I am familiar with max settings. The reason he hasn’t caught on with me much yet is he seems to do really good comparisons (if I am thinking of the right guy) but of stuff I haven’t heard.
All four of those have been on my list at some point. FD7 doesn’t seem like an improvement over the Zen to me at this point. Probably more relaxed, but I am not convinced it is anything more than a side grade from the zen.
Oracle and Excaliber have not shown me that they are better than monarch and clairvoyance yet. And the price difference doesn’t bother me much at that tier. But I will keep an eye on them either way.
RSV is another all BA, and I keep ending up dismissing them (why sa6/s8/u12t etc end up being dismissed.) Why? Because of the bass feedback. With SA6 being arguably reported as the best BA bass.
I need to figure out if BA is a problem for me. If it is, I know exactly where I want to go. If not, then there are like a thousand IEMs to try.
For further education I wondered how the ideal frequency curve for a listener of acoustic music would look like. I have asked @hawaiibadboy if he had anything similar in his database but to no avail yet. I seriously think those charts could look really different as they’re not based on what kind of electric distortions we appreciate above others. So thinking about your piano, if you were able to record and process it in a perfect way and play it back through your IEMs I wonder if we’d really still like the regular bass and treble boost, or that we thought it was way too much and a strange contrast with the undercooled mids. Just curious (but very much so).
@Rikudou_Goku I am reading through your top tier buds reviews. Knowing that I love the Timeless and the Dunu Zen, both for their varying bass attributes (timeless elevated sub bass/bass articulation is brilliant, zen combination of speed and texture is just obscenely good), what would you recommend off the top of your head?
You wont get iem bass with buds. The closest, (that I can recommend) are the Yincrow X6 or the K´s LBBS (with my PEQ preset, stock is epic as well but is more neutral).
Bud graphs are very unrealiable and for the most part dont exist.
That was my conclusion from your S tier reviews. I get that it won’t be the same, but the convenience/comfort of IEM is the goal here. Not absolute sound quality. Similar but different is more than good enough if coherency and balance are present.
Hence my earlier question about DD/EST combinations (and the fact that I can’t pull the trigger yet). Not really anything too interesting out there yet, I think (someone keeping his fingers crossed though).
Yep. I honestly think it’s the best price to performance you can get in the hobby.
One con with the price would be the cheapy cable. Kinda stiff which can cause the fit to be iffy if you move around a lot. I’ve got cables coming in to mod/swap the cable to a braided one.
The Yincrow RW-9 seems to fix that, but reviewers say it has more of a V shape tuning. Dunno about it myself as I don’t have it.
I’m toying around the idea of snagging a Smabat M2s Pro on 11.11 sale.
I get it, the Astrotec Lyra Nature’s molded cable isn’t working for you. And, yes, I get it; you should review something with the accessories ‘as it comes’ and take note of the issues you have… but 13 minutes of complaining about a molded cable and your comfort issues around it, like 10 seconds of loosely mentioning the sound before ranting about the molded cable without any conclusion on the sound.
Just try them with a different cable then, FFS.
And it’s not like you always try to keep your reviews to ‘as it comes’. You swap tips to Dekoni Bullets with 99% of your IEM reviews and live with whatever impressions you get from those–which often leads to the conclusion of certain IEMs sounding good with foams, others not and thus weird impressions.
I can 100% bet Zeos has a non-molded MMCX cable around. But just can’t be bothered.
I’m a value bitch so I’m guessing it’ll work out great.
Just the X6 is so fucking good (and I have two pairs) that jumping for the M2s Pro seems like a steep hill. Might as well wait for a sale to knock the price a bit.
LBBS… I’m not one for EQ, more from a usability standpoint. I EQ speakers as they’re dedicated to the amp that has the EQ settings so no issue with EQ as a whole. But I swap headphones and IEMs and earbuds so often I can’t be bothered to set EQ for a set. I prefer them as they are and enjoy the nature they have, but if their enjoyment is locked in EQ it’s not a set for me.
So, I am not in the “reproduce it perfectly/accurately” camp. Mostly, because I think that is an impossible standard. I am very much in the “reproduce it enjoyably” camp. And that comes in many forms. I like pentatonix on the drop ether cx best. But it’s still great on the hp-2. Timeless sits between those two. Zen probably beats the timeless but still second to drop ether cx.
All of them are enjoyable. All of them give pentatonix enough difference to make each appreciated for different reasons. Which one is the “closest to reality”, I have no idea. If I can ever have pentatonix singing in my living room, I will let you know. Which one reproduces a concert amplification? Again, never seen them live. So what’s “accurate” in this case?
Where do the voices sound the most natural to me? Drop Ether CX, but still not “right”. Fantastic tonality but plasticy timbre (based on timbre discussions of today)
End Of Rant.
I might! I watch Zeos for a lot of reasons. Unfortunately, what he thinks of the sound of stuff isn’t one of them. That said, I love watching his reactions to stuff. His reaction to the ananda, in hind sight, told me everything I need to know about it. Also, he’s just fun to watch.
Like, I’m totally fine with mentioning 'The supplied cable doesn’t work for me, but when swapped out for this cable–which is an issue to buy, but works better…"
Like, I get it. I used to do reviews too and hated the idea of people saying, “But if you did X-thing then it’s better”. But when the supplied accessories don’t work and you’ve got literally boxes of things that could help benefit the review, it just doesn’t look good to keep ranting about the issue.
It’s like ranting about running shoes because the laces aren’t the way you like… as a running shoe reviewer. I BET YOU HAVE SOME LACES TO SWAP OUT.
But to bash on something for 13 minutes straight due to the cable… and they just say, “the other expensive earbud I’m reviewing doesn’t have this issue” and not compare them apples to apples leads to some iffy conclusions… like hyping/shilling for the other company.
Yeah, but he also tends to swap cables too on occasion. Like his Blon 03 review was, “stock cable sucks, but if you use this cable they’re amazing…”
I don’t think his EM5 review is the best out there (I think the written sources are way better and much more factual) but sometimes it’s nice to pick up someone’s enthusiasm for a product that you either didn’t know existed or were preoccupied about. It makes for a nice restart and might open our eyes for a thing or two.
I for one really picked up your enthusiasm for the Zen (and 7Hz yet again) and will re-read everything I can find about them today or tomorrow. Maybe it’s what I’m looking for if there’s a way to make it act a little differently in the upper mids and highs.
Cheap as dirt, sounds incredible.
I don’t personally really watch his videos much at all anymore for reasons like this
Like his Blon 03 review was, “stock cable sucks, but if you use this cable they’re amazing…”