Welcome back to Golden Ears, our regular PC audio review column! This week, we’re taking a look at the Arya Organic headphones from HIFIMAN. At $1,300 dollars, these open-back headphones deliver on audiophile sound quality with a surprisingly full-bodied sound and a gorgeous wood finish. Simply put, these are one of the best headphones for bass fans who don’t want to skimp on detail and that rich, layered planar magnetic sound that makes them such a popular choice. In this price range, they’re simply stellar — as they should be.
Specifications
- Current Price: $1,299 (Headphones)
- Frequency Response: 8Hz - 65kHz
- Sensitivity: 94dB
- Impedance: 16 Ohms
- Weight: 440 grams
HIFIMAN Arya Organic - First Impressions and Key Features
The Arya Organic is a revision of the Arya Stealth. But if you’re going into this headphone expecting the same experience, you’re in for a surprise. The Organic and Stealth have different mission statements, and I suspect that the Organic is going to land on top as the more popular choice.
The Arya Stealth was more than a little impressive. It was incredibly detailed and rich. It didn’t hide anything at all and could even be revealing of different tracks, for better and for worse. It leaned into the treble, and while it had bass extension, it was a very airy headphone overall. If you wanted punch, impact, and a wide, reverberant foundation to your music, they needed EQ.
The Arya Organic, on the other hand, is HIFIMAN’s answer to listeners who wanted a fuller-bodied Arya. The demand is understandable since the Stealth truly delivered an outstanding listening experience, but that body was a recurring request, such that EQ curves were shared to “fill it out” among the community and to temper some of the treble energy. The Organic applies its own take on these changes, enhances its look and feel on the head, and as a result of the tweaks, is a notably different Arya than audiophiles may have known before.
The Arya Organic arrives in surprisingly humble packaging. While many of HIFIMAN’s past models came in hardback, satin-lined boxes, its new focus on sustainability an ecofriendliness sees that dialed back to a simple cardboard box with a molded styrofoam insert to cradle the headphones. I was surprised to find that there was no included case like with the cheaper Ananda Nano. Instead, the middle piece of styrofoam is removable and has a solid plastic base, allowing it to act as a headphone stand. Neat, but at this price, I would have preferred the case.
In addition to the headphones, it also comes with a nice braided cable. HIFIMAN has clearly been taking accepting the feedback its community has offered on the quality of its older cables and upped its game. It’s soft and thick enough to feel nice without also retaining memory from its wrap in packaging. It connects to the headphones with dual 3.5mm jacks and ends in a 6.35mm (¼-inch) jack.
At 16 ohms of resistance and 64dB of sensitivity, you’ll need an amplifier to listen to these, but if you’re buying a $1,300 pair of headphones, the chances are that you already have a proper source to drive them. If not, the Headphonesty Headphones Power Calculator puts them at need less than 1 volt RMS and 39.8 milliwatts. Even a small amp will run these fine, but they do scale very well with more power.
The headphones themselves have been reworked in a number of ways outside of tuning, and it’s not all immediately obvious. The clearest change is the shift to wooden rings around the earcups. I’m not sure if these are a veneer or a solid wood ring. HIFIMAN doesn’t say what kind of wood it is, so I suspect it’s a visual change only, but they do look very good.
The headphones are nearly identical in size and shape. They use HIFIMAN’s asymmetrical, egg-shaped design that completely engulfs the ear. They’re very large headphones and need to be to house the exceptionally large drivers held within, but the design also impacts the way sound hits your ear. There’s a largesse to the sound — height, width, and depth — that’s difficult to find on smaller headphones. If you don’t mind their size, it offers immediate acoustic differences and, in my opinion, benefits that even Audeze’s struggle to replicate at this price point.
The Organic’s also have wide open backs with window-shade grilles to support their expansive soundstage. Sound bleeds out so that others can hear what you’re listening to, but your own listening experience is heightened with an added sense of space and depth. The headphones also utilize HIFIMAN’s Stealth Magnet design which pairs magnets on either side of the diaphragm and both shapes and positions them to avoid wave diffraction and distortion. This is the level of consideration that goes into such a high-caliber headphone — correcting for wave disturbances in the pursuit of pure, unadulterated clarity.
Like the Ananda Nano, the Arya Organic uses the company’s nanometer drivers, a technology first debuting with the $6,000 Susvara. Its shocking thinness allows the drivers to move extremely quickly when power is applied to its electrical traces. There’s incredible detail and dynamic range, offering a frequency response spectrum far outside the bounds of human hearing. When current is applied to the electrical traces, the diaphragm vibrates to create sound well outside the range of human hearing. This wide dynamic range pushes distortion equally out of the range of human hearing (8Hz - 65kHz). Drivers are most likely to distort when pushed to their limits, but short of blowing these out with too much power, distortion simply shouldn’t be a concern.
Left: Arya Organic, Right: Arya Stealth
A change that’s less visible but no less important is their new cushions and improved fit. The new earpads use denser foam and appear to be slightly thicker. While the Arya Stealth fit very loosely on me, impacting my ability to maintain a consistent seal, the Organic is more snug and secure. It’s not overly grippy or uncomfortable. On the contrary, I actually find them much more comfortable and satisfying to wear than the Stealth with this refreshed design.
