I genuinely hope this headphone is as great as you say and that lots of people buy it and enjoy it. However, their argument that making it look ok would be too expensive or hurt the sound quality does not hold water with me. There are quite a few headphones below 1K that manage to excel at esthetics, sound, and comfort; including some from small manufacturers. The era of asking headphones buyers to sacrifice everything else for sound quality is long past (or it should be).
Analysis of the form is a tricky thing. in essence, we don't need to use the same acoustical tools with true-ribbons and it shows in the liberty we can use in design.
There is a lot going on in CA-1a...
Sculpturaly, most headphones share the usual elements, wrapped headband, pivot rod, clicking mechanism, the fork...None of that is coming from the design aspect, but mechanical aspect, something that allows wear fitting, so not much imagination there. It's rod-fork-joint linkage, but just that.
I don't consider those elements pretty in any way, or necessary for great wear fitting.
Everything you see nowadays traces its origins from 30 to 70 years ago. The problem is the same, you got a head and two cups that you must place over the ears, and that will never change.
The mechanisms only became uglier and heavier, with some recent ones (in headphones that are actually considered very nice looking), are appalling examples of engineering arrogance in letting you wear their overweighted contraptions on your head. Ant that is extremely ugly to me.
The first and foremost aspect was reducing the weight, in respect to people that will wear it.
Instead of spicing up some linkage mechanisms, we opted for deleting them.
The whole headspring with leather strap weighs 71 grams.
Instead of clicking mechanism for height adjustment, we kept our SR1a solution. there was no need to change the solution that will never break or fall apart if dropped.
That allowed us to use a single piece of bent metal to connect the two cup and performs the necessary functions for wear-fit.
That piece of metal is very tricky to bend in just the right way (there are 4 torsional 90° bends that nobody but us can afford to do) as it was tricky to engineer the right mechanical behavior without the presence of joints.
You have to know how to use the material you're working with, so the design of it is specific to that particular Stainless Steel in that particular thickness, which can not be said for the usual headphone linkages that can be made out of plastic, metal, whatever you want.
It also has a hidden tilt-angle stops. The headphone won't "fall apart" in your hand, if you pick them up with just one hand, like some $6k planars without restrictions in pivot or tilt (which is another form or arrogant engineering).
So, while that may not be obvious, I consider it an achievement in engineering, design and respect to our clients.
About the gemstone design of the cups;
There are many ways to do it, but we opted for facetted form that connects the oval of the earpad with the rectangle (the back side of the ribbon driver.
We don't have round membranes over the whole surface, like stats or planars, so there was no point in using one large grille in a ring for the outer side.
speaking of which, ring wing a grille is already overused and worn out element of the headphone desing. Fine, if you have to use it, cus your membrane is the size of the grille, but otherwise really worn out and stale, non imaginative.
The facetted design, however, has never been seen before as the tooling for that costs a lot. You can't mill-in the female part of the mold, you can only EDM the whole surface of you want to preserve the edges of the facets. The desing of the heaphone cups is a slave to tool milling, so most look like tits, everything nicely rounded, or some form or simple machining.
The problem with the edges and sharp corners is that if you paint it, it gets worn out and scuffed in no time. So you can't paint it. You can only mold it from the weapons grade polycarbonate that is incredibly tough and won't scratch.
That material has glass fiber in it that flows to the surface while injection molding at 310-320 °C (590-608 °F), so gives it that nice kind of mother-of-pearl vibe when you take it out in the sun, and that should not be hidden with any paint. It's the nature of that material and I like designing with the medium I work with.
It turned out to look like a graphite, or gray rock, facetted like a gemstone. And it's so durable that you can drive a car over it and it won't break, so it has the highest build quality.
The pads...
Leather is used for sealing, that is it's primary function. Over time, it became synonymous with quality headphones, adding luxury, but it's nothing but a seal that we can bare to wear on our skin. Nothing more, so in it's core value of design worth, it has none as it is mandated by necessity not by designer's choice. Of course, you can use it as a design element to spice up the thing and fulfill the already formed expectations of the public, playing it safe...
But what if your new technology of True-Ribbons does not need sealing? And is in fact performing poorer in this particular case? Well, then you do away with it and instead of just one set of fixed pads, you offer two sets of easily exchangeable pads for the same price, so the client can choose the tone balance by swapping them.
This different working regime allows me to ventilate your ears when listening. I respect your comfort and instead of deciding to put vents around the driver, I decided to ventilate your ears directly, with top and bottom gaps in the pads. It was easier not to do it.
Also, the foam pads are easily washable for superior hygiene than with leather pads...
So, bare foam pads actually reveal the different working regime of the driver, having naturally low resonant frequency, like a home speaker, not the usual 200Hz that needs sealing to do anything in bass. Low Fs also allows for less acoustical resistance in front (or back) of the diaphragm to control the resonant peak, which in turn, gives higher dynamics in bass. It's a different paradigm that has it's own merits in low frequency reproduction.
As for the comfort, it's superb, with or without glasses. We'll also offer extra-deep pads if your ears are touching the driver grille.
Our design and engineering was aimed to do away with the usual forms used in headphones, as well as usual finishes, while emphasizing ease of use, functioning forever, staying the same forever, respecting client's hygiene.
Simply, we don't need to use the same acoustical tools with true-ribbons and it shows in the liberty we can use in design. It's not just a desire for the quirky looks, it's an attempt of getting down to the essence of things.
The ribbon drivers are whole another story in it's complexity of manufacturing. Also, they require different kind of drive and we also need to offer that (the transformer interface and more cables and connectors) along with the headphones, so that cost money to make, too.
It's like buying electrostatic headphones together with the energizer, for example.
I only wish we can make the ribbon headphones even cheaper, but this is our maximum effort right now. It took some novel engineering and design to make this technology viable in the lower end of expensive headphones. Austerity awaits posterity so we're adapting.
I beg to differ about the sacrifices you're talking about. The comfort is great, the function is great, the looks is purely techno-artistic, without finishing overlay hiding the materials used. None of the examples in the headphone world that you can give me, had to deal with the specifics of ribbon drivers, so look at it as a fresh start that should not follow the usual solutions. CA-1a will certainly reward the buyer in most ways.
In the future, we will be working in the same direction. trying to make ribbon technology more affordable, using less power, but keeping the top sound. That will definitely require yet another set of novel engineering and design approaches that won't be usual, or share the same sculptural values with the rest...
EDIT: Thank you for the good wishes in the later post!
