hi everyone...i have a friend who recently switched from grado gs1000e to the hifiman 1000...
now he feels that planars sound 'more real' and are superior to dynamic drivers.....
Most (newer) planars are flatter if not close to being totally flat from 1000hz down to 10hz (ex HE400i, HE560) or otherwise have smoother curves with no peaks (pre-Fazor LCD-2 - barring a 10hz to 1000hz plateau is otherwise very smooth on either side of 1000hz), so at the very least he's not dealing with the peakiness of dynamic drivers specifically those in Grados.
i did counter to him: if so superior then why didn't focal make the utopias with planars?
If electric motors are so superior that 4DR Teslas can outrun Lamborghinis in a straight line (when the road gets curvy of course the low slung Lambo is more agile) then why didn't Ferrari make the GTC4 Lusso with the dual electric drive of the Tesla Model S?
If the relatively square (or before that, over-square) quincevalvole V12 of Ferrari is so superior then why the hell does Chevrolet keep on stuffing the Corvette with a central cam, 2vavles/cyl undersquare/long stroke V8?
If the central cam, 6.0L long stroke small block Chevy is so superior then why did Lotus use a 24-valve Camry 3.5L V6 and why did Honda develop a new 24valve 3.5L V6 for the NSX?
If the 3.5L 24 valve Japanese V6 is so superior then why does Mazda keep improving the Wankel engine?
If the Wankel engine is so superior then why does Ducati even bother with V-Twins where now they gained high rpm power at the cost of front-wheel popping midrange torque?
I could go on an on, but the point here is that each manufacturer has their own reasons for going with a different design. Tesla splits the luggage compartment and you have to drive around areas that have the Supercharger Stations to use one (ie, California), two things Ferrari doesn't want to do; Chevy wants to be able to keep costs down by sharing the block casting facilities for their truck engines; Lotus wants to save money and slapped on a supercharger and new cams and forged internals into Toyota engines, plus a transverse mount keeps the wheelbase short (and they stuffed two rear seats in case you want to bring along a large dog); Honda wants to keep the link to the original NSX, even though they use a longitudinal mount instead of adapting the Accord front end; Mazda wants low center of gravity (and a high rpm wail that beats Honda in sounding like a Ferrari); and Ducati used to want midrange torque, now they just want to keep the bikes slim (and probably because Norton didn't really get anywhere with a Wankel bike).
Similar things in audio. Grado didn't even change the chassis design in decades (hell, even the addition of the large GS/PS pads wasn't much of a change since they fit in any headphone, it's just a matter of what the sound is like), since it will require an investment, can disrupt production processes, isolate existing products for support parts, etc. Plus what Grado needs is high sensitivity to get that "dynamic sound" (which is just being able to play loud without getting a lot of distortion - ex drive an HD650 with a Violectric or Meier and it will sound like an RS2) and they already have the basics down for that design. Focal has more experience with dynamic drivers, so some of the design data they have went into their initial headphone designs and what they learned there went into the Elear and Utopia. HiFiMan started out with planars so that's what they use for their flagship, even though they did dynamic driver circumaurals at some point (HE300 and HE350), but obviously that didn't work out quite as well (peaky treble, lower sensitivity than HD600/650, etc). And hell the first planars didn't exactly have the same objectively superior response as the HE400i.
In other words - these are partly business decisions and partly engineering decisions.
