[sansfin]

Did Sonarworks add the Elear to their list..or did you have it custom calibrated?

At least on the latest version of True-Fi, yes.

 

[Ancipital]

The HD800 has a more even response than the Elear, relatively speaking, so in my experience, with the right kinds of music/properly mastered, and especially if you are using them on the WA7, they can be very reasonable, and not come off as piercing at all.
That being said, with bright tracks on a SS amp, the can take your head off if you are listening very loudly. But your hearing/taste may vary

Except that the HD800 is shrill. It has an obvious 6KHz spike caused by resonance in the body, in the middle of the drivers. In the HD800S, Sennheiser themselves fixed this with a tuned Helmholtz resonator-style arrangement.

You can do this yourself on the HD800, with the "SDR mod"- giving you a better headphone overall than the HD800S, as you don't have the added (deliberate) low frequency distortion added to thicken the bass. This gives you a less shrill sound which still takes EQ well.

 

[Imusicman]

I found the Elear articulate and detailed, but overall had nothing to do with music. Sound was mechanical and brittle compared to a Grado HP-2 or an original RS-1. This is not to say that other headphones in the Elear's price range do not have similar problems. IMO everybody's going for detail, big soundscape, awesomeness....and the heart and soul of music has gone out the window. Some of the less expensive offerings like the Audioquests get closer to music.

I have to agree with about Audioquest. I had the NightOwl Carbon and it was probably the best closed back I have experienced to date. Really nice tone & SQ for the money

 

[Brahmsian]

Early reviews of Elear were also overly positive. The majority of headphone reviews are very positive with new releases. Who knows if reviewers are paid for good reviews? After you've been on here long enough, you will see this optimism to be the trend. It's a new release, lots of hype and FOTM reactions (this is the best deal ever!), give it a year and the same thing is happening, but it's with a newer release, more current release. It's rare to find very negative written reviews for new products.

Or buy into it if you want. This process gets tiring to me though. Perhaps I'm getting old.

Absolutely. The hype train is real. Not all of it is marketing, though. There are tons of interesting headphones out there that even reviewers get enthusiastic about. Statements like "will make you hate all your other headphones" are definitely over the top (I've also seen it applied to other headphones). But not all reviews or reviewers are universally glowing for all headphones.

Based on the reviews so far, the Clear has definitely made it on to my radar. It doesn't mean that I'm buying into the hype -- or maybe just buying into it enough to pique my curiosity about a product.

I'm probably open to a little marketing since I'm looking to make a purchase. But somehow I always end up with what I believe to be the current biggest bang-for-the-buck headphone, which, right now, based on my research, looks like the HifiMan HE560. If they are anywhere near the same ballpark, why pay three times as much for the Clear? That's what'll prevent me from actually buying the Clear, at least until the price comes down and there is a new hyped product.

 

[bidn]

Couldn't disagree more strongly with all of that... Apart from maybe at times a warmer sound can be nice when wanting to blast things that are poorly mastered/recorded on full tilt (as one is inclined to with metal, which pretty much across the board suffers from some of the worst mastering as the loudness war database can attest to).
Both the Elear and the Utopia have quite poorly controlled impulse responses, likely due to the powerful magnetic array overshooting, much like the T1, and in the Elears case, they have a slower initial peak response too... But as a result they do come off as warmer, more full bodied - sort of like what the HD800S is doing.

But I suppose we canjust be happy there are good headphones for everyone's tastes these days

Also along the lines on your idea of folding Elears, I do agree Focal should look into make some high end portable/closed cans... I love the Fostex Biocellulose drivers to death, but we could use some new blood in the high end closed dynamic world!

Then our musical experiences are really different re. metal with our hps!

Re. the Loudness war, even if this would matter (I am not sure about this), most metal is not mainstream and remained untouched when that commercial phenomenon happened
(only a few were, such a a few Metallica albums, -- I don't listen much to Metallica, I understand they were recorded again without the clipping,
anyway I managed to get these few albums after they had been unclipped by signal processing).

As for the quality of the metal music I listen to, most is recorded with high quality, they are simply studio albums, and I listen to most genres.
I have some home-produced albums = still great quality, and some live albums, still great as well.

OK there is distortion,
but it is the way the electric guitars are played,
this does not mean that the music is poorly recorded,
and the electric guitars are played super-fast, which many hps fail at rendering, being too slow. Granted the speed of my HD 800 is fast enough here, if there are not many other fast instruments.
I do have few poorly recorded recorded metal albums (e.g. Burzum), but even here the HD 800 is lacks too much energy, impact and slam, and fails at conveying the aggressiveness of the music.

The only stuff which is really bad quality, and I won't listen to it with any cans, are bootlegs tracks this is absolutely not hifi, so not relevant.

