“…An experience remarkably close to the magic of a live performance.” – Dr. Robert E. Greene, The Absolute Sound Magazine, writing about our speakers
Four years ago, David decided it was time he and the rest of the world had access to a portable, wide range, electrostatic headphone. The best possible sound would then be available to anyone anywhere, instead of only seated at home, and only for people who could afford thousands of dollars in stay-at-home electrostatic headphones, and thousands more for the equipment that powers them and energizes the transducers. It’s lucky that David had no idea yet how hard this would be.
Four years of distraction from the speaker business and seven generations of headphone prototypes later . . .
As a wired-only design, the Lotus headphone delivers optimum electrostatic fidelity straight from your smartphone or portable audio player without the need for any ancillary equipment, whether at home or on the go.
With your support, we plan to deliver the first shipments of Lotus headphones by the beginning of Summer 2020.
Of all sound reproduction devices, an electrostatic most precisely follows the musical signal. No others combine all three factors necessary for optimal sonic fidelity:
Because of this, an electrostatic has literally no choice but to follow the musical signal almost exactly. This creates the most revealing, natural, satisfying, and realistic sound possible.
Based on the prototypes, we can predict some of the specifications:
A prime goal at JansZen has been to make an electrostatic that can carry at least seven octaves of frequency range, and be invulnerable to damage.
To accomplish this, one must employ an active polarizing supply. This gives a consistent polarizing voltage that will never degrade and affect the sound level. It also is the only way to provide a high polarizing voltage, which provides high sensitivity at moderate signal step-up ratios and allows a wide frequency range at relatively high loudness.
The polarizing supply is powered by a rechargeable Li-ion battery. A charge will last at least two weeks. Charging takes a couple of hours. The battery will function well for at least ten years, and can be replaced by us or by an independent shop.
Here’s a sweep of what those seven octaves covered by the Lotus electrostatic transducers sounds like:
The bottom three or so octaves are carried by a woofer, making this a two-way, hybrid electrostatic/dynamic design. This was a technical necessity — it’s the only way to keep the electronics compact and light enough to fit inside the earpieces and provide a lightweight, comfortable fit, but . . .
The beauty part turned out to be that the woofers created bass that was more palpable and realistic than from full range electrostatics. The electrostatic clarity, depth of presentation, and nuance in the critical seven upper octaves blended seamlessly with the woofer’s solid, warm foundation of deep, natural sounding bass. Win win.
The other challenge was keeping the front of the electrostatic transducer wide open to the ear, and not obscured in any way by the rather large woofer. We surmounted this by developing a novel woofer mounting scheme and paying extra attention to acoustics.
JansZen Audio’s primary expertise is in electrostatic transducers and product development.
Company owner and designer David Janszen is a world leader in electrostatic speaker development. His background is as a multi-faceted engineer, music lover, and amateur musician and composer, who has physics (B.S.) and engineering design (M.S.) degrees, and decades of product development experience in a number of technical areas.
The company occupies 2400 square feet of workshop and office space in Columbus, Ohio.
David’s father, Arthur, patented the first practical electrostatic speaker in 1952, and founded JansZen Laboratory in 1955. He was thus a pioneer in high fidelity audio, back when stereo was a new thing.
He was a physicist, a Harvard University research professor, and an amateur musician. He mentored son David practically from birth on matters of applied physics, starting with a gizmo he made with switches, buzzers, and lights for David to play with in his crib.
Here’s a pair of snapshots of the final, fully functional prototypes. Their appearance is very similar to what the production pairs will look like, but mainly just more crude, you know, being prototypes. These and a few earlier prototypes have been demonstrated at high end audio shows.
Among their interesting aspects, they come with magnetically attached covers that adapt them to become both open and closed back, with very little difference in the sound.
By popular demand, here’s a frequency response plot for one of the prototypes:
All the parts that we 3D printed and put together with solvent and glue will have to be injection molded, stamped, cast in metal, welded, screwed together, etc.. Prototype transducers, wiring, springs, pads and so on, will have to be better made.
Making this transition will be expensive, as you can see by the following chart and table of costs:
These numbers reflect a balance of costs, pricing, and revenue to get through the process of establishing production, while also keeping the headphone price attractive, and just slightly better than breaking even on the project.
