Mr. Speakers Ether Flow

I get the sense that the Ether Flows don"t get much love, is there a reason why?
Does anyone have them or tried them, I’m just curious since I can’t demo them where I am.
Again any help would be much appreciated.

I was pretty disappointed by them. They had loose, muddy bass (very strange for a planar), very off midrange timbre, and a mid-treble peak that fatigued me. If someone handed it to me and I had no idea what it was I’d have assumed it was priced somewhere between and HD598 and HD600 in terms of sound quality.

Wow, for something that would have cost me nearly 2400.00 cnd. Thank you

Yeah, I’ve been pretty consistently disappointed by Mr. Speakers headphones. The hype around them kind of mystifies me. I still need to hear the Aeons but the Ether Flow and Ether C did absolutely nothing for me. I think the Alpha Dog and Mad Dog are about the same level as them.

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I bought my Ether Flow (open) before the introduction of AEON. I then bought the closed AEON.
I think the Ether Flow is great. Maybe over-priced, but it is definitely more detailed than AEON.
Unlike others here - I love both, and do not intend to sell either!
If I had to choose 1 though, I would probably buy AEON because it is MUCH cheaper and very close to the Ether in capabilities (to my non-golden ears).

Thanks for the info.

I bought Aeon Flow Closed second hand and have not grown to love them yet. They cannot compare with HD 800S in my view or with the Audioquest Night Hawk at different price points. I don’t find the shape particularly comfortable and the sound is to my ears mediocre. The mids are OK; the treble edgy unless the foam is inserted and the bass lacking depth and impact. I can’t understand why Tyll Hertsen thinks they are so good.
The impressive thing however is Mr Speakers service. They have recalled the phones three times first to modify a faulty batch; then to correct the foam backing which was sticking out of one ear piece; then to correct a buzzing unit.
I will post about them when I have a chance to listen to them on return.Perhaps I will be hearing them at their best then but I have a suspicion that I just don’t like their voicing which is apparently done to capture the quality of drumming ( see Inner Fidelity visit to factory).There was no mention of classical material which worries me.
Roger

Tyll also didn’t like the Aeon then changed his mind and put them on the wall of fame.
That’s a big turn around, makes me wonder if he is to close to Dan at Mrspeakers.

We know Tyll and I can tell you he isn’t like that. He has pissed a lot of brands off in the past with his reviews. Out of all the reviewers out there, Tyll is one that you can trust to be the most honest.

I’ve listened to headphones that I thought were garbage and then after using them for a while changed my mind and actually quite liked them. Its a pretty common thing in the headphone world, especially when you have the chance to spend long periods of time with the gear.

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OK, just that for me because I am still new at this thought it was strange.

This is an interesting slant on things. However Tyl did raise his initial reservations with Dan who said they had already found a frequency imbalance which was being corrected. It was the corrected version that Tyl liked.

Now I’m understanding more, sorry for me being suspicious.

You’ll find all this in the Inner Fidelity review. Tyll is very forthright about the issues. Mr Speakers recalled all the Aeon’s in that batch and modified them FOC.
When I bought mine S/H I checked their SN with Mr S and they took them back and modified them FOC. However none of this splendid service has made me really like them as I explained in an earlier post. When I get them back from the repair of the fault that developed in the right capsule I will give them an extended trial and report back.
Roger

I’m sorry but this is till bugging me, it’s one thing to say I don’t like something, then turn around and not only say, you know what these are actually pretty good, to I’m putting these on the wall of fame.
That’s a huge turn around.
How many other times has he had a turn around like that? I’m only asking these questions because I want to learn.

What Roger said should explain it. Tyll will put things on the wall of fame and take them down too. He put the Meze 99 Classics on the wall when they had their original pads but after the pad update he took them down.

Even though headphone models can remain the same, things about them can change. Whether it be tuning, pads, cables, headband (Audeze just re-did all their LCD series with the new Carbon fibre headband and memory foam pads), headphones can go through many iterations while still being the same model.

Which means when a later or corrected version of a headphone comes out, you may like it more like Tyll in this case, or you may like it less like he did with the 99 Classics. Manufacturers outside of the big names tend to take consumer feedback to heart and will tweak or tune based on the feedback they are receiving. Audeze does it quite a bit with their headphones.

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To bad Sennheiser wasn’t able to do the same with the hd700s, refine them. I understand what your saying and I’ve learned a lot already in the short time I’ve spent here.

Eh Sennheiser tends to just release a new headphone and up the number. Hence the 500 line and the 600 line. Looks like they will do the same with the 800 line-up but not it doesn’t like there is any movement on the 700 line. Probably because it wasn’t well received. But never say never!

Onto the Ether Flow though, @Ishcabible did you get a chance to try out the Ether C Flow as well or just the Ether Flow? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts between the two.

I haven’t tried the Ether C Flow, but I’ve been wanting to try it. My expectations are admittedly kind of low because I’d place the non-Flow Ether C is in my bottom 5 headphones.

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I’m always interested when someone seems to have unusual opinions. I’m curious what headphones you do like and what music you listen to. I was reading some interesting criticisms of the MrSpeakers cans from someone who has old planars which they reckon sound better. I think Dan muffled the treble a bit much in his later headphones. I like the new Aeon Flow but with the black inserts. The default white inserts make the sound a bit muffled for me, but a lot of that is probably because I like acoustic music.

My top 10 I’ve heard or owned are HE6, Utopia, Stax 4070, HE1000 V1 (V2 lost that softness that I thought made the V1 special and turned it into something kinda generic-sounding to me) HD800, SR-007 SZ2 bass port modded, Eikon, LCD3 Pre-Fazor, AD2000 (only because its upper mids are really special-sounding to me), and I think tentatively the Elex because I was really impressed by that today.

Music varies depending on my mood and I’m always looking for new stuff but I most consistently listen to bluegrass, female vocal-heavy jazz, R&B, rap, some sort of rock, some sort of EDM

My biggest criticisms of Mr. Speakers headphones seem to be that the upper midrange timbre always seems to be incredibly off to me. That’s the first thing I listen for in a headphone and it’s something most get off in some way (HD800 is a pretty good example of that; if I could fix anything with it it’d be to make it less warm and make the upper midrange timbre less artificial) but the Ether Flow and Ether C stuck out as abnormally off (Ether C enormously so; I even double checked with a different sample and they sounded essentially identical), which was really disappointing considering how much they cost.

I almost jumped on a cheap Aeon today because I haven’t heard it and have been wanting to, but I think I’m jumping into speakers instead.

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