The Sivga SV023 feels like a new chapter in the company's timeline, one that's generally impressive—enough to merit the recommendation seen below. It's more expensive than the Sivga Phoenix, and certainly more so than the Robin (SV021) which helped break Sivga into the more mainstream market, owing to a V-shaped tuning with plenty of bass but not to the point of being bloated or non-resolving. It also introduced many to wooden ear cup headphones, which as we've seen, is Sivga's distinguishing forte across their product line. The SV023 takes all these and puts out a more mature product, that is going to be less appealing to the mainstream audience in itself, but more so for those who now have a taste for better tuning, but still want that warmer presentation.

I saw a few reviews mention how Sivga needs to be better at marketing its brand and products, and perhaps even give a cooler name to the SV023, as with the Phoenix and Robin before. It certainly would have made it easier to describe and talk about this set, but really I don't feel Sivga is popular enough as a brand yet, to where if you are familiar with it then you likely already know what the SV023 is. Chances are high there will be a word-associated name soon too, but personally I thought the SV023 speaks for itself and the new drivers do too. These are fairly unique LCP diaphragm drivers with a central beryllium coating, and the overall package addresses many of the shortcomings I noticed with the Phoenix and several other dynamic driver headphones in the $25-400 range. I might as well increase that range to $500, given some recently released offerings which are not worth their name even, and the SV023 at $450 effectively becomes an end point in this product segment.

There's certainly a lot to like here, but note that most of these are going to be affected by how well you take to the ear pads used here. I spoke to Sivga about this, because I can't emphasize enough to you how important this is, and was told that the custom ear pad design was made based on R&D done with several different head/pinna geometries in mind. I had to work slightly to get it to in turn to work for me, and I'd have rather seen more typical contoured pads such as the YAXI pads we recently saw. Thankfully it's nowhere near as bad here as in that case, and the Sivga SV023 is a set worthy of your consideration should you be in the market and have the budget for it.