[mrspeakers]

The larger axis was to show the THD, so I'll post a few more next week per your good suggestions.  
 
We're getting ready for the mini-meet tomorrow and after about 4 months of no weekends at all I'm not doing a darn thing Sunday.  
 

 

[money4me247]

curious about why the pads off measurements vs most FR measurements that do seem to be taken with the earpads on. would love to see a pads-on measurement in the future. thanks!

 

[hans030390]

Yeah, the overlay with the other headphones would be helpful. Do you have "pads on" measurements too? Couple other questions (please let me know if I overlooked something!):
 
1. What SPL were you running these at? And was SPL captured/measured via a single tone or white noise?
 
2. Did some spot checking on the D2/D3 measurements. Hopefully I'm reading this right, but D2 usually seems to be about -50dB down from the frequency across most of the spectrum, which would based on an online calculator would be around 0.3% distortion. Though, of course, this is just eyeballing it, and there do indeed seem to be some spots pushing closer to -53dB-55dB, which would hover right around that 0.2% distortion point. And, again, curious about SPL to factor into distortion levels.
 
Let me know if I missed something. Been hearing really good things about these from most everyone. Would like to test a pair sometime, but not sure the sound sig will be enough to my personal tastes based on what feedback I've read to warrant my own purchase.

 

[mrspeakers]

  curious about why the pads off measurements vs most FR measurements that do seem to be taken with the earpads on. would love to see a pads-on measurement in the future. thanks!

Our coupler is designed to approximate an ear-ear pad interface.  It's quite close to what we used to see with our fixtures that used pads. We made the switch a while back with all our headphones and the coupler very closely mimics the ear pad acoustically. 
 
By measuring without pads we eliminate minor pad variations that might cause us to be matching pads instead of drivers.  Pads age and get replaced so long term matching vs "matched with a specific set of pads on" matching seemed the clear way to go.   
 
We specify "pads-off" to be unambiguous. 

 

[money4me247]

  Our coupler is designed to approximate an ear-ear pad interface.  It's quite close to what we used to see with our fixtures that used pads. We made the switch a while back with all our headphones and the coupler very closely mimics the ear pad acoustically. 
 
By measuring without pads we eliminate minor pad variations that might cause us to be matching pads instead of drivers.  Pads age and get replaced so long term matching vs "matched with a specific set of pads on" matching seemed the clear way to go.   
 
We specify "pads-off" to be unambiguous. 

thank you for the explanation.

 

[mrspeakers]

Yeah, the overlay with the other headphones would be helpful. Do you have "pads on" measurements too? Couple other questions (please let me know if I overlooked something!):

1. What SPL were you running these at? And was SPL captured/measured via a single tone or white noise?

2. Did some spot checking on the D2/D3 measurements. Hopefully I'm reading this right, but D2 usually seems to be about -50dB down from the frequency across most of the spectrum, which would based on an online calculator would be around 0.3% distortion. Though, of course, this is just eyeballing it, and there do indeed seem to be some spots pushing closer to -53dB-55dB, which would hover right around that 0.2% distortion point. And, again, curious about SPL to factor into distortion levels.

Let me know if I missed something. Been hearing really good things about these from most everyone. Would like to test a pair sometime, but not sure the sound sig will be enough to my personal tastes based on what feedback I've read to warrant my own purchase.

That's about right on the 0.2%, from about 100-7K at about 90dB at 1KHz. Our measurements are not in an isolation chamber, so it may be better but this seems like a safe number. Will do graphs of that as well.

 

[m8o]

If I understand correctly, the ether driver is a totally new driver built from the ground up, and so it doesn't necessarily need to be compared to a fostex. Sounds like most are comparing to the hd800 and lcd3...and it's holding it's own

Can you Dan, or anyone in the know for that matter, touch on the differences between the V-Planar driver in the Ether and the V-Planar driver in the Alpha Prime?

[ As my understanding is the Alpha Dog uses the t50rp driver and the Alpha Prime uses a V-planar driver of your design. ]

I do know the Ether driver is single sided, lower impedance , and more efficient.

 

[Sonic Defender]

 
Our coupler is designed to approximate an ear-ear pad interface.  It's quite close to what we used to see with our fixtures that used pads. We made the switch a while back with all our headphones and the coupler very closely mimics the ear pad acoustically. 
 
By measuring without pads we eliminate minor pad variations that might cause us to be matching pads instead of drivers.  Pads age and get replaced so long term matching vs "matched with a specific set of pads on" matching seemed the clear way to go.   
 
We specify "pads-off" to be unambiguous. 

I like that reasoning, it seems, well reasonable! I'll be hoping for an opportunity to hear the Ether as sadly at this price point it is nice to hear first. Are you open to doing a loaner/demo program for parts of Canada? That would be interesting to say the least.

 

[olegausany]

I'm well aware that some people don't like HD800 because they bright and bass light but if you would like them with those issues eliminated you would love Ether. My modded HD800 don't have those issues anymore and still Ether beat them like nothing especially in bass slam and extension . This is most realistic headphones I have heard

 

[elvergun]

I'm well aware that some people don't like HD800 because they bright and bass light but if you would like them with those issues eliminated you would love Ether. My modded HD800 don't have those issues anymore and still Ether beat them like nothing especially in bass slam and extension . This is most realistic headphones I have heard

 
I just came back from Dan's mini-meet...and I can't say I agree with this.  The first thing I did when I got back home was to put on my HD800's.  The Ethers don't "beat them like nothing" in anything.  They are, however, just a good as the HD800, but with a different presentation.  IMO, they are equal to the HD800 - they are definitely in the same league.  This is quite impressive since the Ether is basically hand-built from scratch in San Diego.  
 
