Focal Elear and Utopia

I agree. My opinion is that burn-in is bollocks, as described by users on most forums. People tend to get trapped in self-delusions, as subjective sound quality evaluations are extremely tricky. However, burn-in does exist. It doesn’t change the tonality a single bit, but rather the driver operating “precision” improves a little bit. Overall, the sonic impact of burn-in is small. Every speaker driver or headphone sounds a little stuffed out of the box… for a very short period of time like a few minutes. The sound opens up fairly rapidly, more air, better attack, better decay. I am unable to identify any further improvement after say 30 minutes of playing music at moderate to loud levels. Over the years i’ve made hundreds of experiments with speaker drivers, and way too often I believed i could hear some improvement over a day or two, but I’m fairly certain it’s borderline placebo effect. Too much is at play, like hardware warm-up time and especially when it comes to speakers, air temperature, humidity and pressure. I believe it’s not only the driver suspension that gets shaken up a little bit, but there’s some voice coil burn-in as well… For example, every time I power up a brand-new pair of output transformers, the audible effect is very funny. It feels like the big bang, feels like the sound is all stuffed in one point in space/time, submerged in water. Very rapidly it emerges to the surface over the course of a few seconds and spreads out nicely in the room It’s a peculiar effect. This initial effect is very noticeable and the process of sound improvement gradually slow down. I feel that after a few minutes it settles down to optimal working conditions. Every time afterwards when I disconnected and then connected the transformers back again there wasn't even a slight hint of this effect. I am having hard times figuring out what causes this phenomenon.

PS: Boy, was that K701 (Q701 in my case) a horrible headphone! This grainy, shallow, plastic(y) sound. Oh, the horror!!!

 

I haven't got a clue if the Elear is shit or not, but perhaps you may consider upgrading your audio chain. Good transport, DAC and amp. I'm totally unfamiliar with this liquid carbon thing, but just looking at the size of the box, I'm really sceptical of its abilities

 

I wanted to post a follow-up to my initial impressions on the Elear. I listened to the Elear on each of my 5 nights of the loaner period. As discussed in my prior post, I had a very fatiguing experience the first night of listening although I could not really pinpoint the source of the fatigue. I wanted to go back to the headphones to make sure that it wasn’t more about me on that particular night. Also, the Elear, while beautifully built, is quite heavy. The first night I found them quite uncomfortable and the heavy cable did not help. I think this added to my fatigue as I was very aware of the weight on my head and it bothered quite a bit me. But note that the cup size is deep and it do not touch my ears and I felt the clamp was moderate.

Anyway, nights 2 and 3 were better but I still got a lighter headache on night 2 and merely fatigued after 45 minutes give or take on night 3. By nights 4 and 5 though I was not experiencing any fatigue. Furthermore, I no longer noticed the weight.

I did make one adjustment of note. I changed my Liquid Carbon from the low gain to the high gain setting. I figured this would make things worse. But I also lowered the volume knob to compensate. This setting seemed to make the FR smoother for me with less problematic mids. I am not sure whether this tweak really helped or it was in my head, but subjectively I enjoyed the Elear much more with this setting then on low gain with the volume knob almost all the way to the max. I do think the LC can seem strained out of the SE when pushed so maybe this did help. I also believe that I was probably listening at a lower volume on nights 4 and 5. It could be that the very dynamic presentation of the Elear doesn’t lend itself to the louder volumes that I can bear with my HD 600.

As a sidenote, if these had been completely brand new headphones it would have been very easy to wax prolix about the benefits of burn in – unlistenable, then only slightly fatiguing and then completely listenable – voila, burn in. But here the headphones had quite a few hours on them and I added at most 3 hours between the time they gave me a headache and when I started to enjoy them. To me, this is much more telling about brain burn in and adjustment to sound signature than mechanical burn in. I do think my amp tweaking helped, but nothing explains me no longer feeling the weight than an adjustment my body was making.

So, with that background I would say that by the end of day 5 I enjoyed the Elear quite a bit more. Below I will try to give a quick compare and contrast with my HD 600. Unless noted otherwise, both are being run off my Liquid Carbon on the high gain. My source is a Sonos streamer.

Soundstage. About the same. Although on my Marantz the HD 600 seems more expansive for want of a better word but not necessarily wider. Not a very expansive soundstage for the Elear as others have noted, but enough for my tastes. I would also say it seems about the same as the Audeze LCD series from memory. Like the HD 600 soundstage is very left to right. Elear does not have too much depth.

Imaging. Instrument separation is better on Elear. I really liked this aspect of the Elear. Notwithstanding the smallish soundstage, there was excellent instrument separation without the stage becoming too diffuse a la HD 800 or AKG K812. Marantz helped close the gap with the HD 600, but I think Elear just wins on this one.