The parts total is based on making 220 pairs, which is how many headphone pledges we need to become equipped, staffed, and build this first run of headphones. The labor and salary figures are based on a four month production cycle after receiving funding. Some of the ratios may change a bit if we decide to purchase our own, small scale injection molding machine, but the total will stay about the same.
If there’s so much enthusiasm out there that we shoot past the 220 pair mark, making the price jump up to retail, there’s a campaign promo code in the Rewards section that will get you a 10% discount on our web site for a month after this campaign ends.
Some of you might be curious about the approximately $250k that we invested in headphone R/D over the last four years. Well, self-funded R/D is considered an operating cost, i.e., water over the dam for any company that relies on design and innovation. You might think we’d plan on “making it back” through retail sales of these headphones, but what will actually happen is that headphone profits will finance other development projects that are sitting now on back burners. This is how our company grows, and your support will be a part of that.
First, we should point out that our funding calculations are realistic and this means that you’ll have no worries about the project running dry before we’re ready to start shipping headphones.
That said, something else that affects how soon you get your headphones is our preparedness. About that, we have already selected most of the vendors, equipment, and off-the-shelf materials, formulated our own specialty inks and adhesives, designed most of the fixturing, and developed most of the methods and procedures. We also appear to have enough space in our current facility, although we’ll have to add some benches and do some rearranging.
Having most of the preliminaries already worked out makes us confident in the numbers that went into our costing spreadsheet, thus the amount of funding we’ll need.
It can also make you confident that the waiting period before we begin shipping should be pretty reasonable. We’re projecting that shipments will start five months after the funding arrives, plus or minus a month, depending on the surprises we encounter. This puts the start of deliveries sometime during the coming late Spring or early Summer.
We plan on building five pairs/day at full speed, so once everything is set up, the entire run of 220 pairs should take no more than three months. You can guess that those of you who pledge early will get your headphones noticeably sooner, but no one will be waiting very long.
The reason that the planned production rate is low is partly because it would lead to mistakes and create waste if we expanded greatly before all methods, procedures, and equipment are proven out and fully refined, or before the people building the headphones become experts at what they’re doing. Also, a big ramping up right away without being sure of demand would be unwise. The modest production rate is also related to the fact that the headphones will be hand built, and for some of the parts, it’s accurate to say they’ll be hand-crafted.
Automating these processes or simply rushing the builds will take an important aspect of the character away from the Lotus. We feel that the accumulation of personal métier among the people who build them and put their hearts into it is important for making the headphones most satisfying to handle and use. Aside from that, there are always slight variations in the parts. People, not machines or robots, are able to compensate for these variations and create a great pair of headphones every time.
The JansZen Lotus headphones are of course the primary reward. The retail price after the campaign ends will be $1495, but the campaign price is $1195. But there’s early-bird pricing.
At the beginning of the campaign, the Kickstarter price will be just $595 for the first 10 pairs, $795 for the next 20 pairs, and $995 for the next 20.
After those first 50 pairs are gone, the price will be $1195 until the campaign goal is met.
After that, if the 30 days of the campaign isn’t over yet, you could pledge here at the full retail price of $1495, but you’ll get a 10% discount by ordering directly through our web site, at a price of $1345, if you use the promo code JKSX2019.
There will be other rewards, of course:
Tee shirts come with the headphones, but to show basic support for the project without pledging for headphones, you can pledge for tee shirts separately.
In either case, please specify size by adding penny amounts to your pledge, as follows:
To add two of one size, just double the pledge, but only add the size amount once. For example, three small shirts would be $29 x 3 + $.02 = $87.02.
This simple method won’t allow a mix of sizes, unfortunately, without being impossible to decode. Even using primes for the size indicators won’t allow different quantities of different sizes.
The headphones come packed in a case that can be used for transport, but a nicer case with places for cables, charger stand, and sound level meter:
Kickstarter makes it impossible to explicitly add more than one item to a pledge. The workaround is, if you’d like more than one item, just add the pledge amounts for all the items together and pledge that amount. Each item has a unique price, so we will be able to determine what it is that you want.
Tee shirts and signed owner’s guides come with the headphones.
