Dan Clark Corina electrostatic

[justin]

A new electrostatic from Dan Clark is arriving -- the Corina.

I've had the opportunity to try it and if you are a SR-007 person and not as into the 009/X9K, this is a fulfilling option. It does require considerable power, which the Stax mafia has been taking care of since ~2003

https://www.headamp.com/products/dan-clark-corina

 

[spritzer]

I look forward to trying these out but the damping does make the worried.  DCA feel the need to add damping to everything while being shit at doing it, I mean the Voce was pretty much terrible in ever way.  Also the matched earpads has to be the stupidest shit ever, this is worse than Hifiman levels of utter BS. 

[Voltron]

It was in a loud meet room but I thought the Corina sounded fantastic from Justin's amazing new chunk of aluminum with an amp in it. I also heard the X9000 for the first time and that was pretty damn good too. 

[spritzer]

I listened to the Cortina three times, twice off a BHSE and once off the new GC amp.  Unfamiliar sources are an issue plus regular meet conditions but there was something about the midrange that bothered me, like an etch to voices which came off as very artificial but I need more time with them to nail it down.  I also feel that headband is utter trash, on the second time I put them on my head the headpad caught on the metal springs causing the headphones to make a very lough "twang" sound through the earcups.  I prefer the older type on the Voce, seems much more solid and better made. 

I'm also not sure if these are worth the price, just put them next to the CRBN and it looks like some cheap fake out of China,  The headpad and earpads feel cheap and nasty and not high end in any way.  This is always a personal thing but they were both sitting in front of me and they don't look, or feel, like a comparable product.  

The biggest issue for me though are the people who were there from DCA, I mean fucktards doesn't really cover them.  I know fullwell I can be brash and bombastic but these people are utter fucking idiots.  I went to their table to try the Voce and wanted to know when they were fixed as the original release of the Voce... they were fucking awful.  This earpads never made any sense and it's clear to anybody who has messed with electrostatics for s long time.  Same issue as with the King Sounds back in the day and they now, too, have moved to new earpads.  Now the guy there, who was quick to point out he was the president of the company, said this gem when I said the Voce was awful, "Ohhh you like electrostatics so you don't like bass!"  Yeah... and he also wanted to ask if I had ever designed headphones and when I started to listen, he ran over to Justin to bitch about me... which I heard most of.  What a fucking idiot.

Then we have the lady who was there, when I said matching of earpads was stupid loudly said this "SIR, THEY ARE HANDMADE!!!"  Well fucking duhhh, all earpads are handmade outside of the molded ones super cheap ones.  Most of my life I've been making things by hand, which have to be extremely consistent and it is easily done with far worse materials than these.  Now I reached out to two manufacturers and asked if they had measured earpad effect on the sound.  0.1-0.4dB is worst case and with large production runs of earpads they are much closer. 

So the bottom line, the people making them are fucktards but I need to spend more time with the headphones.  I don't feel they are worth the extra cost over the Voce, which looks much better made, and now sounds far better than they did.  Add to that the Audeze CRBN being sold as B-stock for less than 3k$ and this becomes a pretty hard sell.

[Voltron]

The woman at DCA's table seemed clueless but pleasant. If the the big guy with black hair who looks like Bluto from Popeye is the president of the company, then Dan Clark's judgment is suspect. He's been around the audio business forever and I'm sure he's been  fired for being a douche by companies better than DCA.

[Emooze]

I didn't mind the headphones too much, but I don't like douches. He was also vaping inside the whole weekend. 

[Oneguy]

I haven’t heard the Voce since 2017 at the Fujiya Avic Headphone Festival (wow has it been that long?) but it was terrible then. Muddy and no treble to speak of. @spritzerIt’s interesting that you say they seemed to have fixed their voicing since the early runs. I may have to consider giving them a listen if i ever run across an opportunity to try a pair. But based on my Voce experience I wasn’t expecting much out of the Corina. Would still like to give them a listen to officially close the door on them. 

[garageboy]

Dan is not the president of the company?

 

Or was there a "restructuring"? I remember seeing emails asking for investors for DCA

[Pars]

I see an Andy Regan listed as president. Might be "Bluto". I think Dan is still CEO, but don't know for sure.

[Voltron]

Andy Regan is Bluto

[spritzer]

I'm happy that at least got him to stand up and move from that fucking chair...  😉  It was funny to see the difference compared to other vendors who had perfectly affable people working there and this shit show. 

I wonder if DCA is doing the Cavalli route, have some idiot show up with an investment and blow through all of it and move on to the next sucker? 

But vaping in and around delicate electronics like this is beyond stupid.  What does think is in the smoke, magic fairy dust that makes electrostatics better? 

[musicman159]

Ha ha ha !!!

I know exactly who you guys are talking about. Before DCA he was with HiFiMan and at Axpona a friend of mine and myself had the worst experience with a dealer/manufacture in a show. He was so bad and rude that we got up and left saying good bye to HiFiMan because of him.

When I saw him now with DAC I just could not understand why Dan made that move. 🤨

 

[spritzer]

It's a bit amazing how people like this are like leaches on the industry.  I did a little bit of digging and yeah... found this:

https://www.startengine.com/offering/danclark

So sites like these are iffy to say the least and a good way to be utterly fucked as the investor and why would any legitimate company go down this route.  There is Bluto himself singing his praises... 

[spritzer]

Now that the prices of used Corina's seem to be crashing hard, I picked one up.  I have the impulse control of a fly when it comes to electrostatic headphones but this set was like new and way less than half price...