At 440 grams, it’s relatively heavy on paper but you wouldn’t know it to actually wear them. The suspension headband design distributes the weight very well. I was able to wear them for hours without any discomfort or soreness whatsoever. They also offer wide tilt and pivot adjustments, so they can lay completely flat around your neck when you need a break. Between the new pads, grip, and weight balance, these are easily the most comfortable HIFIMAN headphones I’ve tried yet.
Given their high price, I would have expected to see more accessories included. The cable is only about a meter long. There’s no balance option, no alternate pads. It’s just the headphones, as they were designed to be listened to, and a styrofoam headphone stand. Their price is based entirely on sound quality and comfort. We know it’s a winner on the latter, so let’s get into how they sound.
HIFIMAN Arya Organic - Listening Impressions
If HIFIMAN’s mission was to deliver an Arya with more body, it succeeded and then some. While the Arya Stealth was on the bright side of neutral, a tuning that others tell me is common higher up in HIFIMAN’s product stack, the Arya Organic has a much more fun sound signature without skimping out on the detail and resolution that made the Stealth and original Arya special.
Bass: The bass has received the biggest upgrade. It reaches deep and makes the Stealth sound rolled off in comparison. The mid-bass has also been touched up. Track Stars at the Bay by Jonny Craig is far more powerful than on the Stealth. Hip-hop, R&B, and pop in general sound so much better on the Organic, and not just because there’s more bass.
Instead, it’s captures and presents the lows in a way that feels fresh and new, even on familiar tracks. The bass is very high resolution with outstanding texture and detail. It sounds wide, giving tracks like The One a sense of scale that isn’t present on the the original or even competing headphones like the Audeze MM-500 or Sennheiser HD-8XX.
The combination of sub- and mid-bass improvements adds tons of energy and fun to these headphones without ever once sounding bloated. It’s just so well done.
Mids: The mids are very similar to the Stealth with a touch of additional energy in the upper-mids, heading toward the lower-highs. This makes guitars and pianos come forward and other instruments in that range. The level of detail and clarity remains next-level, revealing an exceptionally realistic listening experience. Male vocals in particular sound like they’re just on the other side of a curtain. Even though the upper-mids elevation risks sounding shouty, the Organic pulls just before this ever becomes the case. It’s impeccably well-tuned here, making a great fit for rock, pop, other mainstream genres while not skimping on detail.
Treble: If the bass boost is the first half of its tuning revision, the highs are the other half. The rise in the upper mids extends into the lower treble, which brings the upper harmonics of instruments out, enhancing the perception of clarity and detail. Moving up in the spectrum reveals a smoothing compared to the Stealth, eradicating sibilance yet not sounding dull either. It’s not as crisp as the Stealth, but not as soft as the Dan Clark Aeon Open X. At the same time, it pulls more detail and air than the Audeze MM-500 and LCD-2. In short, I really think it maintains a lot of the highlights from the Stealth while just rolling back the sharpness that could sometimes be fatiguing.
Left: Arya Organic, Right: Arya Stealth
Technical Performance, Soundstage, and Imaging: At this price point, you expect excellence in at least most areas and technical proficiency befitting its price point and the Arya Organic delivers. It outperforms any other $1,000 headphone I’ve heard in detail retrieval and sheer capability, but when it comes to layering and soundstage, I found it to be very track-dependent.
Broadly speaking, I found the soundstage to be fairly wide, tall, and deep. You can clearly perceive the different layers that make up the soundscape, right down to multi-layered vocals. It has the capability to deliver an engrossing, spacious, listening experience. It still doesn’t top the Focal Elex, which blew me away with its spaciousness and transparency, or the HD-8XX, but the still deliver an enjoyably immersive listening experience that tops much of the market below its price.
The flip-side to its adjusted tuning is that the bass fills in some of the space that previously left the upper-mids soundstage region open. When there’s a lot of bass in a track, the sense of space decreases. It never approached intimacy or congestion with rock, pop, or even hip-hop with my library, but there are times when the Stealth can sound more expansive with its thinned-out sound.
Gaming: These aren’t headphones that you’ll buy for gaming alone. $1,300 gaming headphones? Madness! But if you’re an audiophile who also happens to enjoy gaming, these will work well. I don’t think they’re the best gaming headphones, though, as the spaciousness of the sound and wider low-end tuning can sometimes blur pure directionality of cues like footsteps and gunshots. This is often in cacophonous moments, so games like Battlefield 2042, are very immersive but there are times when that detail won’t give you the advantage you might expect as a result.
Overall Impressions and Final Thoughts
At $1,300, these are headphones for a very particular kind of listener: a listener with lots of expendable income and a passion for audio. They’re halo cans for most of us, but I’m here to tell you that these absolutely deliver on their promise. With sparse packaging and accessories, they live and die on their sound quality. And they live.
They are my absolute favorite headphones of the year so far and come as close to a perfect pair of headphones for my tastes as I’ve heard yet. I enjoy rock, metal, melodic hip-hop, prog rock, hip-hop, and gaming… for these genres, they sound amazing. They sound as they should at this price point for this kind of library and are a satisfying, fun, and enrapturing listen.
The product described in this article was provided by the manufacturer for evaluation purposes.
