Are you talking about the Elear?
No, I was talking about the Elex.
Ah ok, the Elex are like a unicorn now
My streak is over. 21 days straight with just the Elex’s (one night I also used the Grado’s). My last longest streak was, I think, the Fostex TH-610’s at about 8 or 9 days. Usually I wear a pair for a few days and then change up.
Tomorrow is TUBE DAY and I will be hitting the Grado’s hard all weekend.
The Elex’s may just be the best purchase I ever made in the headphone game. To me they are end game and I just can’t see me going much past $1K (in Canuck bucks) as I am pretty sure the law of diminishing returns would punch me in the face hard and repeatedly. 
For now and in the near future, I am covered for open backs with these and my Grado GH2’s. And I have, for now, two pairs of Senn’s to mix it up.
Life is good! 
10 Likes
I just wanted to pop in here to see some others thoughts. I’ve heard these described as easy to drive many times in the past and I kind of disagree with this. They take a fair amount more power than my 58x to get to a similar volume in my experience with them (80 ohm 104db sens. vs. 150ohm 104db sens.). Thoughts here?
1 Like
I mean as long as you have a semi powerful amp you should be fine (even a portable), but a agree that it’s not great off a phone like the 58x is
1 Like
Totally agree, I have plenty of power in any situation for them, I was home all day today going between the two on the monoprice thx portable, and I’m 10 to 15 db higher on the volume with the Elex to reach my listening level. I’m gonna try plugging directly into my phone’s 3.5 jack (Pixel 3a) and see how much volume I get. I expect it won’t be enough. That being said, I see the Elex as a headphone youre not really ever going to take portable because they’re the most open, open headphone I’ve ever experienced but who knows.
1 Like
That’s when you get an elegia lol
3 Likes
It’s on the list… The very long list. But for some reason lately I’ve wanted to buy something from ifi, and the RNHP, and upgrade from the A100, and a ZMF headphone, and the btr5, and…
3 Likes
Oh id also like to add, today was by far the longest amount of time ive had the Elex on my head in one day. Its literally been all day, music, playing MCC on PC, more music, and not a single second did they become uncomfortable 
3 Likes
If only manufacturers would report specs consistently.
Massdrop lists the Elex as 104 dBspl/1mW@80Ω and the 58X as 104dBspl/1V@150Ω. Note one is mW and the other V.
If we translate that into the same units, by my calculations that’s 115 dBspl for the Elex vs 104 dBspl for the 58X, both drawing 1 V. So on the off chance my calculations are correct the Elex should be 11dB louder than the 58X according to these specs – just the opposite of what you’re experiencing.
1 Like
Yeah looking at the spcs your are correct, however i can assure you that the Elex do need more power to reach a similar volume. I think the openness is partially to blame here. The Elex on your head with nothing playing is pretty much not there in regards to isolation. The 58x isolates quite a bit better. So with that, the Elex are going to leak more sound to the outside world than the 58x. Seems to make logical sense to me anyway.
1 Like
The elex are also very dynamic and that can play a role in how much you want to push them compared to other headphones
1 Like
Don’t doubt it for a minute. I see the same kind of discrepancy between the reported SPLs of my Sennheiser and my beyerdynamic.
1 Like
But if he ear-matches pink noise from both and still finds the same difference in volume knob settings, would that not take the dynamic aspect out of the equation?
1 Like
Of course I get that it’s a harder to drive headphone not because of that reason lol. I was just saying that’s another reason why people also want an amp with more headroom at times
1 Like
Fine. But what I’m trying to grapple with here is – if my numbers are correct then why are Focal’s specs so misleading? And if my numbers are wrong, I want to know how to calculate this correctly.
We have a number of engineering/numbers types on the forum, I’m really just looking for one of them to weigh in.
1 Like
In my experiences with a variety of amps, the volume knob stays around 9:00 on most of my headphones, 10:00 with the Elex’s and 11:00 for the Senn HD600’s.
Specifically with the Elex’s, I tried using them with my DAP (Sony NW-ZX300) and it sounded Horrible. I think it was in the first post I made about the Elex’s.
I think though that if you want to run them off a phone with some juice, you might want to try an LG. Probably still be weak though.
2 Likes
From doing a little research, the two units are identical.
EDIT: Im wrong, found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headphones#Sensitivity (granted wikipedia isnt always a reliable source)
Using this and doing the math, we have the 93dB/V for the Elex, and 104 dB/V for the 58x.
1 Like
I am still assessing my new amp and it’s only been a week, but I am not loving the Elex’s on a tube amp. Weird since they sound great on pretty much everything else. Of course it was a VERY small sample size. Just didn’t sound good. More testing to come.
1 Like