Robots are always present. Test drive as been done long ago
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If you EVER and I mean EVER want to get rid of those … I would be desperately interested 
Dude, just staring at these ….
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My pleasure, let’s talk PM.
What is this beauty and where are you getting this custom work done?
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Old but gold!
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@nymz If you ever get the chance try the Rikubuds Grand Rider 1. It’s a complementary to the OG Teas imo 
Tea cult members recommended.
Just finished the review here: RikudouGoku's Database (IEMs/Earbuds/Headphones Ranking list) - #7485 by VIVIDICI_111 I prefer it over the Olinas… sorry Chris 
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I just did some A/B testing with Moonlight and OG Tea. Only thought to do it after listening to @hawaiibadboy recent video. Noting I did not watch it to see the frequency comparison if it was made to hopefully avoid confirmation biased if they were similar. Used both SE on the Apple Dongle.
Wow! The comparison is nearly spot on to my ears. I 100% agree that it sounds like an OG Tea with EST treble. Like the Moonlight was better suited to be the Tea 2. No wonder I loved the Moonlight so much on first listen. To my amazement I then compared graphs and there’s a lot of similarities. Yes I know the graphs aligning don’t tell the whole story. In this case however, it seems to be fairly accurate.
The easiest way for me to sum it up between the two is, it just seems treble takes on more presence. Not in an elevated way but, a way that just brings it more in line. While adding a touch of sparkle and air to it. It’s a nice clean presentation where the OG Tea seems to be a touch darker/softer in the treble region. Really brings a great sound to the mix.
I’m fairly confident if your part of the Tea Cult you’ll find enjoyment in the Moonlight if ESTs don’t bother you. Moonlight won’t take the OG Tea out of the mix though for me. Moonlight isn’t fatiguing but, the Tea seems to be a little more laid back in the treble. They’ll be good compliments when I want my cup of Tea but, need a little sugar with it. OG Tea will be when the extra zing isn’t needed in my day.
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How does it compare in-terms of detail, clarity, and imaging? Also, do you think the moonlight is an upgrade to the OG Teas aka are they worth buying when you own the Teas?
Very curious 
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Seems Moonlight it’s a go 
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Wait are you getting one??
I don’t think so, at least not for the next weeks. But I’m enjoying the feedback, let’s see if more come out.
Just watched Chris vid on it, and damn, I want that case to be sold as well. I need it 
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I am either going to get the Lava or the Moonlight. I am leaning towards Moonlight. The fact that it is the Tea like is interesting but not stopping nymz from getting one . I do want to sell the Blessing 2 before I buy either. I might just buy Canon but it not what I plan to do now for 6 months that get a tri.
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For me it’s imaging is better but, not by miles. I’d say most the improvement seems to be in the clarity and detail department. My guess is the the EST really helps here.
When I bought the Moonlight I had no idea they’d be similar to the Tea. For me I wanted it to be a tamer Canon. Had I known at the time it was a lot like the Tea and less like the Canon I may have skipped it. Mainly because I adore the Tea and didn’t see any faults. It ended being worth the purchase in my opinion. Unfortunately though I’d hate to say yes to the masses unless you specifically want to know what a Tea with ESTs sounds like.
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Sennheiser IE600 - First Impressions
Disclaimer: This unit was sent directly to me by Sennheiser and it is part of two tours arranged by themselves, one in Europe and one in the U.S. This unit will be sent back to Sennheiser after my assessment to be sanitized and sent to the next person in line. Sennheiser asked for nothing else but a full review and opinions, without giving any incentives or influence over them, so as always, what you are about to read are my own thoughts and opinions. Thanks once again to the Sennheiser team for giving me this opportunity.
Disclaimer no. 2: I have a personal unit coming, shipped in the beginning of April, but that seems to be lost or missing, as I have no further updates since then, and as of today, this is the first time I am hearing the IE600. Keep in mind this is a first take of a review that will be out soon, but my opinions might change over the next few days.
The ramble
Sennheiser needs no introduction. This German based company has proven over the test of time why they are considered one of the top dogs at the game - their full-size headphones are some of the most recommended and acclaimed pairs all over the internet (I still haven’t heard any, so shame on you nymz, what a joke).
