Today I joined the MrSpeakers club with the Ether C Flows and here's a few observations:
1. I wouldn't want anything heavier. These are not heavy, but they teeter close to being so. Kudos to Dan for getting them under the magical weight level. I have very serious neck issues and weight matters more than any other ergonomically issue.
2. The box said "Ether Flow" instead of "Ether C Flow" so I was worried until I opened the box and saw that beautiful carbon fiber. I'm not sure if that was a goof or if all the boxes say "Ether Flow."
3. Burn-in smurn-in, I'm listening to them straight out of the box instead of waiting. I'll burn them in during off-hours. Maybe. Shoot, either I'm an unrefined aural cretin or people are making too much of the 0-hour sound of these. What's not to love? They sound incredible. If they get better, shoot, what a bonus but if they never got better than this then I got my money's worth.
4. The bass is good. Makes me think that anything less would be "light" though. Glad I went with the Flows. Gotta have bass in music.
5. They don't create that air pressure that I get with my Audeze phones. Maybe it's my eyeglasses getting in the way. If so, that's a good thing in my opinion.
6. They love the Mojo. I have no desire to get a desktop amp with this little jewel doing so well.
7. I was very doubtful about the claims that they would run on an iPhone. But, they run on my iPhone 6 plus and my MacBook pro at sound levels so loud it's uncomfortable. The sound isn't as good as through the Mojo (duh); I can detect that right off. BUT, they still sound amazing even without the amp straight from an iPhone or computer. The specs of this headphone are very conservative because they play louder than my Audeze Sines and almost as loud as my Beyer T5p.2s and the specs don't read like they should. For those of you who wanted to know, now you know.
8. Sorry, Dan, but the case isn't very useful. A handle would be nice. I'll buy a Pelican case and be done with it though. No way I'm taking these out of the house without the latter.
9. These resolve just as good as my Grado GS1000i headphones, which up to this point were, for me, the kings of resolution. The ECF is as good and does it smoother and in a more musical manner. Still love those Grados though.
10. The ECF handles vocals better than all my other HPs. I love the body the vocals have and the natural sounding timber of the various voices in my song collection. You can hear vocals so well and intimately that you can tell when the singer has spittle in his/her mouth.
11. Guitars used to rule highest on the GS1000i but I think the ECF does them better. Is there anything this HP can't do?
12. The dynamic range takes getting used to and is a revelation. I can be listening to a quiet interlude and then a musician comes in more aggressively and the ECF shows it to you with real range, not the fake collapsed range you get on most HPs. This iis how real music sounds, in real life. Yet the ECF doesn't take it too far where you're always fiddling with the knobs.
13. As for the professional reviews of this headphone: Take those with a grain of salt. Those guys are clearly looking for small things, not large things or there wouldn't be much to write about. Such as Tyll Hertsens talking about what he sees as the faults of these HPs. I don't hear those things, they're small, too small for me to notice. There are HPs for all tastes of course and not everyone wants closed headphones or likes them. When buying headphones, decide first which you like (closed or open) before looking at the other aspects of a headphone.
14. Because I can't end on 13, right? This is how a cable should be done. Beyerdynamics T5p.2 has a very similar cable which I also appreciate. Grado cables are horrible in comparison. Grado needs to stop using that garden hose they call a cable and take a cue from Dan and his DUM cable. The Audeze Sine cable is somewhere in-between.
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