Cable upgrades were removed from the campaign.
We’ve exhibited and demonstrated our headphones at three consecutive, annual AXPONA audio shows in Chicago, where they were well received.
We also took the only 3rd generation prototype on a walk through town in the Summer of 2017 here in Columbus, and shot a video of random people listening. The signal source on this sojourn was whatever phone the person we were interviewing happened to be carrying, or David’s iPhone 6s, when the person wasn’t carrying one with music on it. The green color is just the natural color of the 3D printing material, left unpainted to attract more attention on the street. You might notice the earpieces are far bulkier on this version than in the final one.
We built four sets of nicely functioning examples of this latest version, and received positive feedback about them. We even received a dozen pre-orders after showing an early prototype at the 2017 AXPONA, which is a high compliment. (Those orders are not included as pledges on this campaign, and thus do not count against the early-bird pricing).
To get to where we are now, we financed the four years of development work using company funds and David’s time. The goal now is to migrate from prototype to production, and it’s going to be expensive.
Here’s the first bench prototype:
That mess of circuitry had to be miniaturized onto printed circuit boards with mostly surface mount parts that would fit into the headphone cans. Here is the next-to-last version of the boards with a few final modifications showing.
Note that the transformers are much slimmer than on the bench prototype, which was necessary to keep the headphones from being ridiculously bulky, as the early prototypes were. The right hand board has the bias supply, the left has the signal input, battery, and battery charger, and both have a crossover and step up transformer. They’re interconnected through a cable in the headband, with the left circuit board supplying power and signal to the right, and the right circuit board sending bias voltage back to the first.
That prime goal of wide range response from a new transducer was met after many iterations that included the exploration of several possible means for manufacturing them.
At one point, we hoped to be completely 3D printing the transducers in production, meaning the stators (frames) printed from insulating material, and the electrodes from conductive material, all at once. We spent about six months exploring this option. Cool idea, but unfortunately, once the design was finalized, the only printer we could find capable of printing two materials without smearing them together turned out to brilliant design that ultimately wasn’t reliable enough for production. This was just one of countless obstacles to success, but probably the most time consuming one. Losing our first transformer supplier was probably the next most troublesome, but the new one is extremely dependable.
Anyway, here’s one of the next-to-last Lotus prototype transducers, an example of the ones that went into the final headphone prototypes. We took four headphones with these transducers to the 2019 AXPONA, and all but one worked well throughout the show, despite the relatively poor dimensional tolerances and less than optimal materials possible with the printer we were using.
This electrostatic transducer has a frequency response that extends up past the human hearing range to about 32 kHz, and all the way down into the upper bass, crossing over to the woofer at a frequency of about 285 Hz.
We wanted more sensitivity, to go as loud as possible with just a phone as the signal source, so we designed and 3D printed one more version, which is a little more complicated and time consuming to build, but added about 2 dB to the maximum loudness. After this, we designed the future injection molded version to be the equivalent of that final part.
Because injection molding creates much more accurate parts than 3D printing, and allows better materials to be used, we expect another 2 dB or 3 dB sensitivity in production.
We picked an advanced material called PC/ABS (polycarbonate/acrylonitrile butadiene styrene alloy) for the transducers. It should be stable forever, even if the headphones are left in a hot car in the sun in Summer, but nonetheless, the warranty won’t cover heat damage.
At JansZen, we once used the tag line for our speakers, the magic is in the midrange, which is admittedly borderline hype, but still, it does refer justifiably to the most engaging frequency range of electrostatic sound reproduction. This is generally defined as being from 500 to 2000 Hz. Recording engineers consider the midrange as encompassing a wider range, 300 to 4000 Hz. These engineers break that wider range into three bands — lower middle, and upper — where equalization of each of those bands has a known effect on the tonality of each recorded track.
Here’s that frequency spectrum graphic again:
Above the midrange are the presence and brilliance ranges, typically just called treble, where the upper harmonics reside. You’ll recall that electrets make no midrange at all, just the presence and brilliance octaves, and not enough of those.
True electrostatics happen to reproduce these upper ranges with the same, nearly perfect fidelity as they handle the midrange. In fact, an important aspect when accounting for their magical midrange is the purity and perfect alignment of the upper harmonics with the midrange frequencies. This, along with the insignificant mass of the diaphragm provides exceptionally crisp transient response, although people tend to gloss this over.
