Great news!Small update on the ribbon headphones. I was previously running them on a tiny class D amp that claimed 50wpc (a very dubious claim, after some testing), and found the sound quality to be lacking in certain areas. Annoying static, clipping and amp shutdown at high volume or during songs with lots of bass, etc.
Recently got a massive JLH 1969 class A 15wpc amp, and things sound much better. Even with this 15wpc amp, it easily reaches deafeningly loud levels, so I'm not worried about headroom.
I previously typed in detail about weird observations I had with the bass response in complex songs - those still remain, but every other issue I had with the headphones are now fixed. I can definitely say they now sound really good, outstanding even, far better than my beyer t1, and better than my, admittedly unreliable, memory of the focal clears.
I'm meeting up with a friend soon, dragging the huge amp with me, to show off these ribbons and compare them to his 95X try his focal clears again. Will post additional details after.
I'll probably relegate the tiny class D amp to use as the 'portable mode' for these ribbons, once the hardware I need to run it off a power delivery battery pack arrives.
The imaging issues due to the bass seems likely unsolvable for the form factor: the driver just moves too much in its efforts to produce the bass.