Introduction

So, imagine you’ve pulled the trigger and you got yourself a pair of Hifiman Susvara. They are widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best headphone you can buy, and it comes at a huge price of $6000. While the build quality is pretty impressive, there are always things to upgrade, and one of those things are the earpads.

Don’t get me wrong, the stock pads on the Susvara are quite comfortable and rather well-made, but I have to admit that they are not worthy of being used on the best pair of headphones on the market. 

Luckily, there’s a company called Dekoni, that offers a super high-quality replacement for the earpads for many high-end headphones on the market, including the Susvara. I contacted them a couple of weeks ago to see if I could test them and see if they are worth considering. They responded to me and they sent me four different pairs of earpads to play with, so today we’re gonna test them and see whats the fuzz is about.

Packaging

The packaging of the earpads is pretty straightforward and really good. It is a rather small box with the pads inside and nothing else (well, what would you expect). What I really like is that the design of each box is corresponding with the type of earpad inside.  

You’ve got yourself solid, leather earpads? The graphic on the box is solid and minimalistic. Did you go for perforated leather? Well, then your box has circles printed on it, and if you bought hybrids, the graphic is more complex, with one part of it being solid, and the other part is filled with circles. It is a very nice touch, which might not add any value to the final product, but it’s really cool to see the company caring for such little things. Kudos for that.

Build Quality

As I said above, the original earpads that come installed on the Susvara aren’t bad to begin with. They are quite comfortable and pleasant to the touch. The Dekoni pads however are clearly an upgrade in any way though. 

The quality of the materials is fantastic, no matter if it’s leather, suede, or perforated leather, they do feel premium and very nice on your head.

What’s important is that I don’t find any of the four different styles hot, even after using the headphones for a couple of hours. Even the Elite Sheepskin, which should be the least breathable of the lineup feels good after 2-3 hours of usage, which was quite a pleasant surprise for me. 

When it comes to the choice of different types of earpads for the Susvara, there are four different models, which are:

Elite Velour – A plushy, velour earpad that actually uses a tighter velour than most, to achieve sonic characteristics similar to those of leather. Thanks to that, it doesn’t lose the low frequencies as much, and the isolation is also quite impressive for a velour pad. The material is very soft to the touch and they are superbly comfortable and breathable.

Elite Sheepskin – This version uses sheepskin to achieve a splendid feeling on your head and in your hands. Like every other version, the memory foam makes it very comfortable, and the overall experience with these is great. Definitely one of the best leather earpads I’ve ever used, but I enjoy the hybrid more. 

Elite Fenestrated Sheepskin – Basically take the Elite Sheepskin version and put some holes into it. It is designed to be the coolest of the bunch and very comfortable, which I can report is true. It does look unique and it feels quite fresh on your head, my second favorite. 

Elite Hybrid – The stock Hifiman earpads, but on steroids. It uses all the best materials from Dekoni paired together to achieve the most neutral sound and brilliant comfort. The velour face feels magnificent on your head, while the Fenestrated leather on the inside is there to reduce reflections of the direct sound before entering the ear. My favorites!

Usage

Let’s state one, very important thing at the very beginning. I don’t actually think that they sound noticeably different from each other. I’ve seen some people online really recommending the Fenestrated earpads, because they give you the best sound quality. 

Dekoni has measured its earpads and all of the measurements are almost the same, with some very, very small differences, and sonically it is just that. The differences are so small, that I won’t bother comparing them. 

What IS important though is that whichever model you’ll choose, you’re looking at a significant upgrade over the stock earpads, and looking at how inexpensive they are compared to the $6000 that you’ve paid for the Susvara, it is simply a no-brainer.

After testing all of them for a couple of weeks now, I decided to keep the Hybrid on my Susvara. They do offer brilliant comfort and breathability while being quite similar in their design to the original ones. I just like the feeling of velour touching my skin, and the Elite Velour version is harder to clean and it attracts my cat’s fur way more. 

To summarize, looking at how inexpensive these earpads are compared to the price of the Susvara, you should definitely get them and enjoy your TOTL headphones the way it’s meant to be enjoyed. 

Summary

Well, this review was pretty straightforward, wasn’t it? I absolutely recommend the Dekoni earpads for the Hifiman Susvara. For a fraction of the price of the Hifiman flagship, you’re getting a substantial upgrade to both comfort and overall feeling of your headphones. While I won’t call it an improvement in terms of the sound quality, everything else about them is pretty much a no-brainer. 

You can get Dekoni Earpads for Susvara here