Hey guys,

Had a really sad day in my HP journey when I returned my favorite cans – the Arya Stealths. You see, I couldn’t get rid of inner ear discomfort after like 5-10 minutes of use, even at lowest volume, and even EQ’d, despite everything I tried.

To isolate whether it was pads or sound, I wore the pads without sound and it felt fine. Shortly after putting some music on – in any genre, even at low levels, boom, I felt the discomfort in both ears. And what a shame, because they sounded so unbelievably perfect to me – airy, wide soundstage, great tonality, just beautiful…

I found a thread by u/Sproketz who described the same thing. He ported bass-holes into the pads to relieve low-freq pressure and it worked for him. Sadly, it did not resolve the issue for me, although it did seem to help a bit.

I’m now debating whether I will have this issue with all oval-shaped planars. Currently debating ordering either the Arya Organics or the HE1000SE. Worth a shot or hopeless?

For reference, I own Focal Elexes, Sundaras, Audeze LCD-X, etc, and none of them have ever given me issues.