Last year, during the summer, the world skipped a beat, as two single-DD IEMs were announced: the now (in)famous IE300 and IE900. Sennheiser’s plan was simple: take a shot at the fabled tale of great top-tier DDs with the 900, while giving the crowd a more budget approach to taste it.
To my sadness, I never had a chance to try any of these, as only the IE900 appealed to me, but the hefty price tag did not, as it’s still $1500 for a single dynamic driver IEM. Those who had a chance to try them, mainly complained about the relatively recessed pinna gain, affecting the mid-range of the replay, while others grabbed their tinfoil hats and started speculating how there would probably be another release between the 300 and the 900 later down the road. Half a year later, the tinfoil hats were thrown into the air like students after graduation, and there was the announcement.
The Sennheiser IE600 is a 7mm single dynamic driver IEM kicking in at 700 USD (according to the official website). Following the same form factor as the other 2 predecessors and with a 3D printed shell made of a special metal, the footprint is small and the weight is marginal.
As I’ve rambled enough already for a quick take, and before we delve into what really matters, I would just like to touch on an important non-sound aspect, as the others will be fully covered in my full-review: the fit and the tips.
At first I had fit problems. I thought it was related to the small form factor but I quickly realized it wasn’t - the fit on these is heavily tip related. I was having problems even sealing with the stock tips, and at first I was bummed, as these tips have tuning foams inside it - a last line touch of tuning that Sennheiser used to achieve the intended sound. As you might guess, this is a major problem because if I’m having fit and seal problems if I move around, I need to change tips, so that would affect sound, right?
Long story short, not by much. In fact, due to the better seal I got, rolling tips into Final E (large size) open up the sound even more, giving me a sense of my controlled mid and upper treble, with more impactful bass, and as of that, the following impressions and most likely my follow review are not based on stock tips but using Final E tips. If you end up buying this, beware, as you might need to tip roll a lot.
The Tonality
“Ok! Enough rambling! Show me the goods!”
“That’s some impressive channel balance, but what about the tips?”
I’m feeling frisky, so I will start by the end: I like these a lot. Are they perfect in the first passages? No, as in no transducer is. But I like them a lot-lot for a single dynamic.
The moment I turned this on and adjusted the volume, my reviewer instinct came in, so I knew what I was experiencing - I sitted back, relaxed and grabbed the controller.
The amount of clarity and sheer detail you get thrown at, for a single DD, it’s impactful and deserves respect. Sennheiser did it and IE600 is the most technical single DD I have experienced to date, and I knew it in the first 30 seconds of my take.
It’s actually pretty obvious how they are achieving this - besides all the work inside the shell and the driver itself, - if you look at the mid to upper treble region. I’ve been extra kinda so time to cut the candy talk and rip the band-aid: These will be too hot for some people and/or music genres.
As a lower treble sensitive person and fond of darker sets, me liking this level of elevation in the treble region surprised even myself. After further looking in the FR graph, I would attribute this to the dip from the upper mids into the lower treble, a region where it makes or breaks an IEM for me.
The boosted region, above 8k hertz, it’s tiring for long sessions, and the first thing that came to my mind was the UM Mest brothers, who instantly overloaded me with too much detail, which I appreciate, just not the usual hours I listen to music everyday. Despite this fact, I respect the hustle, as it was cleverly done in my opinion.
Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac shuffled and here I am, mesmerized by how the intro of this song could describe this set: a beautiful bunch of stardust flying around, that can be too much for some, but beautiful nonetheless.
Now, with these being a mild-V or U-shaped IEM, you can’t talk about the treble without talking about the bass and, in a word, it is goooood, especially after rolling the tips. While listening to “Playing God” by Polyphia, both aspects come alive. The level of treble presence and detail bring a new level of micro-details to the song, while the bass around the 28s drop just feels prominent. Both are a bit on the overemphasized territory in comparison to the mid-range, but still leave out a clinical taste on your lips, without bleeds whatsoever.
Tracks like “Why So Serious?” show that, just like the treble, bass extension is one of the show stoppers. At around 3 minutes and 26 seconds, the world will just rumble at your feet - funny fact, it happened to me while picking groceries.
