I can report that when I first auditioned the Arya Stealth, while it sounded agreeable but not mind-blowing compared to my Jabra Elite 85h (reasonably neutral) amid my perceptions at the time, I was surprised when on putting on either the Edition XS or Meze 109 Pro, they somehow immediately sounded off in tonality and imaging compared to the Arya Stealth, Audeze MM-500, Sennheiser HD 800 S, and Focal Clear MG. Otherwise, if you’ve seen my posts on Head-Fi (as “MrHaelscheir”), it has been quite a long objectivist journey after that. Maybe it is true that trickling technology from the HE1000se that far down yields such noticeable losses, else the problems lie in frequency response artifacts for your own ears best assessed with the help of listening to sine sweeps and pink noise, and at best, in-ear microphones. For matching the tonality, you might be able to try using a tone generator or slow sine sweep video like “Hearing Test HD” and volume-match the pure tones between your EQed IEMs and target Edition XS EQ. Comfort-wise, I don’t think there are very many headphones with deeper pads than the HE1000 derivatives.
I can report that when I first auditioned the Arya Stealth, while it sounded agreeable but not mind-blowing compared to my Jabra Elite 85h (reasonably neutral) amid my perceptions at the time, I was surprised when on putting on either the Edition XS or Meze 109 Pro, they somehow immediately sounded off in tonality and imaging compared to the Arya Stealth, Audeze MM-500, Sennheiser HD 800 S, and Focal Clear MG. Otherwise, if you’ve seen my posts on Head-Fi (as “MrHaelscheir”), it has been quite a long objectivist journey after that. Maybe it is true that trickling technology from the HE1000se that far down yields such noticeable losses, else the problems lie in frequency response artifacts for your own ears best assessed with the help of listening to sine sweeps and pink noise, and at best, in-ear microphones. For matching the tonality, you might be able to try using a tone generator or slow sine sweep video like “Hearing Test HD” and volume-match the pure tones between your EQed IEMs and target Edition XS EQ. Comfort-wise, I don’t think there are very many headphones with deeper pads than the HE1000 derivatives.