I’m trialing the Final E4000 as EDC for a few days to see if it can do the Serial’s job well enough as an isolating/bass boosted set. I ordered the Serratus, so between that and a decent source, if it turns out to be the sublime keeper I imagine, I’ll have to get by with less in some area or other.
While the E4000 doesn’t do anything overly magic for me, it really is a shockingly good all rounder and relaxed listen. Stage is good enough. Sub bass is good enough. Mid bass is good (drums sound great on this), vocals are smooth and emotional, there’s enough treble for someone like me, etc.
You went for the Serratus over the Alpha / Tantalus? I wonder if you’ll be satisfied with the bass quantity - the quality is fantastic, but it is definitely not elevated
One: budget, two: fears of drivability, three: If the Grand Archer and various over-ear headphones are any indication, when the transducer is outside my ear I can take a lot of brightness (need it actually) and can jam with a sub-bass level that might not cut it in in-ears. I prefer the Grand Archer to buds designed to have more bass in their profile.
I think the standard for in-ears bass can be as far as feeling it in your chest, jaw, (knees if we’re counting the Maestro Mini) whereas I don’t recover that level of internal vibration from my outer ear.
That plus Chris vouching for both bass regions puts me at ease.
It does mean that the set I choose to compliment it is likely to be a pretty bassy one.
I really don’t think you can beat a DD for realistic bass…both in texture, natural impact and the realtime life and death of a bass string pluck…No Planar or BA subwoofers either?
DD macrodynamics are better than any BA can do. I was shocked when I discovered how “dead” sounding planars and BAs sound to me.
Just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s bad, especially in audio. There’s a reason people are still using 40+ year old headphones. Drivers aren’t cell phones. They don’t become obsolete when the new model comes out, any more than my kitchen mug does.
I mean it’s also a dynamic driver is just a concept in a sense, it’s not like there haven’t been any innovation with dynamic drivers over the years. I mean cars have existed for a long time at this point, is the general concept of a car “ancient tech” by that standard and we should abandon cars because of that?
I think Wade at Dankpods said it best “Good audio stays good”. If you look at other segments of tech, I think audio is the one that has progressed maybe the least. High end Headphones from the 70s seem to sound just as good as mid level cans from today. So, they’ve definitely gotten a lot more affordable, but I don’t think it’s as big of jump as say going from an old tube TV to a Flatscreen 85 inch 8k OLED.
I agree but I think it’s more about driver/drivers and their implementation than something being obsolete… BA’s mostly rule the Chifi iem market because of being small, cheap and the number of “bragging rights” etc…a well tuned DD set can still be very enjoyable today, just look at most high end speakers they’re still predominantly DD’s…BA’s and EST’s are only used in IEM’s because of space and cost and not necessarily their replay quality