These properties combine to produce exceptional realism, which is what will draw you into the music like never before.
There are three main reasons why an electrostatic has literally no choice but to reproduce sound accurately:
1) We all know that speakers and headphone drivers have a diaphragm that vibrates against the air to make sound. An electrostatics’s diaphragm, however, is unique: it’s so thin and light that it weighs less than the air that it’s pushing against. Being less substantial than the air itself, it’s impossible for its own characteristics to impose any unwanted behavior on the sound. This also allows it to respond instantly to the force that moves it. All other types have extra weight that has to be moved in addition to moving/vibrating the air. This extra weight delays the movement of the diaphragm, which doesn’t sound natural.
2) In an electrostatic, the force that makes the diaphragm vibrate is spread evenly all over the diaphragm’s surface. This makes it impossible for any part of that diaphragm to move differently than any other part.
All other types (except for planar magnetics) push a small part of the diaphragm and expect the entire area to somehow move together. It can’t possibly do that. Instead, there are other areas that lag behind. Worse than that, different parts vibrate in their own ways, rather than simply reproducing what’s in the music. The effect on the sound is called coloration, and even when it’s not obvious, it creates a sense of artificiality.
In the sound of our earbuds and regular headphones and speakers, we’re hearing coloration and all the usual distortions. We’re used to it — it sounds normal — it’s not so bad. We still hear music, right?
But the second we hear an electrostatic, the difference is obvious. The terms people use to describe it are deep, full, real, immersive, a swimming pool of sound.
It seems like these are words for the sound, but really they’re not. These are words for what the electrostatic revealed in the recording that was always there, but couldn’t be heard before.
Electrostatics aren’t the only type with the force spread evenly. Planar magnetics do, too, but they have metal conductors on their diaphragms, and beefier diaphragms to support the metal, and this is what holds them back, so to speak. The extra diaphragm weight has to be accelerated to create sound, and that causes the membrane to lag behind the signal, which causes the sound to be delayed. The delay is slight but very brief transients are missed entirely, and slower transients are blurred. Furthermore, harmonics don’t line up correctly with fundamental tones, which makes the timbre less realistic. Lastly, the metal heats up when the music gets loud, which causes the diaphragms to loosen and change their sonic characteristics.
Accurate transients and timbre are essential to realistic sound. They make the difference between thinking there’s an actual instrument playing music vs. a speaker playing a recording. It’s hard to imagine the difference, but when you hear it, you won’t forget that sound.
3) Since electrostatic diaphragms are so lightweight, it’s easy to damp their natural resonances using acoustical methods. Amplifiers with high damping factors are important for controlling the motion of electromagnetic transducers, but for electrostatics, it doesn’t matter — the construction of the transducer itself takes care of the damping. This means smart phones can work a charm with electrostatics, despite having low damping factors. And might we remind you that the Lotus is the first ever to be sensitive enough to work with smart phones.
Transducer is a technical word for a device that converts one form of energy to another. In this case, we’re converting electricity to sound. It’s better than speaker, because it avoids conjuring up an image of something that won’t fit into a pair of headphones.
An electrostatic transducer is made of two parallel plates with openings to let sound through. In between them is an extremely thin diaphragm with some space left to vibrate in.
You’ll be familiar with the notion that like electrical charges repel and opposites attract. This attraction is what holds a balloon to the wall after rubbing it on your shirt. Imagine if you could alternate the electrostatic charge so fast that the balloon would vibrate. This is much like what happens to the diaphragm in an electrostatic transducer.
In the animation below, each stator alternates between positive (red) and negative (black) voltage, as under the influence of an audio signal. The voltage continually reverses, moving the membrane back and forth, creating sound waves that are emitted through openings in the stators.
The polarities of the two stators are always opposite one another, so while electrostatic force is pushing the membrane from one side, it is also pulling it from the other. This makes the force quite linear, reducing distortion to inaudible levels. It also makes the speaker louder than if it were pushed and pulled from only one side.
