iamblest said:

It's a shame no one else has one and no real aftermarket amp supports it!

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Apologies for slight temporary diversion....but yes, a real shame it's not more celebrated...It may not be the most refined player but it's the most exciting sound out there with it's nice chunky 6.3mm Jack!

kamakahah said:

Well apple has been doing it for quite some time with many people paying for the privilege.

To expand on the design thing a little more towards what I was trying to to say, a new connection might have been a necessity to make the BMW design work without adding a port sticking out like on other headphones that use mini-xlr.
I think one benefit is that it enables them to use the sleeker cup design without bulky connector ports that would be necessary otherwise.

Is that enough to be worth a new design? Depends on the person. Will it stop people that want this headphone from buying it? I highly doubt it.
People that already spend $150+ on aftermarket cables, lol, probably won't flinch at doing it again for these.

I'm not particularly stoked about it, it's not a deal breaker.

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every portable pair of headphones on the market can get a sleek portable design without any special connector. even for planars, the new oppo pm3 has normal 3.5mm jack.

when apple introduced it, they were able to make their design much smaller than everything else on the market & they had a grabbed a big enough marketshare that it was easier to find accessories for them than for standrad usb

It is not as simple as weight but distribution. If Audeze will not implement a wing headband then look at driver design and materials for weight savings. As I said, the weight of the prototypes is fine to me but the pads do generate heat too quickly to realistically be used on the move. And this is in the UK. Our weather is beige unlike asia and America where you do get real temperatures in the seasons

money4me247 said:

every portable pair of headphones on the market can get a sleek portable design without any special connector. even for planars, the new oppo pm3 has normal 3.5mm jack.

when apple introduced it, they were able to make their design much smaller than everything else on the market & they had a grabbed a big enough marketshare that it was easier to find accessories for them than for standrad usb

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Depends on the space inside the cup. As I mentioned, the normal mounting jacks for connectors can be awkward inside the cup - Even a 3.5mm. Since there isn't normally space inside the cup, ports on the outside are shaped onto the cup. It really depends. Since none of us have intimate knowledge of the interior design and space requirements/acoustic of the drivers and cups, it's pretty much impossible to say that the EL-8 design could have worked the same without the connector. 
 
Not sure which design from apple was supposed to be smaller, the lightning connector? I wouldn't call it significantly smaller than micro usb which came out on early smartphones and PDAs five years prior to the lightning connector. 
 
Summit-fi headphones are a pretty niche market. Within that niche, they hold a fairly strong position. Since the only people that are mildly put out by a new connector are other Hi-Fi enthusiasts with aftermarket cables, who will likely just by a new aftermarket cable, it's almost a non-issue. 
 
Going back to the original purpose of our comments, I'm with you. It's hard to determine a worthwhile purpose for the addition. I speculated as many of us do. Not sure if any of my ideas hit the mark, but hopefully there is a better reason than I could dream up. 

I went to the Bristol Show today

The pre-production EL-8's were there. I listened to the open version on an A&K AK240.

I didn't notice the weight. I found them very comfortable.

The wood veneer looks even worse in real life.

The sound did not give me any wow moments. Of course I'm used to T1's so I take a bit of wowing but I've had them for 3 years now so I kind of expect to hear advances in high priced headphones after all that time. Seems not.

The iFi Audio guys had the LCD-X and LCD-2 on their stand. I wasn't wowed particularly by these either although the LCD-2 did elicit one sigh of contentment. The HifiMan HE-6 was there too and that didn't wow me either. Sadly there were no HE-560's at the show.

Don't get me wrong, all these headphones sound very good as they should. They just didn't have me thinking about replacing my T1. The last time a headphone did that was when I donned a pair of SR009. I didn't even know that was what they were until afterwards but I knew immediately I was listening to something very special. The various planars I heard today didn't do that.