  

Overall impressions match those from when I tried them at CanJam NYC in 2023, some parts look great while others feel like a 100$ "GAMING!!!" set for ROG or Razer.  The housing is well made and I do like that back design.  The headband is utter trash, the earpads feel high quality - yet at the same time extremely cheap and that blue stitching... who signed off on this?  Worst yet... what the fuck is this??

I will refer to these in the future as "coRRRRRRRÍÍÍÍÍna".  Seriously though, why?   This horribly offends my nordic sensibilities. 

Last year I've also picked up a used Voce, a set I hated when they came out.  Put those stock earpads trash where they belong, fit the angled Ether pads and they are quite enjoyable.  They are also touching 1k$ in terms of price so for that money, they are a nice set to have.  Voce naturally had the same issue as the Corííííína, DCA always has the worst headphone boxes ever.  They keep trying to make headphone stands in boxes which make no sense. 

Now for the sound... I just don't understand why these were made like this.  They are like the headphones for people who hate how electrostatics sound.  Do you like your headphones to sound expansive with a nice solid soundstage which goes outside of the head?  Nope, you can't get that here.  On some tracks they are simply claustrophobic, almost if you are listening through thick cloth.  Sure, it sounds inoffensive compared to something super forward like the X9000 but compared to something voiced correctly... yeah it isn't great. 
ere we can see the culprits, mesh on the back on the driver and that stupid damping they put on the earpad side (faint circular holes through the earpad mesh):

Why they did this, I haven't got a clue.  Electrostatics don't need this level of damping so it could only damage the sound.  The Voce was initially supplied with a bunch of damping pads to put inside the earpads so they might think this is necessary...  I didn't find an easy way of opening the headphones to check if this could all be removed easily. 

Now we come to the major issue though... what all this damping does to the midrange.  Now this is really compounded by two parts, first off the headphones are rather inefficient and they sound so fucking dull.  That means the volume has to be pushed to try and get something out of them... and that's were nasty midrange artifacts pop up.  I picked up on some of this at Canjam NYC'23 but in my own system this is very apparent.  It gets worse and worse, the more you push them which only goes to show how bad the driver setup really is.  That also means I turn down the volume so now they just sound dull, not involving and I wonder why I'm not listening to something else. 

Now rant over, would I recommend these?  Nope... not a chance, even at half price they are horribly overpriced for the performance they offer.  On my desk now is the ES Lab ES-2a and the Audeze CRBN2 and I kept wondering why I wasn't listening to either of them instead.  The Corina isn't even comfortable so yeah... nothing going for it really. 

[catscratch]

Are any of these midrange artifacts position dependent? From what I've read their AMTS damping or whatever they call it can give a lot of FR variability based on headphone position.

Is their self-adjusting headband system fine for bigger heads? I always had huge issues with the 007 and its system.

The Voce's FR with the stock earpads looks like a complete mess, and I was wondering why you praised them, but with better pads it makes sense. How's the build quality on them? Are they likely to hold up over time?

Too bad the price of the ES2a is likely to skyrocket over here, but what are you gonna do.

[spritzer]

There isn't enough room inside the earpads to do any real repositioning for me , maybe 10mm back and forth max.  I didn't spot any meaningful difference. 

The headband is just horrible, too much clamping for me and no good way of adjusting that out of fear of breaking it.  It rings and it always wants to twist on me

I grew to hate the Voce over time (well a couple of good listening sessions) and the earpads were huge part of that.  I heard them again at Canjam with the angled ether pads and they are much better.  I told the people manning the DCA booth that "wow, there were utter trash but now they are good" and they didn't like that comment all that much.  If I remember correctly they replied in a fit of rage "they won awards!!!".  Yeah as if anybody puts any stock in that trash.    No major failure point them that I can spot, nice materials and all that

Edit:  Okey I got fed up and ripped off the earpads.  Just look at this stupidity!!!!!

The only thing that springs to mind is why on earth would anybody do this?  I'm going to dig deeper and see if this trash can be removed. 

Btw:  The earpads are simply glued in:

 

[spritzer]

I did some further digging:

Drivers are accessed from the back and this is a nice piece of aluminum. 

The driver is in a plastic carrier but somehow the dust cover on the front is not included and was just loose. 

I was told that these drivers were supposed to be easy to service in the field but that is just a flat out lie.  I lifted the cradle out of the aluminum shell and the dust cover was left behind... how does that make any sense?  Dust intrusion is a major issue so if somebody is going to replace a driver the first thing you do is expose it to dust.  Makes zero sense to me... 

You knew it was coming, I went all viking on its ass...   

I simply used a flatblade screwdriver to vedge underneath the lip of the plastic and slowly the adhesive gave up... most of the time.  The other channel was much more difficult though so this is not easy.  Plus I left the driver in there so exposed face of the driver means one slip and you've done some major damage. 

There is still some remnants left over but I'll likely design a simple PCB that I can glue into place to protect the driver.  Let's call this the un-fuck mod...   

Now for the sound, it is a definite improvement.  Is this sound staging I hear... in an electrostatic?  Perish the thought...  Much better bass too and everything sounds more alive.  There are some midrange issues present in drivers though, especially on voices when I push the volume up a bit (remember these are roughly 6dB down from the Stax norm) but it is still a stark improvement over the stock headphones.  More listening needed and a quick PCB session...

[Jon L]

7 hours ago, spritzer said:

 

 

 

Huh, looks like somebody is emulating the vintage JBL LE85 "Potato Masher" Horn concept, likely an effort to manipulate sound dispersion.