[Hifiearspeakers]

Hmmm...just not what I’m hearing. Middle of ‘Whole Lot of Love’ is very dynamic and engaging. It’s one of those songs where I hear the mix going from flat (2-d) to 3-d and back, within the track. Middle is mostly drums and other percussion — very 3-d space and very engaging. Certainly not ‘lifeless and dead’. BTW, aren’t those — lifeless and dead — synonymous?

My ears, your ears!

Haha. Yes they’re the same but I just can’t emphasize that point enough. You know the middle of “Tom Sawyer” by Rush where Neil Peart goes off on his drum solo? It sounds bland and very undynamic. The keyboards come through vibrant and lively, but the drum solo is just all kinds of meh. The same goes for the percussion climax on Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight”. That’s supposed to be the best part of the song. It just sucks on my Ether 2 compared to every other headphone I own. It doesn’t even sound as good as my $60 closed back Monoprice headphones that I only own for privacy.

There’s also a drum intro on the song “Lights of Taormina” by Mark Knopfler that isn’t very loud but you can hear each distinct beat clearly. Then the guitar and backing instruments start kicking in. With every other headphone, I can still hear that drum section but it’s faint. With the Ether 2, it is nowhere to be heard. Nothing.

 

[franz12]

Just saw this, now but had the previous post in draft. This FR looks like this headphone sounds but there are still additional issues.



I think that's how the E2 sounds. We confirmed this pair with Mr. Speakers and he says, "Your unit is not one that was affected. Regards, Steve" so it's been checked out. My friend burned it in for 100 hours, I have another 100 on it. The LCD-X was far more impressive and had not overdone treble presence than the E2. I wish it had the build of the E2. That thing is drop dead sexy. Some great design work.

Now, I'm not trying to ruffle feathers here, but I'm hearing what I'm hearing, have consulted with friends and they have confirmed this. I wanted a second opinion as I had previously said, I want to like this thing.

I'm gonna give this another listen and compare to other common headphones to put a couple characteristics in context. No time now, it off town.

If you have a pair and you enjoy them, that's awesome! If my friend enjoyed them, I'm sure he'd keep them and if I did, I'd have one on order. I understand people have different tastes, hence impressions, not science on this side of the forum.

I think E2 is tuned intentionally in that way, because mrspeakers already have brighter offerings like ether c flow.
I heavily A/Bed E2 and focal clear so that I see that some people would prefer the brighter presentation of the Clear.
Both of them are great headphones, and I do think the Clear is of great value at 1k.
Currently, E2 gets more of my head time as it sounds so gentle to my ears. Enjoy.

 

[Hifiearspeakers]

I think E2 is tuned intentionally in that way, because mrspeakers already have brighter offerings like ether c flow.
I heavily A/Bed E2 and focal clear so that I see that some people would prefer the brighter presentation of the Clear.
Both of them are great headphones, and I do think the Clear is of great value at 1k.
Currently, E2 gets more of my head time as it sounds so gentle to my ears. Enjoy.

Franz, the Clear is known to have above neutral bass. How does the bass of your Ether 2 sound compared to the Clear? If you say it has equal or more quantity and impact, then I’ll know for sure that my pair is defective.

 

[franz12]

Franz, the Clear is known to have above neutral bass. How does the bass of your Ether 2 sound compared to the Clear? If you say it has equal or more quantity and impact, then I’ll know for sure that my pair is defective.

This is my second pair of the Clear, but my first pair of the Clear seemed to have more mid-bass than my second pair. I didn't have them at the same time, so I am not so sure, but there seemed some product variations going on in focal products. So I am not so sure whether my Clear is the same as others, but at this moment, the mid-bass quantity is pretty much comparable between them.

I don't know why but in my experience, mrspeakers' products do seem to change their sound in their first 100+ hours. That wasn't the case with Clear, Ananda, Sundara, and hd800s I owned or tested. So I think it is still early to conclude.
I heard songs you mentioned. The mid-bass quantity of E2 is fine to my ears. But E2 does have more linear bass compared to my other more V-shaped headphones like AFO or Bose QC35ii, while E2 is more resolving. Probably, it might be my ears, your ears!

 

[CoFire]

Here’s what’s interesting. Rolled off upper mids or treble should have no effect on the volume, intensity, or impact of the kick drum. For me, I don’t have any issues with the quantity or quality of treble. My problem is that I’ve never heard a headphone, at any price point, that renders mid bass so poorly. Drums sound completely lifeless and dead. Bass drum way more than snare but neither is acceptable. There is simply no rhythm section with my pair. I actually really like the treble on mine.

