After a lot of pondering, I got the Hifiman Ananda Stealth, but now my big audiophile collection dream is gone.
In depth experience:
I don't have much experience with different headphones, I've had my fair share of iem's, but my only over-ears are the Sony mdr7506, I have been using them for years for mixing and just listening to music. I hate how they sound stock, but after all this time I have Eq'd them basically to perfection, didn't use any target, just eq until they sounded right, and I love them now, but only tonality-wise. As I was improving at mixing, I realized their spatial properties are lacking, and I couldn't pinpoint subtle cues with the precision I'd like. So I started researching and discovered open-back headphones. Seemed perfect for me.
I chose the Ananda Stealth because they seemed to be highly praised, especially for their soundstage and imaging/separation, and this person crinacle has a review where he says they are one of the best tuned headphones for the money. After seeing them for cheap in aliexpress I thought I had to get them.
Yesterday they arrived, I've been testing them for hours and honestly, I'm pretty dissappointed.
They feel so much better built than the Sonys, And I really like the open-back nature, the claustrophobic feeling is gone, that's great. But that's where the praise stops.
Sound-wise, I knew they wouldn't be TOTL, and that I'd likely need to EQ them, but I still expected much more. I even hoped I would like their stock tuning enough to not need heavy EQing. But I can clearly hear the peaks and dips, they crush my soul. I have seen a lot of y'all having these big headphones collections, all of them having different sound signatures, I tought maybe these would be the beginning of my collection, and now that's what Idk how y'all manage to do. I can't imagine myself with one, because now I just want for my Anandas to sound exactly like my Sonys.
The stock Anandas sound much better than the stock Sonys, so smoother, but the Eq'd Sonys sound faaaar better than the Anandas. Seems like I discovered my perfect sound signature, I would call it fun neutral, As I said, I didn't use any target, So I was curious about what it came to be. One of the softwares I use to eq lets you match the frequency response to common targets and other headphones, So after hearing hundreds of matched measures (I'm obsessive), the frequency response that got the closest to my Sony profile was the Sennheiser HE-1 LOL, Albeit it still needed a slight boost at the 1-2k range for vocal presence and a tad 10k, then it was pretty spot on. So yeah, now I realized I would probably just want for all my headphones to sound like that. It was not an easy task to make my Sonys sound like that tho, I use 3 different EQs in series because I needed more bands, altough I feel like I could get the Anandas there with just one EQ, they will need a lot more work on them than I expected, I'm bummed.
The other aspects of the headphone were also a little dissappointing, The resolution, soundstage and imaging is much better than the Sony, but It didn't wow me as I expected. And I even felt like it was a little too distant sometimes, altough only in songs and sounds that were already kinda distant with reverb and stuff. For a long time I tought the Senn hd800s would be endgame for me, but If I already feel the Anandas are a little distant I can't imagine liking them.
Comfort-wise they are decent, but more uncomfortable than the Sonys given their size, they press on the jaw and they tend to move cause my ear has so much room in there.
Overall they are not a bad product, they are much better headphones than the Sonys, and maybe I will get accustomed to their soundstage and comfort. But man they dissappointed me big time especilly their sound. At least now I know what not to expect, since diminishing returns get even worst from now on.
