Unfortunately had only a few hours to spend at the festival so that will be short and concise.
Really just stopped by few places of interest and no pics so not the most entertaining report I am afraid
.
Stop 1: Head-fi booth
- Was great to be able to catch up with Jude
- He showed me pics of his test lab for headphones, talk about overkill
- We were half joking that there are numerous manufacturers out there that would probably want to pay some money for have their gear measured there.
- I am sure details will surface at some point but Jude seems dead serious to assembly a badass measuring rig and supporting staff to go with it
Stop 2: MrSpeaker's booth:
a. Ether E prototype out of BSHE (production mallards) / Auralic Vega, playing various high res material (jazz mostly):
- On the positive side first, the bass extension and kick was there and enjoyable / foot taping kind
- Overall it made for a relatively easy sounding headphone for plenty of body
- On the negative side, I found most of the midrange too scooped out for my tastes coupled with some kind of accentuation of upper mids / lower treble
- While Dan mentioned that's his house voicing / based of listening to real percussions, to my ears there was too much presence there and it did not sound "quite right"
- Upper treble was also quite present out of this rig, which was hit or miss depending on the tracks so in the end I could not say I either liked or disliked the phone as it was changing with the tunes I was playing.
- Discussed a bit with Dan about the design and what not, he suggested I try on the other rig. BTW, Dan's really really nice person to talk to, I remember when I met him first a couple years back and he remains true to himself, very honest, very humble, we need more industry people like him
- Talking about price, I was glad to see he also has a rather sound approach to pricing. That is he basically wants to have a sustainable business but does not price a product based on what people tell him they ready to pay for (can't say that from all the makers out there....)
b. Ether E prototype out of LLT2 (I think, but SS version) / Bricasti M1, playing same music:
- This rig was more pleasant to listen to, the issue I had with the upper mids (or might be in the treble, too short to tell) in the BHSE was reduced there
- One possible explanation is simply differences in upstream gear (the Vega does not have the reputation to be particularly sweet sounding and the BHSE may be not sounding at its best with stock tubes)
- The other possible explanation, all speculation on my part but, as mentioned above, I wonder if the Ether E in its current iteration may be one of the most difficult loads to handle in the realm of estat phones
- For one the sensitivity is very very low (see post above) which suggest the D/S gap may be much larger than other estat offerings
- The headphone capacitance may also be rather high (due to very large stator active area?) which means most amps out there will roll off high frequencies depending on their max slew rate (see links in sig for details that are way beyond my pay grade to explain)
- Note that really only thing I could judge was the tonality of the phones in the short period so no comment on imaging and such
- Conclusion for me: jury still open, probably at the very least needs some work to increase sensitivity which Dan is already working on apparently
Stop 3. Stax booth:
- That's mandatory stop for me, Sasaki-san knows me well by now and expects my short visit at every show
- I really like Stax, they're very friendly and down to earth and it's always good to chit chat about future products (even though I never can get anything out of the conversation lol)
- Stax is quite aware that everyone and his friend wants a piece of the action in regards to estats (coincidence or not, Shure had their estat iems at the table right next to the SR009...)
- They of course take this seriously (and preparing to fight back it seems
) but also think this is good for spreading the word on estat technology (I agree with this)
- On the new products front, since the bag was let out of the bag already, we could discuss about the work done on entry level portable DAC / amp. I am not sure Stax was controlling what was shown at CES some time ago, it may have been driven by Edifier (they've been implying from day 1 of the acquisition that they were hoping at some point to increase accessibility of stax gear to Chinese market by helping with design and manufacturing of more affordable, portable gear.
- A friend had asked me to convey the claims of poor service from US based clients due to the local distributor, which I did... I don't think anything will happen but it does not hurt to mention something.
- I could spend short time listening to the L700, L500 and 507, it was interesting experience because they all seem to have a bit different voicing to please everyone's varied tastes out there.
- In particular, my take on these 3 guys ranging from bright to full bodied: 507 (006t) > L500 (3010?) > L700 (006t)
- For me, there's no question I gravitate more toward the L700 sound (out of Stax tube amps)
Stop 4. Audeze booth:
- I listened to the Sine through my iPhone using the lightning connector
- I thought the voicing was excellent and no big / obvious defect like some peaks in the FR response and such
- I have to admit I haven't been a fan of Audeze gear till now, always found the LCDs heavy / claustrophobic and poorly resolving etc...
- Now, I find the Sine is a great move for Audeze, it's light, it's relatively affordable, and it just has a fun / engaging yet non fatiguing sound out of the iphone
- My main grip is with the severe clamp and small size of cups (not sure I could handle it for couple of hours straight for instance)
- Coming from the Sine, I briefly put the EL-8 on and took it off after 10 seconds, tizzy and heavy, pass...
cheers,
arnaud
