I, too, have owned a lot of headphones From Sony, AKG, Audeze, Focal, Denon, and now HiFiMan. I've also borrowed Senn 800's and they are indeed very good. I had begun to think that I was just a Focal guy, having several different models and liking them very much as I went up the chain, but then I tried the HiFiMan HE1000 Stealth. They could clearly outdo any of my Focals (Clear Mg had been my favorite) and they just sounded "right". I sold everything else I had except the Denon 9200's because I still needed a closed-back for use in bed next to my sleeping wife, and then I set my sights on the ultimate HiFiMan, the Susvara. I was fortunate to find a dealer who would sell them to me at a sizable discount and they were drop-shipped directly to me from the company. Holy cow, I was not disappointed. While they have a reputation for being hard to drive, my original amp, a McIntosh tube HP amp had no trouble with them but when I found out that the Holo Audio Bliss amp was designed and made specifically with the Susvara in mind I knew I had to try it. It also does not disappoint. The combo, to my ears, doesn't have any obvious weaknesses. The instruments sound lifelike and the bass, while not the most prodigious of any HP I've tried (and that's a good thing) is simply dead accurate and not at all artificial or boosted. There are seriously no changes I would make whatsoever in the bass response of this system. I've always used EQ, usually in the form of a convolution filter, with all my previous headphones, but with the Susvaras there is no advantage for me to doing this, so I don't.
Of course, now there is the Susvara Unveiled which, it is said, have a slightly better midrange and is much easier to drive. With the Bliss I'm not concerned with the latter, but I am curious to hear the midrange. I would also like to hear the updated Focal Utopias and the Meze Elites, but just out of curiosity and, I guess, due diligence. I would truly be surprised if I ended up liking either of those more than the Susvara. My brain is not wired to hear imaging as most of you describe it, other than with a multi-channel speaker-based system and I realize that's cheating, so I can't report on that aspect of them and would have to defer to others on the subject. But I can say that I don't feel any need to upgrade what I already have. After years of trying different HP's, I have built a system (the Bliss is fed by a May KTE DAC, which is fed by a HiFiRose RS130 streamer, which is fed by a Sonic Transporter running Roon) that is truly satisfying and allows me to just relax and listen to the music without that little feeling in the pit of my stomach of "I wonder if I could do better?"
