After a long courtship and several in store demos and comparisons to phones I own, I yesterday bought the Elears. In store I found them superior to the LCD-X, HE-X and HD800X. The HD800S are generally my default phones but I have recently become intolerant of the Sennheiser sound.
At home in the light of day I feel there is an awful lot of zing in the treble and anything that has fingersnaps, handclaps or snare drum rattle really stands out, almost to the point of hitting peak at times. It's not a sibilance, but rather what just seems like an extended dynamic. Not a deal breaker, but if it were any worse it would be and I suppose I bear some disappointment at how different they are to the pair I had demoed. Not the same smooth yet resolved sound. Something like Portishead's Numb sounds very weird indeed through these, far too punchy. Even Morcheeba's super smooth Almost Done is presented in a difficult light with the snare and high hat going far too loud.
Perhaps they will settle in, but I am not a big break in believer.
The other side of the coin is that they bear a sort of presence and resolution that easily outclasses the HD800S. There have been a few spooky moments with the Elear where you get an "in the room" feeling of live performance that I can't say I have heard with any other dynamic phone. So this is enough to keep going with them for the time being.
I was never a believer in burn-in until I got my Elear. After about 20 hours or so I noticed that they sounded a bit more open compared to new and the highs were sounding clearer and cleaner. At around 50 hours the soundstage width was much better than before and everything just sounded better, its hard to explain but I just found all frequencies to sound cleaner. Now I don't know how much my Modi Multibit had to do with it but I didn't get that until about 30 hours in or so. Now it might just be a placebo effect but I don't think it is.
Since the headphone bug hit me I've always been looking to upgrade after a while but with my current little desktop setup (Elear - Magni 2 - Modi Multibit - Foobar2000 or X5II coaxial out) I don't feel the need to anymore. I'm sure I will at some point but for now, I'm very satisfied.