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

It sounds like the accusation is being made that Dan has productized a design that a modder had basically made publicly available for free. Whether Dan materially modified it, or even used it all in the first place are in question. It also seems that the modder's design itself may have been an adaptation. Such is the way of a great many industries.... Although what I find odd here is that Dan is both saying he wasn't aware of the modder's design and that Mr Speakers would like to acknowledge him in a mutually agreeable way.

 

My interpretation is that Dan is saying he was not aware of the work done by ZGLISZCZ before.
But once he was made aware of the prior work, he then acknowledged that his "TrueFlow" was basically the same thing and therefore not patent-able.
He also went on to say that he will remove that aspect from their patent application since there is prior art. But that their patent application has other things which are patent-able. So he is going to modify the patent application and move forward with the patent for the other things.

He also offered to work something out with ZGLISZCZ in terms of acknowledgment or compensation or who knows what.

Honestly it seems like both parties are OK with the situation if you look at the posts immediately after ZGLISZCZ's first post. And kudos to Dan for not making it into a huge battle.

 

Nevermind! I had not read the last post from ZGLISZCZ in the thread on HF.

I guess all is not fine over on that thread...

 

Mr. Speakers didn't know about ZGLISZCZ's work. Right. And Hilary didn't have classified info on her server...

 

I don't think this will end in them being friends. I'm glad he called him out on it. Doing something free for the community, and Mr. Speakers apparently trying to capitalize on it. Not nice.

 

Wondering out loud..

Trafomatic Head 2 is my only amp right now. But it is a bit hit and miss with pairings.

Omni: Even with the impedance knob set to 50 ohms the layering, soundstage, and tonality is all lovely but the bass becomes slightly fuzzier and the transients loose a bit of edge. The Cayin iHA6 was better at controlling this headphone.

LCD2.2 F: However it is a great match for the this amp, the bass seems to gain some control and the strong nature of the TH2 gives it some tonal density and makes it sound less diffuse. Better than the solid states I have tried for it or heard it from.

HE5LE: Great match, just felt that the bass wasn't as tight and controlled as I like but I think it was the headphone itself as I would rank the bass quality with this amp even only slightly more than the 2f which I think has wack bass (nice quantity, just not the best quality) no matter what I amp I tried the 2f from (not a lot)).

HD800S: Darn good match for me. Compared it to the Teton and after using stock tubes on both, I didn't feel I was losing out much. The teton was more fluid, softer, and spacious, beautiful, and detailed but the TH2 was more physical, had similar depth and a more visceral sound which gave an immediate sense of layering. This pairing is irrelevant to my wonderings and question to follow.

HE1k: Bass didn't suffer at all, in fact I really liked it through my amp over the couple of solid states I had. Became slightly richer but kept its balance overall and didn't lose any composure. The HE1k didn't really show much of a difference as the others. Improvements were audible but it was subtle.

Now to my question of what I am wondering....

Is the Ether (original) more like powering an Omni, LCD2.2F, HE1K, or 5LE? Not in terms of sheer power or sensitivity because obviously there is more to it than that.

Previous research leads me to believe the Ether is more like trying to power HE1K in that it is less effected by the amp and is really not even that scalable. If that is the case my current amp is great for it.

I only left the HD800S and others to fund my Pavane, hoping to return to it but I like to try things so before I get back to it I may make some pit stops at a headphone or two. The Ether Flow supposedly having more layering and punch really intrigues me. However if it wont be a good match for my amp I should just leave it alone since the HD800S is really great with it.

 

That is a great point.

If it was in fact inspired by freely given information, he should have made it like an Ether MK2 or something of the same price point. But he is not claiming it to be so. I am sure he has to stick to his initial marketing plan of revealing 'new' technology.

 

@gbeast ...regarding amping requirements and synergy. During the period that I had with the Ether Flow (open) these were my findings with comparisons to he1k.

1. Ether Flow is fairly easy to drive but does offer a reasonable amount of scale.

2. There was about 2.5 clicks of difference between Flow and he1k on the GS1 amp.

3. Both amps sounded better on the mjo2 with NOS tubes. The he1k responded well to the power of the mjo2 and gave me a little more dynamics and driver control with high gain. Flow didn't need high gain but responded well to the NOS tubes and bass was noticeably punchier with better slam.

4. Both headphones performed best on the cma800r dual mono stack. Better imaging, blacker background, sweeter tone.

All using Gungnir Multibit as source. Sorry, I know nothing about your amp.

 

Kind of ironic. Didn't Mr. Speakers get his start by modding other companies headphones? Now a guy that is doing the same thing for free, has his idea basically stolen (if I'm understanding this entire thing) by Mr. Speakers. If that's how it went down, it's fucked up.

 

Thank you for the response. Maybe it can make good pairings. Most know nothing about my amp. It is not particularly popular, no marketing, from Russia's neighbor, and never mentioned anywhere. I can say definitively that is is better quality than the Cayin iHA6 overall (prob best bang for buck solid state after BW) , which in turn is better quality than the MJ2 (don't know about with NOS or not though). I only have some gold lions in mine now and had stock tubes during my previous time with those other headphones. My amp is 2W into 50ohms with an impedance switch and 6922 tubes. Impedance outputs of 25,50,100,300,500 ohms. Its not going anywhere.

 

@gbeast ...you might want to pm me about a set of NOS that might be useful for you.

 

Yes bad wording. Had no idea you were black until you mentioned it. I'll be sure to reply with extreme prejudice from now on

HE-6 has been better than the Ethers and I wouldn't doubt it if it is still better than the Flow. It's quite simple - Dan is deaf so I doubt if he can ever get things like imaging correct.

 

Its okay your not a cop with a gun... and its the internet.

 

Dan Syndrome

 

Wow I only just started reading up on this... and before I even read the drama I saw the flowhole stuff (those flow lines are complete bunk; acoustic vibrations and airflow are not the same thing) and thought "hey wasn't there a guy who did this exact thing in the T50rp thread a year or two ago?"

But hey, this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened... and it certainly won't be the last. I guess now it's just a race to the patent office and whoever has better lawyers.

 

Taking Dan at his word, he wasn't aware of the prior art. So no, it wasn't stolen. Please read the whole thread on HF. Dan is doing exactly the right thing by removing the prior art from the patent application.

 

No shit we are literally wasting time. We are discussing a product that's not even out yet on an online audio forum. We came here to waste time

 

Like I stated in my post, "if I am understanding the entire thing". I never said what I said as an absolute. You are entitled to your opinion, and entitled to believe Dan. If you want to take his word for it, that's fine. I have no idea if he had prior knowledge of the "prior art", but unfortunately the world I live fills me full of skepticism, and I have hard time taking some people for their word. Especially when it comes to making money and the shenanigans I have seen in the audio world. But, Dan could be a great guy, I really have no idea.

Regardless, what we do or say here ultimately has no meaning, it's just idle chatter. Passing the time and discussing nonsense. My post wasn't meant to be offensive to you, Dan, or anyone else in the world. If it came off that way, my apologies.

 

Yep, It is odd. Now I guess Dan is a sponsor but you would think that it would be pretty easy for headfi to figure out if Dan did in fact view the posts in question?