Mr. Speakers ETHER Flow Headphone(?) Upgrade(?)

Discussion in 'Headphones' started by OJneg, Jul 14, 2016.

  1. cityshlacker

    cityshlacker New

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    I very much did, thanks.

    Also, while most genres left me unimpressed, I thought Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band wasn't too bad on the Flows.
    I don't know whether this is considered an amazing recording, but I like the album and it sounds pretty damn nice.
    In general I'd say just listen to what you like and what you would normally listen to.
     
  2. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Please stop this burn in nonsense. Last few posts have been sounding too much like HF for my comfort.

    In some cases, burn-in does make a small difference, e.g. dynamic drivers with stiff surrounds. I've also heard burn-in make planars sound worse. In no cases does burn in ever result in something that sounds meh to awesome, or even meh to good, or even meh to meh+. Burn-in has never fixed serious issues I've found with headphones: bad frequency response rolled off extremes, nasty treble spikes, high distortion, etc. Burn-in has never made a headphone I disliked into a headphone I liked. This is also true for any piece of gear.

    Most of the time, burn-in is brain burn-in: getting accustomed to the sound.
     
  3. Gemini

    Gemini Facebook Friend

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    When people are always liking the results of burn-in no matter what: headphones, cables, speakers, amps,... then it's probably placebo.
    Burn-in sometimes goes the other way: HE-4 and Sony XBA-H3 both sounded worse after burn-in IME. I've found about 1/3 of the time I can't tell the difference, about 1/3 of the time it'll sound worse and about 1/3 of the time it'll sound better.
     
  4. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Don't listen to people like that. I've never heard any difference between new and well used Ether headphones that could be associated with burn-in. The differences I've heard and measured with Ether headphones (and some other planars) are due to production variance.

    "Burn-in" = Weaksauce method employed by people on HF to tell you that your opinions are wrong because you don't cherish the headphone like they do.

    Who the heck has the time to burn in something for 100 hours, much less 200 or 1000? Burn in works because inexperienced listeners who don't have a stable reference system get accustomed to a headphone's sound (good or bad), or gullible wishful-thinking listeners who dropped shit-ton of money want - to - believe.
     
  5. TMRaven

    TMRaven Friend

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    It sucks.

    I've found that 300 hours of burn in really does change the headphone.

    It still sucks.

    I've found that aftermarket cables improve the sound drastically.

    It still sucks.

    It needs more power to be driven properly for it to come alive.

    It really does suck.

    You need a tube amp costing thousands of dollars.

    This headphone is horrible.

    Well I just don't see it like that. I can tell you from my experience that this is an incredible headphone and headphone x isn't in the same league.



    That's the gist of head-fi from my time spent there. People rather spend their free-time talking about their headphones that they spend lots of money on, and are readily available to defend their purchases.
     
  6. BillOhio

    BillOhio Friend

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    Are opinions often so all over the place among experienced listeners on other high profile headphones as they seem to be on these Ethers?
     
  7. Torq

    Torq MOT: Headphone.com

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    Drives me even more insane when either dealers or, worse still, manufacturers indulge in this nonsense. And in those cases I firmly believe it's a mostly disingenuous attempt to either get you to adapt to the sound (be it good or bad) and/or get you past your return window so you're stuck with the thing.

    Want me to let something warm up properly before listening to it critically? No problem ... this matters, to a significant degree, for several classes of component (clocks especially). I'll even be nice and not listen to it AT ALL (beyond 30 seconds to verify function) until after the proposed warm-up period*.

    Want the thing run for 300 hours before I review it? Then either ship it with 300 hours already on it or make sure I'm going to have the thing for a couple of months.

    --

    While with ultra-precise, properly calibrated, controlled measurements you can find very small changes in some types of component over brief periods of time, this is a) mostly a product of attaining thermal equilibrium rather than "burn-in" and then b) when you do the changes are invariable a tiny-tiny faction of the tolerance rating of the device anyway. So unless the circuit doesn't account for those tolerance differences in the first place, they're entirely lost with the range of perfectly acceptable values anyway.

    With the original "Life after Yggdrasil" process some manufacturers wanted to send units for inclusion that they made the typical "needs hundreds of hours of burn-in" claims about. This was something I pointed out to them as being utter nonsense on the basis that, at the time, I was doing my listening over two-day periods, and they were only letting me have the DAC for a week anyway. That sort of thing WILL get directly called out in the version going on here - even if I don't bother reviewing the DAC as a result.

    With my Fostex TH-X00 they sounded broken for the first few seconds - I'm assuming something was sticking after sitting post-manufacture, and then suddenly they sprung to life and never exhibited any such nonsense again. If there was a change, over time, from there, I didn't hear it. I liked them immediately (well, after the first few seconds at least), and no extra run-time changed that one way or the other.

    --

    *Yggdrasil is a good case in point here. No claims about burn-in here. Just a recommendation that it sounds better after being on for a while and coming to temperature. It sounded great fresh off the truck, cold, immediately after power-up. That it got better over the course of a couple of days. Power it off and let it get cold and the process repeats. You can even measure differences in performance doing so.
     
  8. Skyline

    Skyline Double-blindly done with this hobby

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    Personal preference will always causes differences in opinion no matter how good (or bad) a headphone is.

    Also, there's a history with Dan here on the forums that induces a further level of bias, which I believe magnifies the gap.
     
  9. BillOhio

    BillOhio Friend

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    When I first plugged in my Gungnir Multibit I thought it kind of sucked (very etched sound) and that I might have made a bad purchase. When 'Warm Up" was mentioned I crossed my fingers that that was true but in the back of my mind wondered if the warm up thing wouldn't turn out to be 'audiophoolia'... but nope, The Gungnir Multibit sounded a ton smoother and more cohesive after two days.

