Family portrait at the nude beach? I had to check HifiMan's web shop for pricing: €569 Ananda Unveiled at left, €1'599 Arya Unveiled at right. I'd be doing the ~€1K skip from model to model looking for max ROI as the subjective sweet spot among them. Where was my sugar meter? I had paid no attention to Unveiled having migrated this far downmarket; or an alternate headband for their oval ear cups. I was clearly overdue for my brand readjustment. Here it's fair to explain my way-back attitude when HifiMan and I drifted apart. I'd thought their pricing very arbitrary; peppered with unpredictable deep-discount promotions to undermine value for existing owners; too many model revisions; and sub-par Susvara-level fit 'n' finish. With more mileage under my hood since, how would this 2026 crop register? Not having tracked its catalogue for years, I can't comment on discount promotions or model longevity. I'm restarting at zero armed with just my evidence at hand; and in-house competitors representing some contemporary status quo. When my friendly neighborhood gen-X Fed rang the bell with a large carton, I triple-checked that it really had my name. I wasn't expecting anything this girthy. Customs too had been curious. Their tape showed they'd been inside then opened one of the four smaller cartons. Four? I'd only expected three. Et voilà, from the bottom emerged a Susvara Unveiled box. What a four-leaf clover of shameless nakedness. Now I really had my work cut out.

Mission Control at Johnson Space Centre Houston to space shuttle Endeavour: "Use your thrusters. Clean your windows." Even with weak YouTube files exiting as 2Vrms RCA outputs from my Audalytic DR70 DAC into its matching 2wpc/32Ω DR70 headamp, Susvara Unveiled hit high SPL at 86/99 on the dial. With equivalent Qobuz files wired up 4Vrms XLR, that lowered to 75. Still, Houston sensed a sub-par problem. And being in Texas where all is bigger, they were right. Once driven off the 20 x (!) more powerful FangSound Dionysus, matching ear levels moved a previously vegan so most electrostatic sound signature into red-blooded carnivore mode by bolting on obvious dynamic-driver qualities. Ultra transparent but a bit disembodied gained body and gumption. Loud enough isn't all there is to exploring outer space with Fang Bian's best. Whilst sheer voltage sensitivity has improved over my OG to achieve happy lift-off even with a budget €349 deck of 28dB voltage gain, the full veil won't drop until we bolt on legit drive. Obviously 40 watts into 32Ω leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. But already a €399 aune N7 with 6w/32Ω in pure class A off 18V switching power is loaded for purpose. It thus served as my real-world contrast agent to the €3'500 FangSound to see how much daylight between my four Unveiled models the latter would insert above and beyond the N7. The more appreciative of extreme drive, the bigger the gap hence the more critical the load. Would this track the price increases to make Ananda and Arya less sensitive to upstream stacking?

First, the physical inspection. Ananda excepted, all use the same bent-metal bridge with its signature perforated click stops and front/aft swivels. Only Ananda gets a plastic bridge from which click-stop sliders pull out but omit the swivel. Then it's Arya's turn to step out of sameness. Unlike the perforated headband, it adopts a solid version then goes all black and on the cups, high gloss to boot where the rest does a satin-finish clear-anodize aluminium. Suspicion bred by a quarter-century of review experience—down with piano-gloss black speakers which only look flawless at the very beginning and then acquire swirl marks from dusting!—wonders just how soon that black gloss will dull or betray discolourations? All four models adopt the same geometry of forward-angled ear cups; and cable entries forward of the centre point. Ditto for extra channel identifiers marked on the inside headband; and model names on the outside. Of my quad, Ananda's plastic bridge created stronger lateral clamping force and for it felt slightly less comfy on my head. Given the other lot's very high comfort score lorded over by Susvara, that comment is decidedly relative. Finally, Arya's solid headband felt more plasticky than the perf jobs. That said, blingsters like their posh spend to loudly telegraph, 'look what I got'. They could opine that having Arya and HE1000 share Susvara's makeup and build doesn't sufficiently segregate their trophy from the 'lesser' bunch other than by cup shape and camel-tone bi-colour. As far it goes, that's actually a fair argument. Rephrased, whilst plebs should very much enjoy their trickle-down, patricians could wish for less downward sharing with the – um, hoi-polloi. Rephrased again, consider the jump from €2'399 HE1000 to €8'800 Susvara. What creates such an otherworldly cost multiplier?

These oval coasters aka protectors are all the same shape but aluminium for the HE1000; and plastic with a faux-carbon backing for the two lower-priced models. Susvara's are aluminium again but obviously of a different shape.

Sonically it becomes a weight/power question. As moving mass shrinks because the thin film gets thinner so lighter; and/or the magnets stronger to bathe bi-sided conductive traces in more flux—resolution increases. Though it seems cheap to write because it's so obvious-convenient, as the diaphragms gain mass and what powers them softens its grip, the sound gets heavier. Really. What more money buys isn't different styling. It's lighter chassis (thinner film) and/or bigger engines (stronger/more magnets). Hello more responsive acceleration. From it, we enjoy deeper insight and twitchier dynamics. How fast do you want to go? In Dublin, Billy stops Paddy and asks for the quickest way to Cork. Paddy asks, "are you on foot or by car?" "Car." "Good. That is the quickest way." As you saw above, the hub caps or veils of Ananda/Arya are the same whilst HE1000/Susvara get machined aluminium. The magnetic force holding these in place is weak. They'll come off easy when you want them to; and easy when you don't. Here are the basic stats for our four nudists. Though human hearing technically cuts out at ~20kHz, the rising top extension from left to right should be one indicator of lighter diaphragms reaching ever higher. Also, compared to the 83dB/60Ω OG Susvara, the Unveiled's 86dB/45Ω has become a bit less challenging. That said, none of these specs look drastically different from each other. The real differences require listening to sort out. Whilst there isn't much daylight between the weight specs either—those don't include the protectors or cabling—of this bunch Susvara feels lightest on the head, Ananda heaviest. Even there specs don't tell all.