On the pair I have, the HEX V2, HD6XX, and Clear all have more treble for what it's worth among other headphones. I agree with your portrayal of the lifeless snares. There's some element of this headphone that renders real instruments with flaws. With EDM it's more palatable. Maybe it's just headphone to headphone variation? I'm confused every time I read a raving review, then listen to the pair I currently have. Puzzling. I don't disagree with anyone's impressions but I'm finding a common trend difficult to identify. I understand we all have different ears but over time, typically a trend breaks free. This thread has been all over with my experience.

Thanks for your impressions.

 

[Rhadamanthys]

Franz, the Clear is known to have above neutral bass. How does the bass of your Ether 2 sound compared to the Clear? If you say it has equal or more quantity and impact, then I’ll know for sure that my pair is defective.

Man don't get me wrong but I do hope your unit is defective. I'm an avid metal/rock listener myself and my Ether 2 will arrive in the next two weeks. Reading your impressions, I'm dreading the moment that I put them on for the first time. But the way you describe it, there must be something wrong with them for sure.

 

[Deezel177]

This! and I noticed it on the same album. Even on Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven Unplugged, there's a veil over the vocals.

Some of my issues are the treble is rolled off and if linear, is on a downward slope, it is polite yes, won't hurt you because it's many dB below the mids and bass. Feel free to crank it up to find the treble. The signature is L-shaped with the lower part of the L on downward slope. There's something muffled (wooliness) in the upper bass and lower mids which may or may not be responsible for the veil over the vocals. I'll listen more to more precisely muster my opinion, but as far as a $2K headphone should perform, I have headphones I paid far less for that I'd still have a hard time accepting with comparable flaws.

Someone mentioned the treble lies between the HEX V2 and HEK, if the HEK is darker than the HEX V2, this might be possible.

Some may not want to talk amp pairings but I will say, this headphone sounds better out of my Grace m9XX than a Grace m9XX DAC/THX AAA 789 which confuses me. Both these were setup with a SE cable which I think hurt the THX AAA 789. They sounded best from @pthora 's Audio-GD 28.38 which I understand runs a Sabre DAC chipset which in my estimation makes a vast improvement. So either a brighter DAC /AMP pairing is needed or MUCH more power.

In the context of reference sound for mastering, sure, this is a great contender, but also is a HD6XX, 400i, HEX V2, etc, feel free to rattle off a couple more headphones. I agree this headphone may not be suitable for audiophile interested in lively listening as a reviewer commented on my opinion.

Additionally, and this may be the kicker, I don't listen loud, so there are many headphones that I don't find strident that others may have issues with. Not saying I even remotely like bright headphones, I really don't believe I do, but the treble is underwhelming (dull) unless listening at high volumes.

I think there-in lies the issue for your preferences and sensibilities, personally: You view a linear treble and the resultant lack of crisp, ultra-perceivable detail as a fatal flaw. Considering the amount of mixed reception on this thread already, I think that's an opinion shared by many, and understandably so. Detail retrieval and clarity are extremely common benchmarks of performance, followed by stage expansion, layering, separation, etc.... before timbre and tone, very commonly at the bottom of the heap.

Now, I don't intend to generalise and say any of you necessarily do so and/or are wrong if you do. But, the ETHER 2 to me represents a rising trend in in-ears and headphones (like the Empire Ears Phantom, the JHAudio Layla, etc.) that flip industry convention and place timbre and tone at the very top of their respective lists. What good is a lively, crackling snare if they all sound relatively similar? Or rather, leave you with similar feelings? Snappy, open and clean on literally all tracks, anything else? These aren't questions I'm personally asking - because as you said, we all hear differently - but these are questions I believe the products and their makers are asking. Now in my opinion, transparency comes in two parts (rather than one as most people I talk to assume): Detail-led transparency and tonal transparency. The former refers to how much raw information (i.e. detail) you can draw from the recording. For most people I've seen, this constitutes about 70-80% of what makes a good headphone. How much detail can it retrieve? How effortlessly does it do so? How well is the stage structured, layered and separated?

However, tonal transparency is a matter I've rarely seen discussed. Personally, I didn't even know it existed before enrolling into my audio engineering courses. Now, let me reiterate that this does not make me a better listener in any way - simply a different one. I'll touch on this later. Anyways, tonal transparency to me is how colourless the headphone is in tone, and the way I determine that is by observing how much it changes from one track to another - specifically, from one track to another in a singularly-mastered album - and find out how much of its own inherent colour is imparted onto the track. Can I determine shifts in staging as @LCMusicLover mentioned? Does the headphone's inherently (perhaps, stubbornly) large stage make that difficult to discern? If I listen to Lost in Paris and South of the River by Tom Misch, can I hear that shift in the saturation of Misch's voice, not to mention the other instruments? If I listen to Burning and One Day At A Time from Sam Smith's The Thrill of it All, can I pick up the subtle differences in the lower-mids or the upper-treble? Is the only meaningful insight I can gain from them simply the notion that they sound clean and clear? Most importantly, could I have identified these shifts as quickly and confidently if I didn't know about them to begin with?