One headphone did wow me today though but in a much lower price category. So much so that a pair are now sitting across the room from me quietly breaking in. I listened for a good half hour and enjoyed them enormously. I then went back later and listened again and enjoyed them once again. Obviously something good going on here I thought. I'd better buy a pair So... my new travelling cans are the all new Audio-Technica ATH-MSR7. They are like a better dressed and much more sophisticated older brother to the excellent M50's (which are my current travelling cans). £200 in the UK (but £170 at the show ).

I'll give the Audeze's another chance in a better environment once the EL-8 is available but I'm not holding my breath that the T1 will be troubled.

technobear said:

I went to the Bristol Show today

The pre-production EL-8's were there. I listened to the open version on an A&K AK240.

I didn't notice the weight. I found them very comfortable.

The wood veneer looks even worse in real life.

The sound did not give me any wow moments. Of course I'm used to T1's so I take a bit of wowing but I've had them for 3 years now so I kind of expect to hear advances in high priced headphones after all that time. Seems not.

The iFi Audio guys had the LCD-X and LCD-2 on their stand. I wasn't wowed particularly by these either although the LCD-2 did elicit one sigh of contentment. The HifiMan HE-6 was there too and that didn't wow me either. Sadly there were no HE-560's at the show.

Don't get me wrong, all these headphones sound very good as they should. They just didn't have me thinking about replacing my T1. The last time a headphone did that was when I donned a pair of SR009. I didn't even know that was what they were until afterwards but I knew immediately I was listening to something very special. The various planars I heard today didn't do that.

One headphone did wow me today though but in a much lower price category. So much so that a pair are now sitting across the room from me quietly breaking in. I listened for a good half hour and enjoyed them enormously. I then went back later and listened again and enjoyed them once again. Obviously something good going on here I thought. I'd better buy a pair So... my new travelling cans are the all new Audio-Technica ATH-MSR7. They are like a better dressed and much more sophisticated older brother to the excellent M50's (which are my current travelling cans). £200 in the UK (but £170 at the show ).

I'll give the Audeze's another chance in a better environment once the EL-8 is available but I'm not holding my breathe that the T1 will be troubled.

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I'm guessing your ears are very used to the leaner and detailed Beyer sound now....I had T5p for a while...and the th900 I now have couldn't be more polar opposite....Which I prefer. The Audeze are probably somewhere in between....?

deafanddumb said:

I'm guessing your ears are very used to the leaner and detailed Beyer sound now....I had T5p for a while...and the th900 I now have couldn't be more polar opposite....Which I prefer. The Audeze are probably somewhere in between....?

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I also heard the TH900 today. Far too much bass.

I like the balance of the T1 because it is perfect for techno, trance, dub, etc. When I need to dial in more bass for pop and rock/metal CDs, many of which simply don't have enough, I can dial it in with the XBASS settings on my iFi Audio micro iCAN. This way I have all bases covered (was that a pun? :rolleyes. If I start off with a very bassy headphone then some of my collection is going to pummel my head to a pulp - which is how I felt about the TH900 and also the Sony MDR-Z7 today.

I didn't find the Audeze's overpowering in the bass. I thought the bass was pretty good. It was higher up the frequency range that I wasn't really wowed.

technobear said:

I also heard the TH900 today. Far too much bass.

I like the balance of the T1 because it is perfect for techno, trance, dub, etc. When I need to dial in more bass for pop and rock/metal CDs, many of which simply don't have enough, I can dial it in with the XBASS settings on my iFi Audio micro iCAN. This way I have all bases covered (was that a pun? :rolleyes. If I start off with a very bassy headphone then some of my collection is going to pummel my head to a pulp - which is how I felt about the TH900 and also the Sony MDR-Z7 today.

I didn't find the Audeze's overpowering in the bass. I thought the bass was pretty good. It was higher up the frequency range that I wasn't really wowed.

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As usual...we all have a natural preference and eq can be important, as I tweak mine to bring out the mids and tame any bloat in the bass...et voila, perfect can

Everyone seems to be assuming that this is a proprietary cable. What if.... it's not. What if this new connector will be shared between other products and it happened to appear first on the Audeze. Just throwing it out there...

lamode said:

  Everyone seems to be assuming that this is a proprietary cable. What if.... it's not. What if this new connector will be shared between other products and it happened to appear first on the Audeze. Just throwing it out there...