Electret transducers are commonly touted as electrostatic. They do work on an electrostatic principle, technically speaking, but they have a weak membrane polarization charge semi-permanently embedded in the membrane, rather than a potent membrane polarization charge supplied by an active circuit. This weak polarization charge isn’t enough to make much sound, and it will eventually disappear, rendering them gradually silent.
You may have seen ads for headphones that purport to be portable electrostatics. They are only electrostatic in rough principle. In fact, most of the sound comes from standard headphone micro-speakers.
JansZen Audio bought, and David disassembled and tested, a popular “portable electrostatic” headset. He measured the sound produced by the electret alone, then the standard micro-speaker alone, then both together. Each earpiece also housed a tiny circuit board with a crude crossover and a miniature 1:100 step-up transformer for the electret. It was clear from the output plots that very little sound came from the electret. It was only producing the very highest pitches where very little music and only the faint upper harmonics reside. (Data upon request.) All the sound was above 5000 Hz, and most above 10,000 Hz.
Here’s what those two high frequencies sound like:
We can’t say that none of them match the hype, because we only tested one set, but electrets have technical constraints in common that make it very improbable that an electret that could serve a useful purpose in a pair of headphones.
Planar magnetic headphones use large area diaphragms like electrostatics do, and sound very good. These use magnetic rather than electrostatic force to move the diaphragm. To generate the vibratory electromagnetic force, there are electrical conductors adhered to the diaphragm. Signal current is run through those conductors to make the alternating magnetic field that generates the force that vibrates the diaphragm. There are high strength magnets arrayed behind and sometimes also in front of the diaphragm to create the static magnetic field that the diaphragm’s field works against.
The mass of the conductors and the placement of the magnets in the sound field cause problems with sonic fidelity. These sound very good when compared to ordinary headphones, but can’t sound as clear, smooth, uncolored, or detailed as an electrostatic. We’d say they take a solid third place. Another aspect of them is that it’s an open question whether it’s healthy to place such large, powerful magnets so close to the brain.
We’d be remiss not to mention relatively new, super stiff, super light, beryllium transducers, such as Focal seems to have done a fantastic job with. These sound nearly as good as an electrostatic, a close second. Unfortunately, they’re very expensive, due the extreme difficulty of fabrication.
If you’ve read this far, well, thanks for your endurance! You’re now one of our most well informed viewers. We hope you’re excited by what you’ve learned here, and will become an ardent supporter.
The Absolute Sound, AXPONA 2019, on line coverage (2nd item from top)
Stereophile, AXPONA 2019, on line coverage
Inner Fidelity, AXPONA 2019, on line coverage (information error warning — no “upper midrange spike” in the actual frequency response)
Audio Science Review, May 2017, of the 2017 AXPONA exhibit
HiFiPlus mention of the 2018 AXPONA exhibit (6th blurb from top)
We’ll face the usual challenges setting up production and getting things running smoothly, but we’re long experienced at handling them. In most cases, their effect would be to create delays, but we’ll be prepared to react nimbly and thus minimize deadline creep. In some cases, our costs would go up, but if this extends beyond what the Kickstarter funding will cover, we have a credit line that can cover the gap. There’s also income from the speaker business that we could allocate to the headphone project, despite speakers and headphones being structured as separate business units. Here are the common challenges that go beyond the normal, everyday: · Unexpected difficulty hiring people with the right skill sets · An employee moving on unexpectedly · Techniques far more difficult to master than expected · New equipment or tooling not meeting specs and thus requiring modification or upgrade · High reject or rework rates on one or more parts · First articles from outside manufacturers require revision · Late arrival of parts · High reject rate on incoming production parts · Illness, injury, or extended family emergency of key employee(s) Aside from those, we are a high end speaker manufacturer, so our attention will be split between the Lotus project, new speaker development projects, and maintaining the ongoing speaker business. In itself, that’s been accounted for, but if there’s a big enough unpleasant surprise in the speaker end of things, the distraction could slow down the headphone project temporarily, or lead to some poor quality work while we’re looking the other way, and which will have to be remedied. Specific ways of handling these challenges range from being obvious to complicated enough to fill a book. All we can do is ask that you please trust that we’ll get through whatever comes our way, and take comfort in knowing that we’re not going into this blind or without experience.