Despite the mountain of elevation in the low end, the mid-bass is impactful but clean. It isn’t a real Slam Jam party, but it pushes some air that together with the elevation, you can bet you will feel it, but it won’t over shadow the track, at least not as much as the treble or the sub-bass. The pedal played by Elise Trouw on her live loop of “How To Get What You Want” is a nice proof of that, and correctly balanced with her voice.
Speaking of vocals, let’s quickly transition into the mid-range, or as expected, the weakest link. I will be honest, I was expecting much worse mids, and way more recessed. They are a bit recessed, but still just south of neutral to my ears. I still find the need to increase the volume a bit as I am a mid-head and on very balanced tracks like the famous version of MTV Unplugged’s “Hotel California”, where Eagles performance needs a touch more mids in comparison to the treble sparkles and the monotonous bass punch. Despite not being as balanced, it was one of my favorite replays of the track so far, so touché.
Given the ultra transparency of this mid-range, pianos sound great and very detailed, just like Hania Rani - Glass can show us - all the wood sounds are there, and just right and well separated, without a blur.
Vocals are, in my opinion, the weakest link, but despite not being anything to write home about, they are far from bad. They are transparent, clinical and very detailed. Sometimes I miss my RSV’s organic presentation, that just fits me better in this regard, but you can’t have the cake and eat it at the same time.
The female vocals sound better than male do, having more bite but without feeling ever into the shout territory (Adele - Oh My God and Lykke Li - Silent My Song). Michael Bublé’s performance on “Feeling Good” gives a slight feeling of something missing, maybe some weight and presence, again, just south of neutral.
The Intangibles
Sennheiser quality is undeniable, but let’s be realistic here, no one will be paying IE600 price just for tuning itself, as I’m still a preacher that tuning is free.
So, how are the technicalities of the set? In sum, a fallacy of composition - The whole comes out as great, as some of the weakest characteristics get blended in by the others, resulting in a better outcome.
Time to rip the band aid off, once again: the stage and imaging. Soundstage is size is modest and in some tracks it may be too close to your head, showing that it could use more depth and even width. Its height, just like Imaging, feels above average, passing the test easily. The holographic representation kicks in and is very well done, precise to be exact, when the track demands it (Yosi Horikawa - Bubbles).
So how do these flaws get masked? For starters, and once again, the sheer detail is excellent, giving you a sense of micro and macro queues everywhere. Following the line, comes the dynamics of the driver, which are clearly up there with a fast tight response, with sharp transients. To close the formula, comes its timbre, something that I’ve been taking into consideration more and more nowadays, that despite not being the best in class, is well above the pack.
The wrap-up
Despite being first impressions, I feel I am now in position to say that IE600 is the most technical single dynamic driver I have experienced to date, and for that, it already comes out as a winner.
Again, every set has its flaws and Sennheiser or not, this is no exception. I feel this set won’t work with every ear and every preference, and most will find it tiring after long periods of time. This won’t be a mid-heavy set, and I found it to work much better with the electronic side of my library, like techno and house, than it did with the more relaxed tracks.
In the formal review I will compare directly and talk about how I expected this set to rival my other single DDs like the Dark Magician and Zen Pro, but I came to the conclusion they are all different sizes of the same tool, with the application and strong suits being library dependent.
To quickly answer the question I will be asked the most after reading this: Yes, I think IE600 is worth the price when compared to other sets in the market, for my tastes and library. Now, if spending hundreds on a single DD IEM is worth it, that’s up for you to decide.
To me, as a recently slave to the single DD performances, what a time to be alive!
Value Rating: 4.5 out 5. Provisional personal ranking: 9 out 10.
Disclaimer no. 3: All the notes were done through a variety of sources, but the final taker was the iFi xDSD Gryphon using the stock 4.4mm cable. If you are into that, I feel that sources on the warmer side will be a better fit for this set, but as always, YMMV.
Thanks for reading!
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After 3 years, an inumerous number of lockdowns and a pandemic later, I went to a big concert again.
Thanks to the usual luck my gf has, she found out that, not only Guns’n’Roses were coming into town but that there was also 200 tickets that just submerged. Oh well, long story short, we bought 2 as we felt that it could be one of the last chances, if not the last to see them before they retire.