Bass. Tighter and more defined bass on the Elear easily with better extension; and probably punchier too. But more bass volume on the HD 600. I am surprised by some of the comments finding the Elear too bassy and Marb’s efforts to make an EQ adapter to shelve it down. Tyll said in his review that he could have used a little more bass and I agree. When I tried the Elear on my Marantz the bass become way boomy and loose. Bad impedance mismatch and the pairing just doesn’t work. I never got around to trying Marv’s EQ adapted.

Mids. The first couple of nights this area seemed very rough to me and I suspected this was source of my fatigue somehow. Subjectively this area seemed smoother on the last few nights and didn’t bother me as much nor was I necessarily as aware of the mids suckout that others have noted. But going back to the HD 600 it seemed like no contest with the Sennheiser mids being simply more magical. In particular, vocals on the Senns just always seem right, whereas on the Elear it really varied from track to track. Sometimes it seemed quite good and other times off by a bit.

Clarity. The Elear is very clear. I am not sure I know exactly what grainy means, but when I listen to the HD 600 after the Elear my first thought is “wow, this is really grainy”. In the absence of such a comparison I am generally fine with the clarity of the HD 600. The Marantz took away some of the graininess of the HD 600 as compared to the LC, but still not match for the Elear on this front.

Detail. I felt the Elear had a bit more detail/plankton but it could just be the clarity discussed above (I do not think they are one and the same but perhaps others will differ on this.) But not a huge difference and better upstream gear might very well close any gap given how well the HD 6x0 scales.

While I grew to enjoy the Elear, I am not sure whether or not I would consider it enough of an upgrade from the HD 600 to justify the cost differential. Even when I got past the initial fatiguing nights with the Elear, I cannot say it categorically blew away the HD 600. It has a different sound (and from memory reminded me a bit more of an LCD-X than a super HD 650 or whatever) and does some things better (in some case by a significant margin, but others by a lesser one) and others not as well. When I revert to the HD 600 they just a have a very natural sound that is always enjoyable, very easy to dial-in in terms of volume and never fatiguing. If it ain’t broke as they say. But I do miss my time with the Elear and its very clear and dynamic sound. When these start showing up used on HF I might even consider buying one.

 

Your neck grew stronger ;-) thanks for posting your impressions. That was a good review.

 

@Colgin thanks for the impressions man! quick question for context - were you running the hd600 single-ended out of LC or was the 600 balanced and the Elear SE?

 

I was running the HD 600 single ended out of the LC.

 

I’m shipping the Elears out to the next victim on the loaner program tomorrow, so here are my impressions formed over the past 4 days of listening.

Everything previously said about the Elear's remarkable build, clarity and dynamics is absolutely true. The clarity is very addictive and unlike anything I’ve heard before. It’s the thing I miss most when comparing these to the 650s. Like @Colgin, I’d never understood what people meant when they called the Senns “grainy”, but I get it now.

Resolution is very good, although I don’t know that they resolve better than the 650s. My suspicion is that the 650s resolve just as well, but the increased clarity of the Elear’s give them a slight edge. Maybe that's precisely what is meant by better resolution?

Tonally, these are almost there for me. The bass is great — authoritative, tight, and extended. I like laid back treble, which the Elear’s have. A lot has been said about the mid-range having issues, and I agree to an extent. The “suckout” in the measurements looks like a hugely obvious flaw, but I think this is overstating things. When I listened specifically for it, I could hear what others have said about that hole deadening the sound of violins and guitars, but this effect is subtle. If I hadn’t been listening for it specifically — and swapping in my 650s (whose tone I adore) for comparison — it wouldn’t have bothered me. If I was a die-hard classical or metal listener, I may have noticed it/cared more. Overall, I find the tone of the 650s to be the more balanced, coherent, effortless, and beautiful. But the Elear is not that far behind. If anything, it makes it clear to me how special the 650s are here.

The stage is good, but not great. It’s intimate and precise. I prefer the staging of the 650s which has comparable precision but better depth and feels more three dimensional.

For me, the best thing about the Elear is how the clarity, resolution, dynamics, and tone (in spite of the flaw I mentioned) all come together to make music sound engaging, exciting, and real. Yes it’s possible to find flaws in individual spokes of spider chart for these (I don’t disagree with the criticisms of the rest of the NY crew), but the complete package is good enough to make it easy for me to overlook those flaws.

Will I be buying these? Ultimately, I decided against it. If I was looking for my first pair of big boy headphones and had $1000 to spend, I'd buy them no question. But to me, the 650s I already own are good enough where I'm content to let the Elears go and save up for something significantly better (Utopia?).

