I don’t think different materials make a difference per say, but I do think that difference impedance of the cable will make a difference. I’ve experienced it first hand, not placebo.
Monarch Mk2 with stock cable can be painfully harsh in the upper-mids on some tracks, Monarch MK2 with wholesale Penon cable supplier Graphene cable is more mellow and balanced. I never got the chance to measure them with both cables, so I can’t say for sure but I can distinctly hear a difference.
All this to say, yes, cables can make a difference, but expensive cables won’t make budget sets TOTL like you may read on Head-Fi lol No one can convince me of that stance.
If your cable makes a difference that you can measure it’s objectively shit. Anything the cable can do EQ can do better, and regardless, a cable for IEMs that isn’t made with the low impedance and high sensitivity of IEMs in mind is super silly. But the experience of audio is not objective; far from it.
Well, based on the dozens of cables that I and paul have measured, pretty much the biggest difference you will get is MAXIMUM 1ohm and that is a BIG stretch. Most of them have like a difference of 0.2ohm or around that area. Which is to say, it is negligble difference, just the unit variation on the iems is much much much more of a bigger difference than this.
I think that the quality of the material from which the cable is made is very important. If I put a low-quality cable on expensive IEMs, the difference is immediately noticeable in the downward direction. Yes, the cable matters and makes a difference, but you’d have to be crazy to pay more than $150-200 for a cable.
When I upgraded my speaker cable to a true Ohno Continuous Cast Copper (OCC/single crystal/monocrystal), that was my big revelation in cables. It was so obvious, absolutely nothing ambiguous about it.
Much more fluid, flowing & transparent. Dynamic range increased as well and smoothed out all inklings of sibilance that I hadn’t picked up on before.
I agree with this. I can’t hear differences myself, but I would never call a person that does a lier. I am not stupid enough to think that what I hear or don’t hear is the definitive truth.
I had the Kinda Lava at launch (for about 2 weeks) - it cannot compare to this experience imo.
Kinda Lava stage was straight up narrow like being in a tunnel with notes originating in the distant (no please) with an abrasive quality to its midrange and strange treble timbre that felt granular/sandy as Super reviews described it.
OG is close and intimate with notes (yes please) but wide open with no walls. Just endless how the notes propagate outwards from your face. They bloom from inside and outside your head. You never get the sense that music is coming from the shells themselves. Perfection as far as I am aware.
Bass driver is a champ, takes very well to EQ if needed. Textured with dense reverb. As is the midrange - textured, fleshy, emotional, dimensional.
Sublime.
Treble is right where it ought to be - delicate and complimentary to the midrange at high volume and never calling attention to itself.
To the people giving this IEM anything but a stellar review…
Ironically, as of right now, if an iem were to come out with MEMS components, there will be 3 scenarios:
1/ It’s a TWS
2/ It will use a DSP type C cable
Or 3/ It will need an energizer/dedicated amp to use it.
So i’d say Tribrids can still survive for quite a while lol.
The graph lies. It sounds a lot more bassy than it suggests.
The bass of EJ07 is less than Doscinco in sheer output (which has too much, actually), slam and density, but the EJ07 is comfortably ahead in terms of control, texture, separation, transparency & resolution imo.
It behaves more like a true high fidelity REL subwoofer due to linear mid-bass, but the mid-bass doesn’t sound scooped and this is where the graph lies.
On the whole I’m more impressed with and would choose the bass performance of the EJ07 over Doscinco. I would only add the added slam and density of Doscinco bass to get the complete bass package anyone could ever want.
Again, EJ07 is not lacking in a vacuum it’s just that Doscinco is a beast in terms of those bass aspects. Everything shy of Titan, Scarlet Mini etc will be lacking in terms of density and slam compared to Doscinco, but it’s not like we were complaining before Doscinco came around, were we?
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