They've already been rocking the Abyss name, so I personally don't mind the serial number deal they got going on when most anybody could hear 'Abyss' and automatically think of these.

Other companies, however...

LCD2
LCD3
HD800
SR009
SR007

Yea..


As for the aesthetics, I don't mind the looks of the cups themselves with the spacious pads that show the inner magnetic structure and the machined aluminum and the exposed bolts/screws.  The headband though?  Holy shit that's a travesty.  It's like TakeT H2+ tier.

The HE-400 is nowhere near being critically damped, I would rather take any properly damped ortho. That driver needs damping but Hifiman chose not to provide any, probably because they thought that the side effects of a poorly researched damping scheme would be worse than applying none.At that price point, I won't blame them.

I guess dBel and I are the only ones who actually don't mind the way the Abyss looks.

Honestly, I don't see the Abyss targeting the general population anyway, even in terms of head-fidom. I know it's a question of degrees: the Abyss is even more expensive than a lot of other already expensive gear. Yet we're already talking about virtually nonexistent price v. performance value like Ultrabike said. Summit-fi is already so far outside the realm of normalcy that we're essentially talking about degrees of madness, and it admittedly seems a wee bit surreal to me for one madman to be calling another madman out because he happens to talk to his suppositories in a French accent rather than just, y'know, talking to them.

As if $4,000 for the SR-009 is admittedly exorbitant but ultimately permissible, or $6,700 for an R10 you can't replace is irresponsible but daring and motivationally fathomable. We can come up with any manner of justification, citing the questionable credentials of the manufacturer or something's supposed ugliness for one object while casting the other in the role of desirable artifact or collector's holy grail. Ultimately at the end of the day however the justifications are just that. It seems like few people want to openly admit to spending a ton of money on what basically amounts to frivolity in either case, on what is purely a luxurious indulgence.

As guru has noted above, this is the key to the Abyss. You can tune most any ortho to have a reasonably flat frequency response, but to get it right without any real damping - that is a manufacturing challenge. The TOTL stats do this , but you need a stat rig to enjoy them and I am with purrin that I am not a fan of the "ethereal" stax sound.

I know people are making a fuss about the looks, truth is the SR009 looks like a POS when sitting on someones head - it has that funky spring arc that sticks up 10 cm above your head


and good looks don't make it look any better


I absolutely don't care about the rugged industrial look, in fact I think they look quite rugged and industrial . I like it and the fact that they are comfortable and sound spectacular is the real kicker

price - having seen what it takes for Alex to get his amps to production, I can see many hidden manufacturing costs in the Abyss. I have a hard time justifying costs in audio as it is , but when I look at some of the craziness that we accept in the stereo world, paying $5K for a high end transducer seems far less crazy than paying $100K for the equivalent in a speaker. Even if we do not go to the extremes, take the $200 pioneer speakers which rocked the stereo world with their fidelity, does this mean that manufacturers such as sonus faber should rethink their product and not sell monitors for $15K. I am not trying to justify things for JPS BUT I can see where some of the costs come in ( without the whining and misguided assumption that they are trying to pay for expensive tooling required for the manufacture of the headphones) Most people drop $500 - $1000 on aftermarket cabling. Joe being a cable guy made what he considers the best cable suited to his headphone as part of the boutique accessory package. Many may ask why do they need a customized leather carry satchel , a complement of cable adapters and a headphone stand as part of the deal. If these were not included could the cost have been dropped by $1500 ? If I am reading into the idea behind the Abyss, you are buying the ultimate headphone package , "just add an amp" deal. I also think the package is seriously cool. Far more lust worthy than the stax briefcase of the SR007 series. Why did JPS not farm out the CNC work to another fabrication house - well they did initially and after suffering the seriously defunct manufacturing chain , they decided to do it in house . This was after RMAF ( when the price had already been announced, so not a factor in cost of the headphones at all ).

enough rambling , looking forward to more impressions. To my ears, music has never sounded more "real" , the LAu synergy is probably part of this experience.

..dB

Undampened orthos are quite doable. In fact, they're not undampened, they're air and electrically dampened like subwoofers.

For that, you need a very light membrane and a friggin big magnet, preferably neodymium, with well done very light traces on the driver.
Oh, and an acoustic seal with a large driver to move enough air for air braking to kick in. The more, the better.
The less tension in such a design the better - makes it more responsive to linear acoustic suspension, as opposed to highly nonlinear tension with properties that often are hard to predict. (See how many QC issues Audeze has.)
Damping the driver can be done from both sides, but having a back reflection is usually more of a detriment and it's hard to get rid of it completely.
That requires some very serious application of material and a large cup.

While subs are dampened by the air in the box, just invert the design and you get an acoustic suspension headphone. I think that's what most open headphones actually are in bass, but few of them are large enough.