ETA Supra Intro / Discussion (Pre-Production)

@E_Schaaf I love my dt-1350 supras for the practical reasons you describe as well as for their bottomless bass. My partner's Aventho are also great. So I am really interested in your new design.

But it's kind of hard to follow the post without knowing eta or genesis. I tried skimming SBAF threads, but couldn't find anything that gave a clear sense of who you are today, what's been done and the reception. Could you give a little more background or point me somewhere with relevant background please? Just posting as others might be in the same situation.

 

This is a bit of a slow-burn thread given things gradually changed since the first post -

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...ne-intro-discussion-thread-3dp-version.10517/

Impressions for v1.0 (no longer production tuning) - https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/eta-genesis-g-p-impressions-thread.10892/

Impressions for v1.1 (production tuning) - https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...ta-genesis-1-1-impressions.11249/#post-354637

We also have a Discord server where we post more consistent updates, tweaks, measurements, there are impressions etc. I can email an invite link via DM if you like.

Our website is coming along nicely too, but mostly focused on Genesis so far. Soon as we settle the domain I'll post a link.

edit - we're also making some aesthetic tweaks to Supra today, there's still a lot that can change with the looks. The images in the first post of this thread certainly don't reflect what a production set will look like. Think of that look more as 'acoustic sandbox' or 'proof of concept' for the airflow principles.

 

Glad you are back and hopefully doing well. You might have missed some other comings and goings of other DIY ventures. Verum used to post quite a bit and you might have lucked out missing all that.

 

Don't be too quick to judge... just because hi-z Beyers and Senns sound better than their low-z counterparts doesn't mean that's a universally applicable principle. Just look at planars. They are low-z all day!

Supras are also accepted as low-z, like Grado and Koss as you mention. I think there is a stigma for high-z for scalability, but drivers and cups and design still have so much more to it than just the nominal impedance.

 

I wanted high impedance not for sound but because its less sensitive. This way I’ll have more adjustment and be further away from channel imbalance on my Vali2’s volume pot. But you are both right that I am ignorant of amp and headphone matching.

I have ETA Supra-G (300ohm) on order. I wouldnt mind it looking like prototype so long as it sounds on par with GenG. But I do hope @tommytakis gets real creative for final design. I think it was Rhydon at Symphones who sold 3DP cups for his drivers for awhile. They were simple but looked cool imo.

 

This is where we are now - Tommy added space for some enormous M3 screws - we'll probably use brass or something heavy. Thicker all the way around. I'll have a print of this tonight so I'll post pictures of a completed build soon if everything works as intended. We're hoping the screws will help with mass and rigidity. The top cap will screw down to hold a flat grill piece in place - no more bulge like what was on Genesis. We'll have to settle on a mesh for the look. I'd probably favor the tight weave like on the earliest GenG. Cable connector is now flush with the barrel instead of jutting out like before. Just a bit more graceful a flow. They should look much better with the carbon fiber PETG than the protos have looked so far.

We also got some new pads in that I'm loving very very much for both comfort and sound (non-current shells below):



These pads have a slightly wider earhole than what appeared at the ETA Festivus meet. The narrower earhole did kind of obstruct the edge of the driver, which gave an extended sustain to bass and muted the low treble a bit which was slightly overbearing at times depending on the recording. With the wider ear cavity, I hear those issues as completely 'fixed', with improvements to the staging to boot. Tone is still on-point for what I want (these measurements are of the proto pictured above with 32-ohm drivers):



zooming in:



vs HD650 stock:

 

I still love the 7506 headband. Epic.

 

Frequency response looks flawless. Wow.

I used a Sony CD900ST as a portable for a long time so I like the headband, just looks a grade down from Sennheiser headband. Would be a lot more comfortable for me and Im a fan of the colored L / R markings. Your pictures do look washed though. What camera?

 

The headphones are looking pretty good now even with proto enclosure. The black leatherish headband and pads and cable look matched and nice quality.

Too bad you dont have a second cup lip to hide the extra leather wrap of the pads.

 

@E_Schaaf Any updates? ETA?

 

I was having issues removing supports on the old style shells, so many sets got scratched or broken. Obviously we wanted to iron that out before any sets ship to owners, so we tweaked the design again to be easier in that regard with a cleaner end result and the same airflow principles. All that's left is a sound check to confirm they match my personal proto (which is my daily driver). I should have fresh prints in a few days. If it's as it should be, we have enough headbands and pads to start shipping a few sets immediately. Sorry that's not an exact date - we just want to be sure it looks as good as it sounds and is as streamlined as possible in terms of future production.

 

Loaner tour to start at the same time?

 

I think one loaner set is already in the wild (@dncnexus had it, @Erroneous heard it somehow, I have no idea where it is) but that one is not up to date with the current tuning (even though it's about 95% the same).

A 'production' loaner will go out as soon as they're done, yes.

 

@E_Schaaf @famish99 had a pre-pro pair and I took em for a brief spin. Liked those better than Gen G. Liked them a lot, as you already know.

 

We heard the same pair that went to @dncnexus first.

 

Hopefully this isn't an inappropriate question to put here but I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this. Are there any updates w/ regards to getting this into a HD600 series headband w/ compatible cups? Ex no need to drastically change the cups, just get it so they can mount onto a HD600 series headband.

I understand that it's not a GenG/P and possible pad changes may be an issue w/ regards to tuning the sound, but I know I'm not the only one on SBAF who doesn't enjoy using on-ears for over 30 minutes.

 

The new Genesis cups recently posted in the Gen thread give an extremely similar sound which was one of the goals of the revised build along with build quality improvements.

Here's Supra with velour pads in red and revised Genesis in white



50db:


Of course frequency response doesn't paint the full picture especially when comparing completely different pad styles, but they are much more similar now than before.

 

Are these updated ones part of the current loaner tour? Or, if you can say anything, are there a lot of mods ETA has left to perform on either the Supra or Gen G / P?