    I don't want to annoy anyone by bringing up Burn In but at least I can say that the idea has only been referred to, no one has actually endorsed the concept as valid. If the more experienced guys say that warm up is real and burn in isn't... now I know. Thank You (no sarcastic smiley face) and I can dig it.

    If through more use these headphones had gained bass, detail, clarity, instrument separation or spaciousness then that would have been a bonus. As it stands though, I really like these although the range of opinion has me really curious to get a second opinion from someone with more perspective or to hear a more universally appreciated set of phones. Maybe I'll reach out in the Toronto thread...
     
  10. Skyline

    Skyline Double-blindly done with this hobby

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    The only opinion that matters is your own. Stop putting so much stock in what others think, regardless of how experienced they are.
     
  11. BillOhio

    BillOhio Friend

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    It's just a curiosity that'll probably fade soon. Until someone hands me a better performing pair of phones of similar price and comfort level I don't see myself getting talked out of liking the EFlows.
     
  12. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    1. WARM-UP <> BURN-IN. Warm up for resistors on R2R / 2R hybrid DACs to reach thermal equilibrium is an asymptotic behavior that should not be confused with burn-in. Turn off your Gungnir Multibit for a while, and you gotta start all over again. Even then, it doesn't take that long. Gungnir Multibit is still quite listenable after 30 minutes.
    2. EVIDENCE FOR WARM-UP WITH DACS. We have evidence (measurements) that warm up for R2R / 2R DACs makes a difference.
    3. HEADPHONES CAN CHANGE, BUT FOR THE WORSE. I have evidence (measurements) that some few headphones change over time, always for the worse, and never for the better.
    4. BRAIN BURN-IN. If you are having certain doubts or niggles about the Ether Flow, then 1000 more hours won't help, unless you are gradually becoming accustomed to their sound via checking in every ten hours to check on the progress of the "burn-in" process.
    5. BURN-IN CHANGES = DEFECTIVE. A headphone that keeps changing to some notable extent up to 200, 400, or 1000 hours is defective.
    6. PRODUCTION VARIANCE. Differences in opinion of Mrspeakers headphones may be attributed to the fact that the individual units might actually sound different. Mrspeakers tends to incorporate running changes to his headphones. For example, the final MadDog was version 2.81 or something like that (don't quote me). Also the Mrspeakers headphone we've received (going back to the Changstar days) have had a high defect rate. This is not necessarily because Mrspeakers tends to make defective gear. This might be because folks with headphones which sound a little bit off, note such, and send them to the measurement guys here to get a second opinion. Finally, high priced planars have tended to have high production variance.
    7. SHIT AND TREASURE. Someone's shit is always someone else's treasure. I loved the AT-W3000 headphones while most of my colleagues thought they were shit and made funny faces when they put them on. Their opinions wouldn't change my mind. Yet at the same time, I can acknowledge that measured behaviors of the AT-W3000 indicated they were shit in certain aspects. I like fermented stinky tofu. My daughter thinks it's disgusting. I can still like stinky tofu while acknowledging that it's going to smell like rotting shit to most other people.
     
    Last edited: Apr 3, 2017
  13. BillOhio

    BillOhio Friend

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    Very Cool, and thanks for putting up with my chatting. I think I have a sense of things by now thanks to the input. I'll keep an eye out for a local meet and keep enjoying my phones.
     
  14. zhouharvey

    zhouharvey PayPal’s $2 Sensible Enforcer

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    Yes, that makes sense to me too. I don't burn headphones in myself. And I concur that it's mostly burning the brain.
     
  15. Sportsfan56

    Sportsfan56 New

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    Can anyone compare how these pair with a Yggdrasil or Bumby? I have a Modi Multibit-Mjolnir 2 RCA cable-Balanced Ether Flow curious if the extra $1000 is worth it from a PC gaming perspective. I use a Soundblaster card for virtual surround
     
  16. Rthomas

    Rthomas Friend

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    I feel your pain man but if you had been around here a bit longer you would know that paying RRP on a Mrspeakers product is basically financial suicide. He already has a tweak to the Flows ready IIRC from a HF thread!!

    With the amount you spent you could've stretched a bit and gotten a deal on a Utopia for around £2300.
     
  17. BillOhio

    BillOhio Friend

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    Some people are swapping out the stock pads for those designed for the electrostat model, and then there is the electrostat model itself due out sometime. Beyond that is there really a new 'tweak' being talked about by Mr. Speakers?
     
  18. Daveheart

    Daveheart Friend

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    There's always a new tweak being talked about by Mr. Speakers. I guess some people enjoy the constant revisions, but it certainly became a turn-off for me.
     
  19. Maxx134

    Maxx134 Dunning–Kruger effect poster boy

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    I agree with Marvey and can attest to this .

    When I recieved my Either (not C) I immediately went to a friend's house to compare to his set, that he so firmly believed needed continuous burn in...
    He played them day and night for weeks.
    So when I plugged in my fresh new pair, IT SOUNDED THE SAME!

    Then my friend kept listening hard, to try and point out some slightly holographic detail increase..
    It was in the realm of psychological difference (lol) .
    He held onto that impression, while I didn't.

    Now he doesn't use them at all, as once the honeymoon was over he went back to the HD800..

    Anyways, I also owned the Flow..
    The Flow really needs to be heard if your going to spend that type money.

    It was sad day for me because although i loved the materials and quality of the Flow, I knew the first few minutes that the Flow wasn't for me.
    I was lucky to be saved from the restock fee because being an early buyer, I received a unit with a paint defect.
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2017
  20. money4me247

    money4me247 Friend

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