Best sounding headphones you have owned?

By 'high-maintenance', you mean finding an amp that will have enough current and wattage? Yes, there is that.

@larsman Exactly correct.  You need a bonafide 2-channel amp that can drive home speakers to drive the Susvaras, and that’s an expensive and tough ask in a HeadFi setup and brings things to a much higher level in expense whereas I can easily power the HE1000SEs with my LTA or even my Singxer Class-A solid state amp.

@mahgister I really wish I could help answer your excellent question, but alas I’m going through a divorce and haven’t had the chance yet to hear my MZ2 with my Arya Stealths yet, which gives me huge amount of frustration.  The amp I’ve been using up to this point is the fully-balanced, Class-A Singxer SA-6 that, frankly, sounds pretty damn good through excellent balanced silver LavriCable headphone cables.  I’m thinking I can get my MZ2 up and running within the next month and will definitely share my impressions, but I’m highly impressed with the Singxer SA-6 with my Arya Stealths FWIW.

Thanks very much for your kind answer...

I hope all will be better for you at the end of this hard time...Sorry for you...

I dont want to miss your compared impressions... Feel free to remind me about it here... I will wait... Berning ZOTL is my dreamed amplifier....

My very best to you...

@mahgister I really wish I could help answer your excellent question, but alas I’m going through a divorce and haven’t had the chance yet to hear my MZ2 with my Arya Stealths yet, which gives me huge amount of frustration. The amp I’ve been using up to this point is the fully-balanced, Class-A Singxer SA-6 that, frankly, sounds pretty damn good through excellent balanced silver LavriCable headphone cables. I’m thinking I can get my MZ2 up and running within the next month and will definitely share my impressions, but I’m highly impressed with the Singxer SA-6 with my Arya Stealths FWIW.

Focal Utopia. 

I dont want to miss you compared impressions... Feel free to remind me about it here... I will wait... Berning ZOTL is my dreamed amplifier....

@mahgister I promise I will let you know as soon as I can, and thank u so much for ur kind thoughts. The sad truth is I’m using the MZ2 not only as my HeadFi amp but also as the pre in my 2-channel rig and I screwed up because I’m an idiot. I got over zealous and impatient and hooked my new MZ2 up to my big rig while I had my amp powered on and fried the MZ2. I’m hoping I just blew a fuse in my MZ2 by doing something insanely stupid, but it could be worse. Ironically I also now have a recently highly-upgraded McCormack DNA-0.5 amp that SMcAudio incorporates a lot of their mega-dollar consulting work from Berning’s top mega-$$$ projects that eventually trickle down to their SMcAudio upgrades. I’m dying to hear what this combo of several Berning technologies will yield and will let you know not only what I hear in my HeadFi rig but also in my 2-channel system for whatever that might be worth. Berning is a damn genius in our audio world, and we’re just living in it.

Thanks Soix...

Three geniuses interest me in audio now... I know only one by his product...

The three are physicist loving music, and in two cases two acoustician...

Dr. Gorike is an underestimated genius who designed the best of AKG because he founded the company after the second world war... His K340 is the most advanced design since Stax... He patented his acoustic specifically tuned resonators grid creating a dual acoustic chamber making the headphone Speaker like in sound... I even read his patent... He used Helmholtz principle of resonators as i did my way with 100 in my room... :) Dr. Gorike located them at a specific location around the dynamic driver behind the electro-acoustic cell... so with this dual chamber he fooled the brain with the back wave incoming in differential timing with the direct wave of the two drivers helping the brain to recreate a 3-D speaker like impression in a room...

And it was way better than even my two Stax or my planar experience or better than any dynamics i owned ... No comparison...But this K340 was terminated because too costly to made and too complex to figure out right by most consumers and very picky to drive, more hard than the HE 6 and hard to optimize at an era where headphone amplifier for portable headphone emerged ... It takes me 6 months to figure out how to optimize them ..

Dr. Choueri created virtual room acoustic with his patented BACCH filters ... it is a revolution which make headphone or speakers optimal for localization without loss in timbre quality...He works in plasma physics but listen too much music all his life... Acoustic bein g his hobby...His dac is the ultimate dac...

Dr. Berning a physicist who revolutionized tube amplification completely... I dont understand why people stick to hot tubes with short life in the old tube technology... He worked as physicist but also loved too much music and coupled it with his physics knowledge to redesign amplification from ground zero...

Thats the main revolutionary things in audio for me ...

I dont know if i will be able to afford a Berning ZOTL before dying and a Choueri dac but the K340 help me to be happy so much good it is ... Then all is ok... But true audiophile always dream even happy... ;) i dream but with no frustration thanks to Dr. Gorike...

My very best to you with a silent prayer for your next months...

@mahgister I promise I will let you know as soon as I can, and thank u so much for ur kind thoughts. The sad truth is I’m using the MZ2 not only as my HeadFi amp but also as the pre in my 2-channel rig and I screwed up because I’m an idiot. I got over zealous and impatient and hooked my new MZ2 up to my big rig while I had my amp powered on and fried the MZ2. I’m hoping I just blew a fuse in my MZ2 by doing something insanely stupid, but it could be worse. Ironically I also now have a recently highly-upgraded McCormack DNA-0.5 amp that SMcAudio incorporates a lot of their mega-dollar consulting work from Berning’s top mega-$$$ projects that eventually trickle down to their SMcAudio upgrades. I’m dying to hear what this combo of several Berning technologies will yield and will let you know not only what I hear in my HeadFi rig but also in my 2-channel system for whatever that might be worth. Berning is a damn genius in our audio world, and we’re just living in it.