I am finally getting through my honeymoon phase of the new angled alcantera, and I'm very glad the elites come with both pads now, because it was all hybrids when I got these a year and a half ago, now I turn to both pads at different times.
The angled alcantera (AA) has been for critical listening, excitement, sessions under 2 hours, the pads I put on for friends and family wanting their first listen to the elites. The hybrids are the pads I put on for emotion, relaxation, organic presentation, getting lost in my music.
The AAs make the elites show off; soundstage deph, detail retreival, air, layering, you name it. These pads disect every song, and still present them in the meze way. These feel more like the TOTL approach I have heard from other cans, except for being forgiving. I have only ran into two songs that left me feeling the music sounded "off", that's a very good track record versus other headphones. I don't think they're perfect, but considering I would never turn to the OG alcanteras, I am very happy to have these.
The hybrids however, are the more convincing pads for me. Between the added weight and height to the music, more organic, real life separation, fuller presentation, my system makes the hybrids closer to what I expect in real life, while still giving me layering, timbre, everything that made me originally fall in love with the elites. Sure the AAs have more air, separation and all that, but it's more what I call “the hifi sound,” or "the hifi approach," putting on a great show that happens to never escape being a hifi system, and not real life. The hybrids don’t fall into that camp for me. Sure they’re not perfect either, nothing is. But switching back to the hybrids makes it once again about the music, and why I fell in love with the elites in the first place.