When it comes to damping and cup acoustics I'm a noob. However, there seems to be a faceplate (steel baffle) with some narrow slits (min 2:15 in the IF video) in front of the driver . Shouldn't that affect the sound of the headphone significantly?

As I understood this is the magnet supporting frame and it has zero sound absorptive properties. It can affect the transmission and probably diaphragm damping to some extent but seen the size of the slits, it's probably marginal.

Thanks guys

Hopefully they don't sound as -ty as they look.

Yes, one single magnet  -  thought I had mentioned this before. They have them custom made so that they are a perfect fit for their grill. The polarity is front back and, from what they said, forms a strong uniform field. I have no idea how long it has been in the works but speaking to Joe's son , he verified that they went through a boatload of prototypes before finding one that gave optimal results. Driver alignment is critical and they use a jig to make sure they are consistent. He also said that it sounded best with no back at all but that leaves the driver exposed. One of the "tuning backs" they were toying with was some type of fine mesh.

The ortho question I had was what effect the polarizing effect of the front slots was - I think this is a factor in all orthos and is a tough one to escape.

..dB

Anyhow, this can is a cylinder + cylinder earpads with no acoustic damping whatsoever, so it's bound to ring like mad (acoustic and diaphragm resonances) from the midrange up. Hence my eagerness to see objective performance data for this

While the top end did seem fast, as I stated, it also did seem pretty zazzy...meaning it probably was ringing. It was really hard to tell what was going on though as the fit was very poor and no adjustability at all on the headband or capsules.


(Zazzy is a cutting edge technical term that it's not in the Audio Engineers Handbook yet.)