This forum is slowing way, way down. Why should the C get all the attention?
Please, Ether owners.... keep the comments coming.
As a new Ether owner with 3 days listening experience, what follows are a few strictly non-audiophile impressions.
Since I bought my first DAC, an Arcam rPac 3 years ago, 99% of the music I’ve been listening to has been whilst sitting at my PC using a 25 year old Stax Lambda Pro based system. In recent times I’ve been spending many more hours listening in this way and was starting to find the Lambdas a bit fatiguing, driven as they are by an old SRD-X Pro energiser and aging pre-amp. My first thoughts were to upgrade to a proper estat amp but couldn’t dispel the doubts I was having as to what improvements I might expect, or whether I should be spending money on a 25-year-old combo at all.
All the while I was following the Ethers thread as well as the Stax one and a few weeks ago decided to give my sadly neglected HD650s a listen on the PC system, which was upgraded with the Chordette Qute DAC a couple of years back. The HD650s were driven by a Graham Slee Solo. It took 2 or 3 days to adjust to the darker sound but within a week I found I was not only enjoying them, I was enjoying the sound quite a bit more than with the Lambdas. Not only were they more forgiving, I was able to listen at higher volume levels, which gave music more energy and the feel of greater dynamics and drive, plus the illusion of more detail, i.e. details buried deep in the mix were more prominent at the higher volume levels. A few days later I made the decision to buy a pair of Ethers.
They arrived 3 days ago, in the early evening, having spent 10 hours in a delivery van in mid December in the Scottish Highlands. I mention this because when I finally unboxed them 40 minutes later, they were cold to the touch and that may have had some bearing on the initial impressions I noted during that first listening session. When I say listening session, it was just a normal session, working at my PC with (mostly rock) music playing in the background via Foobar on random play, letting the music wash over me. The Ethers were driven by the Solo.
That said, I did notice some things I wasn’t used to and made some notes as I went along. The first thing I noted was a couple of tracks in, I felt I was hearing more ‘bounce’ in the bass line than I was used to on some tracks. There also seemed to be a bit more ‘snap’ in some percussion and I was more aware of the wires clashing in the bottom of snare drums than I remember on some tracks.
Another thing I noticed a couple of times was acoustic guitars deeper in the mix felt like they had a bit more crispness than I was used to. Previously these could sound a bit dead and ‘plasticy’ offering little more than a lifeless ‘thrump’ sound.
By the end of that first session, the impression I had formed of the Ethers was that they sounded very percussive, as opposed to ‘bassy’, and I began to understand why those that had mentioned they were ‘toe tapping’ phones were coming from. A few of the tracks I heard sounded so different it’s almost like I was listening to a different mix than previously, put together by some percussion freak who felt that vocals and guitars, etc do nothing more than get in the way of the ‘real’ music. Unfortunately I didn’t include any track information in my very brief notes, so can’t compare how these tracks sound after a few days getting used to the Ethers’ sound signature. It’s certainly not something I’m as aware of now, so maybe it was just the different sound signature that was playing tricks on my brain, or the effects of the aforementioned cold on the Ethers.
So where am I now? I suppose the original hope was that the Ethers were going to combine the strengths of the Lambdas and the HD650s, i.e. the clarity and delicacy of the Lambdas married to the fuller, more forgiving sound of the 650s. Obviously, it’s very early days, but things are looking quite promising. The sound is very crisp and clean to my ears and, even though I’m not ‘drowning in percussion’ as I was on first listening, I’m really enjoying the ‘snap’ I’m hearing in the sound signature. I would say the sound is also a touch more forgiving than with the 650s.
And have the Ethers helped eradicate the brightness and glare that plague the Lambdas with some artists/tracks and contribute to their fatiguing nature on longer sessions? The answer is yes…and no, not yet. The worst ‘culprits’ that spring to mind are the pop/rock of Manic Street Preachers, Oasis and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I find some of their tracks sound shrill to the point of being unlistenable. The good news is that Foobar has randomly selected a number of their tracks over the last few days and the overall impression is they sound better, if not perfect. However, a couple of tracks spring to mind as being particularly hard to listen to. They are Australia by the Manics and Morning Glory by Oasis. Both are quite strident tracks. The news is not so good on those. Australia sounds a little better but is still too shrill for my liking and Morning Glory sounds as horrible as ever. I’ve created a playlist for them so that I can visit them again periodically to see how I feel about them further down the line. I’m agnostic when it comes to whether burn-in is for real or not; how can I determine whether my perception of changes in the sound is down to burn-in or growing familiarity with a particular sound signature? However, revisiting the above tracks may lead me in one direction or t’other.
Apologies for no mention of sound stages or frequency responses but I’m no audiophile and don’t pay much heed to them. For me it’s mostly about feel and that leads me to one last observation of the Ethers. I’m finding they are managing to impart a sense of tension to much of the music I’m hearing from them and that’s something I
really like.