All impressions above were via Gungnir Multibit → Black Widow 2. I tried @Marvey's included F.E.M. (Frankensteinian Electrical Mod), but I preferred to evaluate these in their stock form. My 650s are stock too, btw.

Some random thoughts:

• I found these very comfortable. Good clamp. No hot spot on top of my head. I wore them at my desk at work for hours at a time with no issues.
• The insane clarity is very unforgiving with old or bad recordings. Moreso than with any other headphones I’ve spent a lot of time with. I loved these the most with clean, modern studio tracks and well-recorded live music.
• They handled all genres well. As I said above, classical or metal heads might find something lacking, but the effect is subtle. Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Prince, Springsteen, Bowie, Robyn, Adele, Aimee Mann, etc. all sounded great.
• Drums and horns sound amazing.
• The logo and small type on the metal ring is in-line with the vertical axis of the earcup, but since the earcup is mounted at an ear-friendly angle, these things end up off-axis when worn. Why don’t companies rotate their logos so they are oriented correctly when someone is wearing the headphones? I will never get that.

 

I found a guy in our local audiophile community who had the Elear and last night i picked up my FSC and HD650 and went for a listen… and took some (not very well organised) notes to share with you. The guy also owned a stock HD800, which was great. In short, the source was a windows Dell computer. We played WAV files via Foobar2000. The DAC was pretty well made, PCM63 based with 6N1P buffer and promisingly looking output caps. The amp stage was 6N1P-EN as well with not too impressively looking output transformers with 70ohm (not a perfect match for the Elear but close enough) and 300ohm output taps. No power conditioner involved, unfortunately. I think the setup was good enough for some proper comparisons.

VS HD800

I’ll first stat with a comparison between the Elear and HD800, because it got me immediately more intrigued.

First off, the treble on both the Elear and HD800 is tense and edgy. I would even say more so on the Elear, but it’s less noticeable, because the treble is a good few db down compared to the HD800. Or the mids and bass are a few db up, depends on how you look at it, it’s all relative. The problem with the HD800 is that its got such a massive burst of energy between 5k and 10k (somewhere in that range, can’t tell exactly by ear) that it masks the upper treble. It draws so much attention, I really always felt like the HD800 had no upper treble at all. The treble of the Elear sounds a lot more even and nicely spread out.

In terms of clarity, initially i felt Elear had better clarity but shortly after I realized that in the midrange and treble the HD800 had the upper hand, though not by a significant margin (again this is all relative). Since we were on a computer we could EQ the objectionable lower-treble, so that I’m not tricking myself, but the verdict remained unchanged. I feel that the HD800 has more precision...

(just a brief break to clarify on the term “precision” that I’m throwing in, so that I can be better understood. To me there are two aspects in subjectively measuring a speaker or headphone accuracy. On one hand is the tonal balance, on the other it’s ability to convert electrical signal into acoustic waves with the introduction of as little noise or distortion as possible in the process. And I’m not solely referring to THD)

…even though it’s got worse power handling and bass control. Some people may see it the other way around if they judge the Elears performance by the lower frequencies.

Elear has better dynamics. Period. It’s got punch that sounds right to me. The HD800 is somewhat lacking. Also, in the bass Elear makes a slam, the HD800 makes a thud. As you start cranking up the volume, that thud turns into “boooooom”. They’re pounding my years, not nice.

The Elear has better power handling. The HD800 bass starts to get boomy as soon as you approach somewhat loud levels. I’ve got a test track (don’t know the name) that I’m always using to test DACs. It starts with a bass slam that goes into a continuous phase loop. The Elear handled it surprisingly well, while on the HD800 it just sounded like “mooomooomooomooomooo”.

The Elear is somewhat of a strange headphone. In the lower registers it somewhat reminds me of a backloaded front-firing horn. There’s a certain lift in the 100-200hz that is ever present. I don’t fancy it but it’s not objectionable.

I’ll just circle back to the treble again, as this is the only thing I can really get picky of. We were listening to one Kalyia Scintilla track from the 2012 remixes. I’ve listened to it a few times on my speakers. There’s a passage where a brush emerges rapidly as if from the back wall, gives me a bitch slap and goes about its business while tiny bells start ringing politely and gently in the forefront. There’s notably more treble information transferred from the speakers while sounding very polite. It’s like a hologram in front of my face. On the headphones, while it sounded more “accurate” to my ears on the Elear, both headphones produced a somewhat jaggy, uneasy treble. It felt like watching it on TV in low quality format. Remember the old DivX?