Personally, with the alternative mastering headphones you mentioned, I'd probably find them a lot more challenging. Because, they're not as discerning in tone as the ETHER 2 is. The HD650 has a stereotypically warm bass that remains pillowy at all times, the HEK is coloured in a hi-fi sense to sound constantly clean and crisp, etc.

The ETHER 2 is on the same boat as the in-ears I mentioned, in that it's split pretty evenly between both forms of transparency, rather than the more common 70/30 ratio I implied earlier. I believe this is why reception on it has been mixed: It sacrifices aspects of detail-led transparency in order to achieve a level of tonal transparency that most people aren't accustomed to and tonal transparency is an often underrated element of audio to begin with. Now, returning to my earlier point, does that make individuals who uphold tonal transparency on an equal plane as detail-led transparency in any way better, more mature, etc.? In my opinion, it absolutely does not. Headphones don't have to be ultra-precise or reference-grade to be enjoyed (or considered subjectively good), and the opposite applies too. This is why I often criticise terms like Reference-Grade or Studio-Grade in marketing. Heck, in a terrible, egotistical and callous world, those in the detail camp would scoff at anyone who could enjoy such a muffled, un-crisp sound, while those in the tone camp couldn't even begin to comprehend how one could enjoy music with such tonal indifference.

So, what I'm probably trying to say here is that things tend to be more than they seem, context is key and joy is in the bias of the beholder. I hope you've all gotten something out of this splurge, 'cus this is surely more than my I've-been-awake-and-live-mixing-at-church-for-8-hours brain can handle. Cheers, hopefully nothing I said here causes anyone any offence.

 

[Hifiearspeakers]

Man don't get me wrong but I do hope your unit is defective. I'm an avid metal/rock listener myself and my Ether 2 will arrive in the next two weeks. Reading your impressions, I'm dreading the moment that I put them on for the first time. But the way you describe it, there must be something wrong with them for sure.

I believe my pair is defective. But if Dan tells me they’re not, I will definitely be returning them. I could never describe them as having powerful bass. I couldn’t even describe them as having neutral bass.

 

[Deezel177]

I believe my pair is defective. But if Dan tells me they’re not, I will definitely be returning them. I could never describe them as having powerful bass. I couldn’t even describe them as having neutral bass.

This may be a particularly dumb question, but I couldn’t help but ask: Is there perhaps an issue in seal? Have you tried slowly rotating it around your head?

 

[supervisor]

The same goes for the percussion climax on Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight”. That’s supposed to be the best part of the song. It just sucks on my Ether 2 compared to every other headphone I own.

just put this on to test to compare to your description--do you mean JUST the kick drum or all the percussion? the drum climax sounds pretty massive to me on E2.

 

[Hifiearspeakers]

This may be a particularly dumb question, but I couldn’t help but ask: Is there perhaps an issue in seal? Have you tried slowly rotating it around your head?

That’s not a dumb question. Seal is not an issue. I don’t wear glasses and they fit my head beautifully. Unlike others on here, I find them extremely comfortable.

 

[Hifiearspeakers]

just put this on to test to compare to your description--do you mean JUST the kick drum or all the percussion? the drum climax sounds pretty massive to me on E2.

All drums and percussion sound dull and muted but the kick drums in particular. The snare can be heard more easily but I wouldn’t call it crisp, clean, or authoritative.

Everyone knows that the inherent advantage of planar tech is the way they can produce bass. That’s why I’m so destroyed that my pair does this so poorly. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the AKG K702, but it’s generally regarded as bass light. It can also be bought today for under $150 dollars brand new and it uses a dynamic driver. My cheap K702 obliterates my Ether 2 when it comes to drums or any percussion instruments. There are a lot of folk tracks that have a quiet drum beat in the background and when I listen with my Ether 2, I can’t even hear the kick drum while vocals are going on. I can still hear the faint kick drum with all of my other headphones.

You know the classic song “One”, by Metallica? It has that typical Lars Ulrich heavy kick drum beat that drives the song. It’s very audible on all my headphones because Lars has such a distinct sound and heavy foot when he uses his double bass. I can easily hear it with my Ether 2, but the Ether presents it with the least amount of impact compared to ALL of my other headphones. And when you get to the bridge where all you hear is Lars and his super fast double bass before the guitars chime in, the notes almost blur. It’s hard to hear each distinct hit with the Ether 2. But it’s not hard with any of my other headphones. They don’t mute or soften the sound.

