Meze Empyrean 2 VS Abyss Diana MR | HIFI Headphone Comparison! 

Can you spill some about 05 pro?

It's great but very very heavy. How are you planning to use it?@@ikhyunan496

I own a Susvara, Utopia, Empyrean 1 and yet my daily driver is a Grado GS3000x, probably the most hated brand of all these HP reviewers. At the end of the day subjective sound signature to you is what matters.

Why don't you use an EQ? That's trivially easy to dial into your preferences -- no purchase required!

​@@flitcroftLA You must be new around here - EQ is a swear word amongst audiophiles haha.

@@xdoctorblindx I’m aware; it’s absurd. People want colored sound: tubes, warm mids, sparkly highs. That is whole point of EQ.

​@@flitcroftLAThey don't actually want the perfect sound, they just want to complain about not having it.

@@one-rv2bx I think they enjoy shopping more than music.

I always relied on my Smyth Research Realiser A16 (as well as the older A8) and headphones to re-create the listening experience of of my big rig speakers (Apogees ribbons and horns etc) . Personally the sound image from headphones without room acoustics is not intriguing enough for my hobby. I cannot stand the compressed image feel inside my head and I just want to trick my mind to believe the sound is projected like a stage in front of me, before my eyes and not on my face (which what stereo means to be, a bigger then life sound image). When the virtualised headphone sounded as close as possible to the way you are listening inside a room, the bass will slam on your body and the recorded soundstage will unfold by itself, as your personal listening memories will trigger your mind to believe it is so. Sometimes virtualised headphone reproduction was just that good. I feel so fortunate I could use headphones for long listening sessions without the feeling that I am listening through headphones. I wanted to listen over speakers all the time but so many scenarios headphones are just more convenient. I tried many top notch electrostatics, ribbons and dynamic headphones (such as HD800) to match with the Realiser experience (although they were already equalized by the Realiser HPEQ in advance) and nothing can match the planars in imitating virtualized room acoustics and impulse responses. Headphones behave so differently when used to reproduce virtualized sound and on the contrary, the more resolving headphones are usually the worst one to make you believe "you are there" Unfortunately virtualized way of using headphones is not in the mainstream audio world, especially Smyth was quite inactive lately with their Realiser exchange and firmware updates. Diana TC and Elite, like most high end headphones are optimised for the non-virtualized listening use and, they were a no go for my A16/A8 when I tried. I have high hopes for the MR, especially I hear that the MR are "less" resolving which could be a good thing in virtualization use and it also reminded me the glory of LCD-2 and LCD-4 in using with the Realiser. The room listening experience "sound" alone, without accounting for the soundstage itself by the stereo effect, is actually much darker and recessed imho (as the wall and ceiling will certainly absorb most of the direct sound from the speakers?) compare to any headphones sound which 100% of such sound is the direct sound from the recordings. Again, when the virtualized sound field from the headphones become right and believable, the sound will just open up and also when the soundstage is in front you and wide enough (and not inside you), you become more psychologically satisfied. Whether sound signature is bright or dark or warm or neutral, honestly I can care less them because my mind is constantly overwhelmed by the huge amount of sound information I am able to distinguish (What I call it "bigger than life sound image"). I guess there are certain characteristics of headphones which need to be further explored for reproducing virtualized sound with room acoustics that many audio hobbyists discovered from their high end speakers systems, at least for stereo playback.

This! A local store tried to convince me that the elite were the best ever and when I tried them I was so underwhelmed! I felt stupid and deaf and left kind of ashamed. Now I see my ears weren't lying. Dms, resolve and golden just rated them B or C tier lol

Agreed. From what I understand it's a well tuned Elite with minor technical improvements. If so it's still nowhere near interesting for me, but of course need to try them for myself to know.

Funny you mention hype, because Abyss has been hyped on this channel to no end.

which one did you prefer? Less involving meaning you enjoy music more on the Arya Organic?

@@tor13128 I enjoy the Organic more than any headphone I have every heard even with the Questyle M15.

@@phantomplastics6582 Seems like I should reconsider getting the Empyrean 2 then. Btw, is the Arya Organic significantly better than the Arya OG?

I own the organics and I love them, but I'm looking for something even more involving, especially when cranking up the volume... Maybe a dynamic driver? Maybe using tubes? I might consider the fireflies

Are you still happy with the detail retrieval and upper end frequencies with the bass-ported Vegan pads?

Try the dan clark e3!

Like every properly open back headphone your colleagues can dance to your tunes😅

You should be able to, I’m currently running my Diana MR’s on an astell and kern sr35 and I still have plenty of head room

They either have manufacturing and/or engineering design limitations. 1266 is so steampunk and ghetto at the same time it's not even funny.

will have to try empyrean 2 at next audio show

Either you get constantly arm chills and a prickling scalp, then you are hooked. Or you do not, then get a HD600 and be good with it.

@@Thund3rstone Well I had the itch but stopped at the audiophile level of a years back, before the craze begun: HD-800S, AKG N40 and N90Q, Sony XBA-N3 and TA-ZH1ES, several Focal (Clear and Elegia I think), Hifiman HE-4XX, Shure SE535… All bought at good prices but even the full prices were several hundreds for the IEMs and at most 2000 for a full headset or DAC/amplifier. Now in-ears cost up to several thousand dollars, and over ears above 5000. I may buy a MDR-Z1R one day but I am not spending more than that.

@@jango71 whats special about Z1R? bass or lets say too much of it or theres something more? in that price are many more accurate sounding headphones

@@soulfulfool There is not only accuracy in life… ;-)

@@jango71 yea but you can get Focal Stellia for similar price, overall better performer

they look like you can buy them at target when you walk in

bad troll 😄

yes 2x better bass and treble, also female vocals come alive.

@@Thund3rstoneThat cable makes it hard for me to take Abyss seriously. They really think A) cables make an audible difference if the stock cable doesn't suck? and B) that any piece of thin wire is worth $5,000?! Pure snake oil.

The point is the feeling you get regardless. Think of seeing a movie in IMAX vs a 6K industry leading monitor. The latter does HDR2000 etc, but you're on a work chair in your office instead of a massive theater. Kinda like Verum One vs Sundara. The latter is way more technical, but former is very engaging. It can be a useful analogy, but hard to say is it here.

Ok boomer….Calm down.

what is this strangely aggressive reply lol

@@hartyewh1 yeah i’m really not agreeing with you, i’m alot more engaged at home watching on my G2 than in most theatres. Yeah in an office of course it’s shit even if the screen is good but he said TV and compared the two types of screen which i think is an awful analogy.

@@johansallqvist6027 i’m very calm, i only stated my view on the analogy he chose. Sorry sweetheart if it upset you.