What I really like about the Ether is that it offers quite a bit of isolation.  Wow.  I have never heard an open headphone filter out so much room noise .  Oh, and they are so light and comfortable.  Wow again.    I really resisted the urge to hug Dan for giving the world such a wonderful headphone. 

 
 
I'm trying to come up with a good excuse so I can convince myself to buy the Ether.   I would never sell the HD800 to buy an Ether...but if I didn't already own the HD800 and I was looking for one end-game headphone I would have a really, really hard time deciding between the two.   I believe I might chose the Ether because of the impossible isolation it provides. 

 

[jk47]

   
I just came back from Dan's mini-meet...and I can't say I agree with this.  The first thing I did when I got back home was to put on my HD800's.  The Ethers don't "beat them like nothing" in anything.  They are, however, just a good as the HD800, but with a different presentation.  IMO, they are equal to the HD800 - they are definitely in the same league.  This is quite impressive since the Ether is basically hand-built from scratch in San Diego.  
 
What I really like about the Ether is that it offers quite a bit of isolation.  Wow.  I have never heard an open headphone filter out so much room noise .  Oh, and they are so light and comfortable.  Wow again.    I really resisted the urge to hug Dan for giving the world such a wonderful headphone. 

 
 
I'm trying to come up with a good excuse so I can convince myself to buy the Ether.   I would never sell the HD800 to buy an Ether...but if I didn't already own the HD800 and I was looking for one end-game headphone I would have a really, really hard time deciding between the two.   I believe I might chose the Ether because of the impossible isolation it provides. 

i like the hd800 a lot from my metrum chain - hex to aurix to headphone.  no shrillness, lots of very well defined bass and good extension both ways.  i also have a set of primes that i like a lot as well for when i want more isolation.   have you heard the primes?  i'd be interested in more details about how you compare the ethers to the hd800s AND to the primes.

 

[olegausany]

I'm well aware that some people don't like HD800 because they bright and bass light but if you would like them with those issues eliminated you would love Ether. My modded HD800 don't have those issues anymore and still Ether beat them like nothing especially in bass slam and extension . This is most realistic headphones I have heard

 
I just came back from Dan's mini-meet...and I can't say I agree with this.  The first thing I did when I got back home was to put on my HD800's.  The Ethers don't "beat them like nothing" in anything.  They are, however, just a good as the HD800, but with a different presentation.  IMO, they are equal to the HD800 - they are definitely in the same league.  This is quite impressive since the Ether is basically hand-built from scratch in San Diego.  
 
What I really like about the Ether is that it offers quite a bit of isolation.  Wow.  I have never heard an open headphone filter out so much room noise .  Oh, and they are so light and comfortable.  Wow again.    I really resisted the urge to hug Dan for giving the world such a wonderful headphone. 

 
 
I'm trying to come up with a good excuse so I can convince myself to buy the Ether.   I would never sell the HD800 to buy an Ether...but if I didn't already own the HD800 and I was looking for one end-game headphone I would have a really, really hard time deciding between the two.   I believe I might chose the Ether because of the impossible isolation it provides. 

Which amp you like Ether with?

 

[rawrster]

   
I just came back from Dan's mini-meet...and I can't say I agree with this.  The first thing I did when I got back home was to put on my HD800's.  The Ethers don't "beat them like nothing" in anything.  They are, however, just a good as the HD800, but with a different presentation.  IMO, they are equal to the HD800 - they are definitely in the same league.  This is quite impressive since the Ether is basically hand-built from scratch in San Diego.  
 
What I really like about the Ether is that it offers quite a bit of isolation.  Wow.  I have never heard an open headphone filter out so much room noise .  Oh, and they are so light and comfortable.  Wow again.    I really resisted the urge to hug Dan for giving the world such a wonderful headphone. 

 
 
I'm trying to come up with a good excuse so I can convince myself to buy the Ether.   I would never sell the HD800 to buy an Ether...but if I didn't already own the HD800 and I was looking for one end-game headphone I would have a really, really hard time deciding between the two.   I believe I might chose the Ether because of the impossible isolation it provides. 

 
I never noticed isolation different than any typical open headphone such as a HD800. I doubt isolation is that high a concern for the majority of those looking at open headphones. I'm looking for that same excuse to buy the Ether. I'm pretty torn between these, the HD800 and HE-6. I hope I don't end up buying them all

 

[jjshin23]

I never noticed isolation different than any typical open headphone such as a HD800. I doubt isolation is that high a concern for the majority of those looking at open headphones. I'm looking for that same excuse to buy the Ether. I'm pretty torn between these, the HD800 and HE-6. I hope I don't end up buying them all

Too late for me... I'll have all three soon. It will be crowded house and maybe one of them will have to go. We'll see.

 

[rawrster]

Nice! Well I just ventured back into dynamic/ortho after being exclusively Stax so I probably shouldn't go and buy everything so soon. I'm not quite there to handling everything since I may change my DAC into something better before I go into the level of the HD800 type headphone.