 

[JerkChicken]

No bass problems for me

I find them to be just the right amount of sub-bass extention.. plus I have an extra +/- 6db to work with my ADI2-DAC for those times I really want to thump

 

[franz12]

I think there-in lies the issue for your preferences and sensibilities, personally: You view a linear treble and the resultant lack of crisp, ultra-perceivable detail as a fatal flaw. Considering the amount of mixed reception on this thread already, I think that's an opinion shared by many, and understandably so. Detail retrieval and clarity are extremely common benchmarks of performance, followed by stage expansion, layering, separation, etc.... before timbre and tone, very commonly at the bottom of the heap.

Now, I don't intend to generalise and say any of you necessarily do so and/or are wrong if you do. But, the ETHER 2 to me represents a rising trend in in-ears and headphones (like the Empire Ears Phantom, the JHAudio Layla, etc.) that flip industry convention and place timbre and tone at the very top of their respective lists. What good is a lively, crackling snare if they all sound relatively similar? Or rather, leave you with similar feelings? Snappy, open and clean on literally all tracks, anything else? These aren't questions I'm personally asking - because as you said, we all hear differently - but these are questions I believe the products and their makers are asking. Now in my opinion, transparency comes in two parts (rather than one as most people I talk to assume): Detail-led transparency and tonal transparency. The former refers to how much raw information (i.e. detail) you can draw from the recording. For most people I've seen, this constitutes about 70-80% of what makes a good headphone. How much detail can it retrieve? How effortlessly does it do so? How well is the stage structured, layered and separated?

However, tonal transparency is a matter I've rarely seen discussed. Personally, I didn't even know it existed before enrolling into my audio engineering courses. Now, let me reiterate that this does not make me a better listener in any way - simply a different one. I'll touch on this later. Anyways, tonal transparency to me is how colourless the headphone is in tone, and the way I determine that is by observing how much it changes from one track to another - specifically, from one track to another in a singularly-mastered album - and find out how much of its own inherent colour is imparted onto the track. Can I determine shifts in staging as @LCMusicLover mentioned? Does the headphone's inherently (perhaps, stubbornly) large stage make that difficult to discern? If I listen to Lost in Paris and South of the River by Tom Misch, can I hear that shift in the saturation of Misch's voice, not to mention the other instruments? If I listen to Burning and One Day At A Time from Sam Smith's The Thrill of it All, can I pick up the subtle differences in the lower-mids or the upper-treble? Is the only meaningful insight I can gain from them simply the notion that they sound clean and clear? Most importantly, could I have identified these shifts as quickly and confidently if I didn't know about them to begin with?

Personally, with the alternative mastering headphones you mentioned, I'd probably find them a lot more challenging. Because, they're not as discerning in tone as the ETHER 2 is. The HD650 has a stereotypically warm bass that remains pillowy at all times, the HEK is coloured in a hi-fi sense to sound constantly clean and crisp, etc.

The ETHER 2 is on the same boat as the in-ears I mentioned, in that it's split pretty evenly between both forms of transparency, rather than the more common 70/30 ratio I implied earlier. I believe this is why reception on it has been mixed: It sacrifices aspects of detail-led transparency in order to achieve a level of tonal transparency that most people aren't accustomed to and tonal transparency is an often underrated element of audio to begin with. Now, returning to my earlier point, does that make individuals who uphold tonal transparency on an equal plane as detail-led transparency in any way better, more mature, etc.? In my opinion, it absolutely does not. Headphones don't have to be ultra-precise or reference-grade to be enjoyed (or considered subjectively good), and the opposite applies too. This is why I often criticise terms like Reference-Grade or Studio-Grade in marketing. Heck, in a terrible, egotistical and callous world, those in the detail camp would scoff at anyone who could enjoy such a muffled, un-crisp sound, while those in the tone camp couldn't even begin to comprehend how one could enjoy music with such tonal indifference.

So, what I'm probably trying to say here is that things tend to be more than they seem, context is key and joy is in the bias of the beholder. I hope you've all gotten something out of this splurge, 'cus this is surely more than my I've-been-awake-and-live-mixing-at-church-for-8-hours brain can handle. Cheers, hopefully nothing I said here causes anyone any offence.

yeah..+ our ears are quite adaptable. Now I feel sounds coming from Bose QC35ii being harsh..which I never thought in that way before..

 

[Maelob]

I am one of those that regarding burn in or not, if I don't like what I hear when I first listen to the headphone, then It is not for me. I mean off course I will give it some time and let my ears adjust but I will not wait weeks and months. I believe if you have to burn something for hundreds of hours so it can change a non likable signature to a one you like, its a no go for me. I believe in this case plenty of E2 owners liked the headphones from day one, right? I guess in some occasion a piece of equipment could drastically change its sound signature, but for me if I dont like what I hear, its bye bye. No headphone will please everybody. I did it with the Aeon Flow closed, rave reviews and people love them, but for me they didn't work. just my two cents.