P1 > HZâs here tooâŠ
P1âs weave an awesome replayâŠ
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This really might be it. The sound of the DD is so different from the BA, it just feels wrong. (as opposed to purely a timbre issue).
That makes me very curious about all-ba options. I do like articulate sound. Planar speed and precision is very appealing to me. Seems like BA would bring something fast as well. DD Bass though. DD Bass.
I meant I have not heard the Mest so I cannot conclusively say it suffers from coherency problems though you can infer it probably does from the many other reviews.
Regarding all-BAs you tend to get used to the sound. Even if the note weight and slam is less-so compared with a DD you donât notice it if all you hear are BAs. And, yes, BAs are generally fast like planars. Can even be âunnaturallyâ quick as is the case with the Anole VX.
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Fair enough. Teas are tomorrow. If I am still in this boat, I will probably steer clear of hybrids for the time being. Bumps the RSV way up the list though.
My replacement timeless will be here in a few days. Canât wait! I have missed that sound.
Thanks for that - Iâm miraculously healed. Thereâs only so many times you can read the same message but from different people. Cleans out my shortlist rapidly!
drftr
Could it be that BAs are TOO fast? What if we like the distortion from planars and dynamic drivers better, while BA may simply be accurately translating what is recorded in zeros and ones, making for a fast but inherently digital experience? Anyone tried listening to an analog source with BA IEMs?
drftr
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I think the main problem with BA sets is for âfull rangeâ sets they generally are multi-BA. Phase and coherency issues.
I had the Aonic 5 & Aonic 3 for a time there. Both have pretty close tuning, like really close. The 5 is 3BA, the 3 is 1BA. The Aonic 3 sounded much more natural to me and the one Iâd choose, although soundstage was more limited.
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I honestly donât know. The drop ether cx is stupid fast and I LOVED it. But it is entirely coherent top to bottom. Since âcoherencyâ tends to be my issue in all things, my bet is it is a mix of drivers that is the primary problem.
But, I do think if decay were really abrupt, I still wouldnât like it. Planars definitely donât feel as ânaturalâ as DD for me. But, that is not the same thing as âbadâ. Just different. And I think the ânaturalâ still comes from âwhat have I heard most of my lifeâ not necessarily âreproduces X instruments betterâ.
Fun stuff. Will have more info soon.
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I donât think BAs as such are the culprit of this. Itâs normally caused by the cross-overs because they have to trick the different drivers to be fast enough but not too fast to play in concert with their palls. This creates issues in the time domain. Basically what Iâm saying is that if you take the very same, say, 5 BAs and you put them in similar housing, etc, but with optimised cross-overs youâll end up with a completely different (and I take it much more coherent) sounding IEM. @Dynamic mentioned the Softears RSV elsewhere in this thread, and Softears produces many BAs for Moondrop. But in their RSV youâll only find 5 BAs where the 8 BA Moondrop S8 of similar price, created by the same designers, and partly having the same BAs, sounds way different. Me thinks they spent much more time and effort on better cross-overs and tuning, resulting in what seems to be the least BA sounding BA IEM under $1,200. So I think literally anything without the need for cross-overs has a much cleaner act, better timbre, texture, coherency, whatever, and starts from pole position. Still they can screw it up during the race but they have an advantage, as whatâs not there canât produce its own problems.
drftr
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Not sure if Iâm in agreement but luckily we donât have to! The transienst and decay from a signal tone are simply enormously complex. Imagine a non-amplified drum kick. If you see different kind of charts how one such pulse can be measured and evolves in time (it doesnât only decay but swells again at different stages) you simply get a headache trying to grasp what the heck youâre looking at. Thatâs one single note in isolation!
What if weâre not good enough at recording all those peculiarities while playing back the recorded version of the truth with very fast BA drivers that simply tell us about the quality of the digital recording with all its problems. Then we replay the same thing through, say, dynamic drivers, and they sound much more natural. Are they better? Probably not. They may just smear those notes in a way that we confuse with natural decay, echo, etcetera.
Let us know what you find!
drftr
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100% correct and you have to take that into account especially when listening to otherâs reviews/impressions of gear. For instance, I come from Hifiman planar and Focal DD headphones so I am used to âunnaturallyâ fast attack and decay. If you come from speakers and especially speakers in a room without acoustic dampening you will be used to the exact opposite.
For you, might I suggest you try getting a listen to the Sony M9. As those are pretty widely available worldwide to demo and it should give you a good sense of what all-BA sounds like.