What else… the midrange suckout. Yes, I heard it. The upper midrange comes slightly uneven to my years. The upper-upper midrange is a few db lower than the lower-upper midrange. The transition is sharp, hence somewhat objectionable. As Marv said in another thread, it makes instruments like violins sound a little off. It does sound just a bit weird. I think it is not that much of a problem though. It reminds me of a comparison between sigma delta converters and the 18bit PCM58 of the old times. In comparison vocals always sound a little off on the sigma delta chips, but few people notice that.

VS HD650

The HD650 is the only headphone I’ve heard that has a truly even treble that is fluid and very polite without being subdued. The Elear doesn’t have that quality, but even that and the fact its upper midrange is somewhat uneven, it beats the HD650 in every other respect.

VS FOCAL SPIRIT CLASSIC

The bass on the classic goes a little deeper and is more even, w/o lift in the upper bass. Mmmm, that’s it.


FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall, I find the Elear more pleasurable than the HD800 by miles. It’s not without its drawbacks, but above all it’s not annoying, unlike so many other TOTL headphones. I can easily listen to it for prolonged periods of time. And I think the price is really spot on.

Further thoughts, I wonder how much better the Utopia could be over the Elear. I know Focal’s beryllium domes are good and made of pretty much pure beryllium and not some “beryllium alloy”. And I also believe they make some of the best neo-based driver motor designs, though I admit this is a subjective assumption on my part based on rather insufficient evidence. Yet, more than a dozen times I’ve listened to Utopia speakers at a friend of mine and i respect Focal more than any other fancy hi-end brands out there. Not far from my office there’s a shop called Kirov High End, where i’ve auditioned numerous times high end systems with prices ranging from 20K to 500K including McIntosh and MBL among others. My opinion of Focal is still unshaken. Yet, I can’t convince myself the Utopia headphones will turn out to be significantly better than Elear. I guess I’ll just have to wait until they pop up in audio shops and compare myself. Well, for the time being I’m not cancelling my Elear preorder.

 

@Colgin I appreciate your honesty about the weight of the headphone. I think that some of us can overcome the weight with repeated use as it conditions the muscles and they adapt and get stronger. Unfortunately for me, that's not the case. I went through this exercise, so to speak, with the lcd-3.

I know that I'll never seriously consider purchasing this headphone due to comfort. So if it would seem fair to take me off the loaner list, I wouldn't get my feelings hurt. Maybe there is someone here who actually is considering the purchase and would benefit from the audition.

 

I'm surprised many people don't find the midrange FR on the Elear as objectionable as I did. Maybe not as bad the stock HD800, but far worse than HD6X0 and HD800X.

 

depends on what makes you tick. No headphone is perfect, there's always a trade-off. To me the Elear is a good compromise, it ticks more boxes for me personally than HD800 and the HD650, so I'm happy to overlook the suck-out.

Edit: Who knows though... maybe the suck-out will start drawing my attention more and more over time, and I'll start to resent the headphone... maybe, who knows...

 

I'm not really talking about the suckout by itself. I heard a middle-midrange emphasis (around 1.5kHz) coupled with an upper midrange suckout. Then again, as I said I find the upper midrange dip of the stock HD800 worse for the proper rendition of instruments. I just really dislike an emphasis between 1 and 2.5kHz, like with every STAX headphone that I've heard, the Dharma, Abyss and many other headphones.

 

Okay, I get you. We're on the same page. To me 1.5khz is in the lower-upper midrange , but there's not really convention about it. Indeed there's a lift around that frequency relative to the upper-upper midrange

I think the origin of the problem you're referring to with the HD800 is the massive blast of energy at 5 to 10khz. If the lower treble of the HD800 could be subdued 2-3db and keep the upper treble on the same level, it'd sound probably a lot more balanced.

 

Just wanted to add that I own the LCD-3, have never gotten used to the weight, and I get an uncomfortable hot spot on the top of my head after about 20 minutes of wear. I had no comfort problems with the Elear.

All heads are different of course, but I wouldn't assume that the Elears would be uncomfortable for you because of your experience w the LCDs.

 

Has anyone had a chance to listen to the Elear with the Utopia pads yet? Looking at Tyll And Jude's measurements Could this be a budget way of getting a Utopia 'lite'?

 

Been having good results EQ'ing 4k up on the Elear. Other headphones don't respond so well to midrange EQ. Might be because Elear is already very uncompressed and clear to begin with.

 

I would not pass up on the loaner just because of my girly-man skinny neck. Most people have not had comfort issues and by the end of my five days I didn't have too much issue with it either. But certainly not as comfy for me as my HD 600 or PM-2.

 

maybe my neck isn't as girly-mans as ice-man, but i found the focals to be more comfy than the 6x0... but not due to weight but rather the pads and cup depth. with the 6x0, the pads are way more noticeable to me, and i can feel the thin foam that covers the drivers on my ears, and, whereas i may not be a girly man i'm certainly still a lil bitch.