Earbuds Discussion Thread

GAS3? Or which gen?
I think Serratus has much more subbass and hard-hitting (like a short Thump bass) than GAS3. Plus much wider stage

GAS3. I would say GAS3 is smoother, warmer and more natural sounding but still have good extension and detail. More forward vocals.
Serratus is way more energetic but also can be bit fatiguing and clinical. Vocals are drier and pulled back in comparison to GAS3. More prominent lows and highs, tuning is textbook U.
My first thought overall when I tried Serratus was “wow, this is fun but no chance I would pick them over GAS3 for vocals”.
These are just my initial impressions about main differences. I’m definitely keeping both.

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This impression lines up pretty well with my own experience with both, using medium to high density foams.
GAS2 is almost like a midpoint between the two, but with more midbass emphasis than either while still mostly neutral.

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Which source are you using? Serratus can get a bit fatiguing, especially if using ESS chip DAC and not driven properly

Onix Alpha. I don’t say they are fatiguing per se. You could treat that post just as an exaggeration of key differences between the two that caught my attention from the get go.

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Oh haha I have that dongle too - it’ll be a good pairing with the Serratus. Hopefully you enjoy some large stage music like orchestra or film scores - they sound fantastic on the Serratus

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03 more sets of earbuds to listen to for the next couple of weeks thanks to @AceBee .

From left to right, Aurora, Aurora Deluxe and Dionysus.

Yet to share my thoughts on Silvanus. Will post them in a day or two.

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Finally got the best fitting buds yet…took some work and I don’t think the tweaks effected the sound negatively in anyway…Riku’s S3’s are already one of the best fitting buds for me but still they can work loose in general use…so NiceHCK doughnuts :moneybag: plus medium foams = solid no movement buds even when head banging lol…

:metal:

Edited…It also works for TGXear MX500 shells too :open_mouth: which were never a good fit for me :smiley:

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Sounds like those older 16mm Sony earbuds might have fit you better in general than the modern 15.4mm drivers. :thinking:

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Yep reckon so too…I only bought 1 set of the NiceHCK doughnuts just to see how well they worked for me…just ordered another 3 sets lol :+1:

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@Rikudou_Goku I can increase my budget upto $100 for earbuds. Any rec ?
$13.5 seems too cheap (Quan39)

Hi there. You know that Riku sells his own buds now, right? So him answering this might be a conflict of interest. You can check out the Flathead Society’s ranking list for sets up to 100usd: Wired Earbuds, Best of the Best Recs? - #159 by ttorbic

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Ahh, I didn’t know. Will look into it.

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It is a good starting point since you can try out if you even like earbuds and if it fits you at a damn low cost. There is the also the Yincrow X6 which has the common MX500 shell that you can try. Usually see people compare these 2 to 50-100 usd iems.

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In my case X6 was a big miss - sure they have nice bass reproduction but the way they are tuned in vocal range puts me off. I was literally unable to listen to one of my test tracks with them (Ленинград - Очки Собчак, chorus from 0:30). Earpiercing and metallic, felt like unintended resonance, to a point where I had to stop the playback. On many different tracks female vocals have this unpleasant glare too.
Could be my set, could be my ears, could just be X6 tuning.

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Both are different enough to Purchase individually ? Will place an order for both today if so

Did you use them with foams? Cuz thats the first time i have seen someone call the X6 earpiercing or metallic.

Could be you dont have a good fit with mx500 as well.

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Yes, both in shell which is completely different and in tonality they do differ. You mostly buy both to get a feel on the shells though, then you know where you can go next.

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Full foams, different ways to fit, same issue more or less. It’s definitely based on tuning because in general female vocals sounds off - that artificial, metallic glare. Track that I mentioned is the worse offender.

I have 5 different MX500 variants and only this one model sounds “not right” to me so it shouldn’t be me having problems with fit. But hey, it’s audio. It could be just me.

Yeah its really weird then, maybe you have a bad unit cuz the X6 is usually described as warm, bassy, smooth. Have seen some call it dark.

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