Mind you, I like Guns, but I’m not a hardcore fan. I do am a fan or this fella, one of the GOATs
And why am I posting this? Well, the sound system was heavily badly tuned and lacked anything but highs, but again, who cares?
We spend hundreds of hours A/Bing, and that’s fine. It’s the job of people like me to do, and there’s no shame on it. But please, never forget what we use transducers for and what really matters. I see people discussing over hours and hours, dozens of posts and just think that all that time could be used just jamming to your library.
Give a me 10 dollar transducer and the library I want over the best setup ever playing something I don’t like.
Be kind, be smart and be happy. Food for thoughts.
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It’s all about the music!!!
Happy listening,
God Bless,
Wayne
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Another set of loose impressions regarding the whole hobby from me after one full honeymoon month with MESTs.
TL;DR - LBBS is better than MEST in acoustic music and costs 20x less. Don’t buy kilobucks sets period if you like this hobby in sense of chasing the rabbit and you are not a whale.
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I really don’t want to listen to anything else at the moment and I am looking for any occasion to get them in my ears. This is all true, but with 2 asterixes
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first * is that I did not reach to the point where I am happy with the comfort and seal. I mean I tip rolled through all my tip collection and when I reach the point where I think I am happy about the seal it turns out that my canal starts to hurt after one hour of listening. I don’t have such problems with any other of my sets and it is the biggest drawback of all drawback MEST has.
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second * - MEST killed my joy of listening to any other sets I have. And I mean really even S12 is not that fun, it is harsh and like looking at a beautiful landscape through a dirty window kind of way. It is funny because the step up from Tea/S12 to MEST was nowhere near as clear for me as now the difference I hear stepping down from MEST to them. The difference in that direction is huge, but overall I don’t think it is worth going up to kilobucks as in 300$ price bracket there are plenty of amazing stuff now to try out. Right now it killed a lot of fun of the hobby for me (but maybe my wallet would be happy net in the long run that I don’t buy Hook-Xses and any new kids on the block)
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one set that holds the ground to MEST and fights on it’s own is LBBS in acoustic music, which is kind of funny if you think it costs 20x less new than the used MEST. I love it’s warmth, natural feeling of guitar and male vocals even loosing on details, bass etc while listening to Singer/Songwriters like Leonard Cohen (early works) or Ben Howard. I would say I prefer it to MEST and this is why I ordered Alter Riders from Riku that I cannot wait for to receive
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DAPs - I fall in and out of love with the concepts of having dedicated DAP as a source of music or at least the one with no streaming capability. Having separate device to carry around apart from phone sucks, not having access to latest music on demand sucks. Having great battery life not burdening your phone is amazing, having physical buttons to control the music without turning on the screen is really one of the Quality of life features that I would miss, having the option to shut away from notification is amazing.
Sony NW-A55 is having truly best in class form factor, great sound, quite fast and responsive software, but has propietary connector which kills a lot of usability factor and has no streaming. NW-A105 with proper Android has USB-c, streaming, but terrible battery life. I cannot imagine not using DAP not on standby to save a battery - having to wait 30s - 1min to boot up the device sucks as hell. I tend to travel a lot and change my mind often while listening to music, so streaming sometimes is a must, but on the other hand having limited library is somehow cleansing, because I know I won’t waste 2h looking for something to listen. I still don’t know what to do, because Q5k is somewhere in the middle of both worlds connecting goods of each of them, but on the other hand I am afraid I started to hear the difference between it and wired NW-A55 and even flac and non flac. Next are the cables
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speaking of which - sources - now I am in the middle of deep research towards desktop DAC/amp for IEM specific use that have outputs towards active speakers. Any good options you could recommend? I am eyeing iFi nano black label, Topping DX3Pro+, maybe some crazy amp like Monoprice THX 887 which is currently on sale but has negative gain that I could use with apple dongle or so…
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Thanks pylaczynski,
Sorry to be so ignorant, but wracking my brain, cannot come up with it.
What is TL;DR-LBBS
Thanks,
God Bless,
Wayne
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TL;DR = Too Long, didn’t read
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Thanks sir
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