Where I have always experienced my HD 800 fail, already quite strikingly compared to my K812,
and even more when compared to my Elear and my Utopia for metal,
is for the violence and intense speed of drums, the more that metal is extreme (power, black, death, trash),
and just the dynamics of all -- do you listen to death metal with your Elear and your Utopia? well I experience my HD 800 as a lifeless zombie here, and even for most metal.

That said I always found my HD 800 are great for classical, folk, opera, etc (but even here I prefer much my Focal hps).

 

[AuditoryCanvas]

Did Sonarworks add the Elear to their list..or did you have it custom calibrated?

Bern

Sorry, to clarify, they added it to their True-Fi app, and when I wrote to them to ask when they would be adding it to Sonarworks 3, they said "We'll have Focal Elear in the Reference plugin within next two weeks." That was a week ago.

 

[TSAVJason]

I'm super excited to hear this at RMAF... I"m hoping it's exactly like @ToroFiestaSol described it! I also hope that I can even get a chance to hear it at the Focal booth. I know it's going to be crazy over there due to this release.

Well was it what I told you?

 

[nanaholic]

So an easy to drive open back headphone, using 3.5mm mini jacks to connect cables at the headphone end, a sound signature that is between the Utopia and Elear? Colour me interested.

 

[Whitigir]

So an easy to drive open back headphone, using 3.5mm mini jacks to connect cables at the headphone end, a sound signature that is between the Utopia and Elear? Colour me interested.

That is Z1R Cables interchangeable . Very nice indeed

 

[nanaholic]

That is Z1R Cables interchangeable . Very nice indeed

Exactly!

 

[BunnyNamedCraig]

Well was it what I told you?

Yes! It's legit ha. I think Focal did a great job of listening to customers to deliver a can in between the Elear and the Utopia. I don't know if they released specs on it yet but they did internal changes to the Elear and tweaked its sound sig.

The Focal booth had a Questyle CAS192 DAC plugged into a Questyle 800r amp. They positioned the cans all in a way to make A/B between all 3 very easy (which I really liked).


I am excited for people to be able to hear them for them self. Also excited to get them in the store

 

[Ike1985]

Then our musical experiences are really different re. metal with our hps!

Re. the Loudness war, even if this would matter (I am not sure about this), most metal is not mainstream and remained untouched when that commercial phenomenon happened
(only a few were, such a a few Metallica albums, -- I don't listen much to Metallica, I understand they were recorded again without the clipping,
anyway I managed to get these few albums after they had been unclipped by signal processing).

As for the quality of the metal music I listen to, most is recorded with high quality, they are simply studio albums, and I listen to most genres.
I have some home-produced albums = still great quality, and some live albums, still great as well.

OK there is distortion,
but it is the way the electric guitars are played,
this does not mean that the music is poorly recorded,
and the electric guitars are played super-fast, which many hps fail at rendering, being too slow. Granted the speed of my HD 800 is fast enough here, if there are not many other fast instruments.
I do have few poorly recorded recorded metal albums (e.g. Burzum), but even here the HD 800 is lacks too much energy, impact and slam, and fails at conveying the aggressiveness of the music.

The only stuff which is really bad quality, and I won't listen to it with any cans, are bootlegs tracks this is absolutely not hifi, so not relevant.

Where I have always experienced my HD 800 fail, already quite strikingly compared to my K812,
and even more when compared to my Elear and my Utopia for metal,
is for the violence and intense speed of drums, the more that metal is extreme (power, black, death, trash),
and just the dynamics of all -- do you listen to death metal with your Elear and your Utopia? well I experience my HD 800 as a lifeless zombie here, and even for most metal.

That said I always found my HD 800 are great for classical, folk, opera, etc (but even here I prefer much my Focal hps).

I've heard the Utopias but not with metal. Elear's didn't do it for me. All I listen to is metal and retrowave/synthwave. So you give the Utopias the seal of approval for metal?

 

[TSAVJason]

I've heard the Utopias but not with metal. Elear's didn't do it for me. All I listen to is metal and retrowave/synthwave. So you give the Utopias the seal of approval for metal?

Certainly I don’t mean to try to talk you out of the Utopia but maybe the CLEAR would be better based on your music preferences. Metal might be too thin sounding on the Utopia unless you like it that way.

 

[Ike1985]

Certainly I don’t mean to try to talk you out of the Utopia but maybe the CLEAR would be better based on your music preferences. Metal might be too thin sounding on the Utopia unless you like it that way.

I like a lot of bass in my metal, especially black metal, warms it up quite a bit. I'd be pairing with Hugo 2.

 

[makne]

I like a lot of bass in my metal, especially black metal, warms it up quite a bit. I'd be pairing with Hugo 2.

What about Audeze? For example the lcd-2: Massive, deep clean bass and warmer than any of the focals