Hey everyone,
Looking for some advice on a closed-back daily driver. I’ve been through about 20 headphones over the past year but haven’t dabbled much with closed. Anyway, I currently own the Ether 2 and just got rid of a ZMF Aeolus and I love both. On the side, I think Ether 2 is underrated and has received poor reviews for reasons my ears apparently can’t hear.
I’ve heard great things about both of these headphones and cost isn’t really an issue so trying to get a sense of which I would prefer. I definitely tend to appreciate a slightly warm headphone and I also find that I like detail, but I hate how it’s presented in something like the HD800s. The Ether 2 strikes a great balance of detail and resolution but not throwing it in my face. I did have the Focal Clear for a few days but found the sound of it too overbearing. It almost seemed sibilant to me for technical reasons I can’t explain. Overall if either of these were a closed back Clear I would likely return it.
I also game on the side, while I don’t anticipate there to be any issue with either one of these in that department, if you have experience with either of these while gaming that would be interesting to hear.
Thanks in advance for any help and if I should clarify or elaborate on preference at all please let me know.
I’ve been on this same fence for a while now - Stella or Radiance…
As near as I can tell, they are pretty much the same cans. Cosmetics aside, the real difference is the driver in the Stellia is made of Beryllium. Focal thinks very highly of their Beryllium drivers, as they use them in their top open back Utopia as well. The cost difference is in more than just the material cost, too.
The general consensus seems to be that the upgraded driver is better. Whether it is better by enough to warrant the cost difference seems to be the matter open for debate.
I haven’t actually heard either headphone, so take everything I say here with a heafty dosing of skepticism and a grain or two of salt. That said, I am only going to get one shot at this, so I personally settled on Stellia, and am gathering funds to that end.
Great video @WaveTheory , thanks for sharing. The only remaining question I really have is bass response on the Stellia. I tend to lean towards warmer headphones like Dan Clark (Harmon target) and I’m just not sure where the Stellia fits. I don’t know if it would be a little more neutral here? Obviously I could eq but generally prefer not to. Anyway, insights here would be helpful. Do you have anything else you can compare the bass response of the Stellia and radiance to?
Recently driver swapped Stellia’s beryllium into Radiance’s improved acoustic housing and it yielded fabulous results. I actually made 2 pairs it’s so good, for home and office setup.
Essentially, it maintains the slammy nature + incredible dynamics of Stellia, but reducing midbass bloat a bit (thanks to radiance’s bass radiator port) and helps with the upper registers being less sharp.
I’ve sent them to Resolve for testing and measurements and he very much was impressed as well. Have photos of measurements (stacked with stellia).
As far as I’m concerned, it is the best closed back on the market possible, and it wipes the Stealth in technical ability (tuning target is way different) and sound better than VC in all categories except for staging size.
Recently tried this on recommendation from someone on head-fi and to me it sounded extremely bass bloated, muffled, and “scratchy.” Is there perhaps something I was doing wrong in reassembling the cup? Also, could I get a copy of those measurements?
