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

I always listen and judge for myself but can still remain skeptical for a variety of logical reasons up until that point, which you seem to agree is fair.

Most $2000+ headphones I've heard did not best the HD650 overall, though they may have held a few select traits that were better. Either that or they did not best the HD800 except possibly in frequency response or other very minute areas. In other words, the vast majority of uber-expensive headphones tend to have sound quality that doesn't match what you pay. In other other words, the Ether Flow beating out most $2K+ headphones would not necessarily be a difficult task.

I will not judge, though, if one prefers a more expensive headphone over a cheaper one, even if I happen to not share their tastes. So long as we can both kick and scream at each other and accept that in our hearts, I'm fine.

 

This looks interesting. The upgrade program would be appreciated since we just bought an Ether C not too long ago, and the price on that dropped a bit. Also, resale on the Ether C probably took a dump.

What would be interesting is Elear vs. Ether Flow.

 

Looks like it has some serious potential given the FR posted by Jude. My concerns are the huge bump from 60Hz to 400Hz. That would result some in cloudiness. And also the extreme downward slope followed by a significant steep bump centered at 7kHz. We don't have enough of Jude's measurements to really know and also, we don't know if Jude's gotten a good seal.

 

Ah, dang it, Tyll...I feel like an asshat, but the way I got the Ether C in was not configured in a stock configuration. Not knowing what stock looked like, I assumed it was just no front damping in front of the drivers. Wrong! Sounds a lot better when you set it up as intended.

Good news is I am no longer wondering if you lost your mind with the Ether C review.

 

For Ether C 1.1, there were two pieces of damping material. One stiff felt and another, the foam. The thick white piece is not used.

 

Stock Ether C (1.1) has one pre-cut piece of thick white felt directly over the driver, one pre-cut black foam piece on top of that, then ear pads, and then the larger black or white felt pieces to your liking stuffed into the ear pad opening. It seems the 1.0 used two pre-cut, white felt pieces over the driver. See:

 

LOL, I dunno. The unit I ordered for us came with the stiff black felt and open cell foam. I simply assumed it was version 1.1. The thick white maxi-pad thing and other stiff black felts came in an extra bag. I did not like the Ether C with the white maxi-pad thing. While it measured better, the white maxi-pad thing was like the cure killing the patient. It just overdamped the sound and killed all life.

 

The large white piece you slip in the pads is dead sounding. What's weird is the smaller, exact-fit cutout meant to sit directly in front of the driver, coupled with the same shaped black foam on top, works really damn well, especially when you use whatever larger damping piece you wanna slip in the pads. Until I tried it exactly like this, the headphone did not sound right for one reason or another. Very different experience.

So, hey, maybe the Flow has more potential than I thought...

 

all this:
v1.0 or stock or v1.1, is it damped properly, does it have white stuffing or black stuffing, or foam or egg crates is a continuation of pure homemade beta testing BS released into the wild.
leading to utter consumer insanity because you never know what you get from Mr Speakers.

I bet in 24 hours we have Flow v1.1 with pink electron sucking bubble tubes.