides allowing for swivel, it also has a different shape, making its clamp force more evenly spread. But it looks kind of silly when you wear it. When it's on a headphone stand it looks very nice, all blacked out for a stealthy (pun intended) look. One more difference between this headband and the cheaper ones is that it's also padded on the side that touches your head. There's a thin layer of soft foam that helps to even out the pressure just a little more. It's not clamping super hard - it's more in the lower medium territory, I'd say.

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The pads are, of course, huge - good luck finding a headphone with larger pads than these. They're also a hybrid of 3 materials, which is a thing HIFIMAN likes to do.

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The only thing I'm not a fan of is one small aspect of its appearance, namely the earcups material and color. It's not a true black - more like a gunmetal color, which upon closer inspection looks a bit cheap, but does its job just fine.

For the connectors, they are regular 3.5mm jacks - one on each earcup, which allows for a balanced connection with an aftermarket cable, or single-ended with the included one. HIFIMAN is known for its ergonomically problematic cable. They used to offer the copper-colored ones with the conductors sitting freely inside a long time ago, which I have to say were quite terrible. Then they switched to something very simple - just regular, black, rubberized cables. That was nothing special but solved most of the issues with the previous version.

The cable we're getting in a box now is yet another improvement. It has a material braiding over it, making it feel much nicer and more premium while adding a bit to the ergonomics, as the cable doesn't have as much memory. The connectors are generally decent, but the 1/4-inch plug has a huge strain relief.

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Flagship technology, down to the diaphragm

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All sorts of trickle-down goodies can be found here. Starting from the Window Shade Grills, that offer special geometry made to decrease reflections, which are detrimental to optimal sound quality. Luckily enough, they're blacked out, unlike the Anandas or the Edition XS.

Then, as the name suggests, we have Stealth Magnets. It's the first iteration of Arya with this tech. It allows the sound waves to pass through them without generating any sort of interference, to create an acoustically transparent design.

Lastly, it's equipped with a nanometer-thickness diaphragm for fast transient response, more details, and lower distortion. All that, in theory, means that HIFIMAN put all of their best stuff in there to make a very good headphone at a price point much lower than a flagship - without cutting down on features just to get you to spend more.

Likes power but isn't fussy about the amp

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Its frequency response ranges from 8Hz up to 65kHz. That's just crazy - this driver is capable of doing pretty much everything it's asked to do. And it does it quite efficiently, with a sensitivity of 94dB/mW (not the highest, but quite high for a big planar) and an impedance of 32 ohms (again, not the lowest, but pretty low for what it is). This combo makes the Arya greatly benefit from a good and powerful amplifier, but you don't have to go crazy, and it's not that picky about the amplification quality.

A warm, full sound with near-3D imaging

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I expected it to sound a bit bright, like most HIFIMAN's planars do. However, in reality, it's very difficult to call it a bright headphone. It's leaning on the warmer and fuller presentation, in comparison to other headphones from this company. It isn't soft, recessed, or lean in the top end. Likewise, it retains all that, while lacking the typical boost in the treble that a lot of people find fatiguing.

Generally, it is a very tonally balanced sound, with just a slight dip in the upper midrange that can be described as starting the ear gain region about one kilohertz later than the Harman target calls for.

The bass is well extended, down to 20Hz. It's fast and transparent but doesn't offer a sense of weight. It's mostly true to the recording. The vocal presentation is good, yet slightly less weighty than you'd expect.

In terms of the soundstage, I've heard that the Stealth Magnets shrink it down quite a bit. At least in the Stealth Magnet edition Arya, it's not a super wide soundstage, but it can get out of your head easily - simply not too far out. But what it can lack in soundstage, it makes up in the precise imaging. It's very nice, with lots of places where sounds can be. In most songs, it gives you an impression of being a real 3-dimensional experience. I'd say that if anything, the imaging would be the only real stand-out of this headphone - it's simply unbeatable.

It also can do large-scale music extraordinarily well. It might not sound that wide, but it does sound big, especially in the vertical sense - it tends to stretch things to a great extent, probably because of the driver's shape, which is a pretty tall rectangle.

The timbre, while not top-of-the-line level, isn't annoying. It has just a tint of plasticky nature. Sounds are separated in a way that leaves space in between them. You can easily tell when one instrument ends and another one starts.

Detail retrieval - it's very inoffensive. You have to try to hear the underlying, hidden elements of the music, but it's available to you. It doesn't scream "details" at you like the Ananda Nano or the Sundara. That's mostly related to the frequency response being tamed down in the top registers. Nevertheless, it's a fairly resolving headphone - not the most, far from that actually, but it's not lacking.

This headphone generally gives you a taste of high-end at a price that's not usually associated with high-end products of this category. It doesn't have one single thing it shines at - rather it's a combination of all things that make it a genuinely satisfying package.