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That's as unlikely as Audeze owning 60% of the headphone marketshare A brand new connector technology standard for other products that first only appear on Audeze products? Highly unlikely.

Yeah the new connector is definitely interesting. Curious as to the strength of the magnets. Rather have them go overkill on strength to make sure they don't fall out too easily. Also curious how the custom cable situation will respond.
 
Is the 6ft cable confirmed yet?, btw. I hope so. I mean honestly, calling these headphones "portable" is like when people were calling the O2 portable: Sure you can, but there are WAY more portable options out there if it's important to you.

I had undisturbed use of the EL-8 at Addicted to Audio yesterday, was the only person in there for a good long while.

From the pics I really didn't like their looks before, and while I still wouldn't rate them that highly from that perspective, I did think they looked better in the flesh. The build seemed very high quality indeed, noted in little things like the smoothness in the swivel of the hinges. Reminded me of the Oppo PM-1 there. Comfort wise I found them OK, although I have a neck like a bull perhaps, since I don't find the other Audeze weight much of a problem either. They're definitely fairly weighty though. More problematic was the clamping force (I wear glasses, so perhaps more sensitive to that than some), although I believe this will be reduced in production models. It wasn't massively bad, don't get me wrong, but for myself I'd have reservations about the comfort of the clamp on longer listening sessions, at least on these pre-production ones. In comparison, when I put on my HE-6 (not lauded for their comfort in general) afterwards the relief was fairly palpable. The cables seemed ok, although the connector (pretty sure it's proprietary) can only be inserted in one orientation where I had previously thought it was akin to lightning/USB C where it'll go in either way (small thing, I know, but there it is).

I listened initially from my Note 4 with a Dragonfly 1.2, obviously not optimal, but with closed EL-8 and possible on the go use-cases I was interested in this data point. I wasn't wowed in any regard, although there was nothing glaringly wrong either. I found the imaging and soundstage just OK, and the bass impact and tightness weren't great for me (felt the bass also bled over the lower midrange slightly). Important contextual information: I have a bit of high frequency hearing loss, so some of the peaky treble some had noted earlier is unlikely to be bothersome to my ears. Look to other opinions for granular impressions of the treble handling you young guys with perfect heading.

I then listened via the WA5 (with upgrades) and the Questyle CMA800R to see whether things would scale a bit. The bass tightened a bit, and the imaging and separation also improved, but I still had no 'wow' moments. Naturally I can't vouch for the synergy of either of these pairings, having not heard the EL-8 on other amps, so they may have more to give of course. I really liked the LCD-3f on the Questyle though (I found the LCD-3 with the WA5 not at all to my liking - the pairing was 'too much of a good thing' where the warmth was concerned), if that helps any speculate on the pairing of the EL-8 with the Questyle.

After that I listened to the HE-6 from the same amps (although here the CMA800R was in monoblock mode), and for my ears the EL-8 was comprehensively outclassed. That might be expected a bit considering the price difference, however the HE-6 can be had secondhand quite often around that $700 mark, so the comparison is perhaps not as unfair as all that.

Obviously these impressions should be taken with a grain of salt to a large degree, I'd want to hear them over a much longer period on different DAC/amp pairings and my own familiar chain at home (Vega and Taurus MKII) to flesh these superficial impressions out some more. Unless someone wants to loan me a pair though I can't see that happening, since my audition today left me quite indifferent.

thx u for ur honest feedback

money4me247 said:

thx u for ur honest feedback

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You're welcome. They're a good headphone, not for me, but I'm sure many will love their presentation. At this point there are relatively few data points for this headphone, so will be interesting to see where the consensus needle lands once these make their way out into the wild.

Dunno if this has been asked or not but does the retail version of the EL8 come with any carrying/travel case like on the LCD models?