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Yeah my point was about single driver vs multi-drivers (with XOâs)⊠I used the Aonic examples as their tuning is so close.
I donât have an issue with BAâs as such. I actually found the Timeless to sound more digital or square-wavey when things for too hot for it. For instance some female Sâs, Tâs for me would sometimes develop a squeal, itâs weird. But it sounded like sibilance that was being clipped. (But thatâs probably more tuning than speed)
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Absolutely, but If I spent my entire life listening to smeared notes because 99.9% of sound I hear from a speaker is from a DD, then that is going to have drilled me into thinking that is the way reproduction should be.
If BA does it âbetterâ, but it sounds really weird, because I am used to a a less capable reproduction, I am ok with that.
Also, I donât think thatâs what is going on here. The BA coherency just sounds bad. It doesnât sound like anything playing in the room. The planar and dd both sound much more like what an instrument in a room would sound like.
An analogy I like to use is RAW images in photography. They look pretty aweful. If BA gives us the RAW image, that may not actually be desirable. In reality, the photographer takes that RAW image and processes to their specifications to get exactly the output they want.
I think this is probably crossover and driver type issues.
Bringing this back to the timeless, It is the only headphone I have heard with this combination: great tuning, phenomenal presentation (speed, decay, articulation) and out of this world coherency across all those things. Even the Zen doesnât hit all those points (but there are others it does better, like bass texture and slam).
I simply find all this fascinating. I will have a half dozen IEMs of all types here in the next two weeks and plan to dig in to this problem.
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I think the fundamental problem we have is that we compare with other IEMs. Leave 'em alone, visit a zillion acoustic concerts, and you realize what Iâm referring to. Only that is my reference and I have zero interest in comparing with another compromised reproduction 
drftr
Dude, you have a problem. No recording of a live event can capture the guy sitting next you smoking a bong and singing off key along with the artist. You really want to reproduce that? 
Seriously though, I continue to be on the side of the fence about reproducing things enjoyably, not accurately. I have something like 20 bootleg ani difranco recordings (on CDs. CDS!!!) of concerts, a few of which I was at. There isnât a way to reproduce them.
âUnauthorized duplication, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing.â â Ani DiFranco
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Boys,
Donât buy RSV.
Regards,
Someone who bought RSV today 
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Is this reverse psychology? 
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And still no review? Geez⊠
Enjoy! Guess you deserve it!
drftr
I bought RSV today, will only have it prolly next week.
Timeless also coming⊠some day⊠somewhere⊠lost⊠express shipping⊠nopeâŠ
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Yep, thats to the point. Should have said âhybrids i own sound emptyâ, but keep forgetting emphasizing that as i assume everyone already has that in mind, same for the library.
Closest price wise would be Fiio FH3, Timeless is my most expensive set so far. Dont have anything more expensive to compare unfortunately, but im very curious to do so, so i will probably get something close in price or higher to see what the deal is. Considering the Tea, so very interested in your oppinion/comparison.
Also have QOA Vesper, which ia much cheaper but if we go by crinacles opinion, theyre dead ringer for QOA Pink Lady which is $120. So i like to think i gamed the system wit that purchase, and my Vespers are worth $120 and i call them Pink Lady when theres noone around to correct me 
:).
And few budget ones - TRN V90, KZ ZS10 Pro, ZSN Pro .
This probably also has to do with instrument separation(same or related to coherency?), better separation, and more the feeling of holes inbetween. So might be both are great but comes down to personal preference in the end. Much more people with way more gear than me that would have more informed oppinion. Either way i know i like what was described by someone as a wall of sound from the Timeless very much.
Ive heard some reviewers praising some BAs ability to reproduce bass as good as DD.
I agree with the last point fully. What is natural?
Given that Even on live concert instruments go through different pieces of gear which would have their own characteristics, pedals, effects, speakers etcâŠ
I would like to think that you can say what natural sounding is if you compare how acoustic unamplified instrument sounds live and compare to how it sounds in iems/headphones. But this also falls apart if you consider that same acoustic instrument but different type/model/manufacturer will have different characteristics. I play acoustic guitar a bit and know what mine should sound like, unfortunately(or fortunately, as i just finished re-watching The Doors movie⊠i dont want to end like that 
) im not an recording artist so cant compare even that, and who would know all the different instruments that a certain artist used and how it should sound to feel natural? Some instruments might be simpler and dont have a variation, idk.
So yeah, in the end its preference in wast majority of cases imo.
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