I love the Ether,the HEK simply does more things well IMHO....i....but thus far i reach for the HEK more often than my HD800 or my Ether but i do very much enjoy all 3
I believe you may be a lucky guy.
The HE1k I heard at friends house did not have anything over both our differently
modded HD800s..
It may or may not be discernable, due to complexity of music listened.
*Edit
This was the primary issue I had with the HE1k, was a lack of involvement with complex passages..
For instance a chorus, an audience, or an orchestra has many more complex harmonics off base frequency, than a single singer or instrumental performance..
Also, there is the ambient room info that may or may
not be there, mostly due to type of gear used...
I listened with them thru an end game tube dac & tube amp gear which maximized the ambient and holographic information that is
sorely lacking in most other gear...
I also listened with same end game system(not mine) with these:
To highly modded HD800, an LCD XC, and the fave of this thread, the Ether...
With a very varied genere of different music,
One headphone was preferred on a 3:1 ratio by me and another member...
Guess which....
You all know the obvious answer as I am posting in this thread..
It was quite an eye opening experience to realize we
preferred the Ether...
The Ether is to me, the reincarnation of the HE6, in an improved version on every aspect.
There was Meat & substance, without overlap or blur or loss of info.
Distinct spacial body and separation between instruments,
Combining the strengths of the closed LCD XC planar substance impact satisfation...
With combining the open soundstaging 3/4 of the HD800....
This, in my opinion, was what was a special talent,
Which gave the instruments real body and space between then.
Cymbals had the presence of an HD800, and combined with the body & texture that was missing on the HD800...
It is an amazing talent that I overestimated and
did not notice in the last headfi meet...
Everything was more enjoyable thru them.
All four headphones were performing at a noticable level above stock, having internal mods
and replaced stock with quality cables..
I still cant believe how these Ethers pulled it off..
The only achillies heel I could see, that the tonality of the mids were centered on a lower range than the HD800,
So only in comparison to an HD800,
These will sound a tad more mid centric, but never in a bad way.
Realism was high because of this focus.
Textured layers from top to bottom wich surprised me because I didnt think it would be more satisfying than the HD800..
Yet I havent compared these to my HD800 which I moded even heavier than the other two.
Also, I still consider the HD800 superior in soundstage and ease of detail retrieval,
BUT that doesnt count much, when the Ethers give more meat, timbre and substance on everything even up to the cymbal hits(!)
I am actually quite dissapointed in the fact that I must conceed the music was
more enjoyable thru the Ethers,
Regardless if it did not have any one trait superior,
Because what it did I have not heard elswhere...
What it did was combine the strengths which are most prominent in open & closed designs, to make it the best all rounder I have heard to date.
Not a compromise, but a mixture of what matters most for musical emjoyment..
I wasnt planning to post some dumb "glowing review",
I am telling it like it is , from my perspective.
I really want to see how they perform with my amp, which I customized & "tuned" for my HD800..
Hopefully soon.
So the Ethers are back on my short
"To get" headphone list, along with the PMx2..
