Hmmm, in the case of the P1 I may be alone with my opinion.
But I honestly cannot recommend them at all, they simply have too many weak spots for their relatively high price.
This starts with the fact that you simply need too much output power on the playback device to operate properly.
In fact, they only sound loud reasonably satisfactory.
The entire bass foundation is simply too weak or partly not available at all to carry as many music genres through.
I don’t get the often praised details, the tape, the KXXS and also an OH10 at least as good, but usually much better presented.
Compared to other in-ears, the feeling of space is practically non-existent.
In my eyes there are much better in-ears for this price, or even significantly cheaper.
And please believe me, I wanted them to be good, also because so many were enthusiastic about it.
I was neither valid nor shy away from time or effort to enable them to see positively.
At least 25-30 different tips, about 10 different cables, intermediate rings on the noses, EQ’ing, masking the air holes, various players, I even tried everything, with everything,
all with the result that it was the most unnecessary investment of the year for me as it was in my eyes much better on the market.
In retrospect, I can’t even begin to understand this hype.
Well, they also would sell way less Fostex T50RPs at 150$-ish if people knew they sounded “thin” without an amp. Planars are planars (headphones or IEMs), apparently.
While I love the P1 to death I can see where you’re coming from. The bass is light, they are power hungry, and the detail is in the super 15k region. Combine that with the sizable drop at 10k and many people who can’t hear above ~15k won’t get that detail.
Personally I am ok with the bass, have an xd-05 for power portable, and love that top end shimmer.
I feel the same as you towards the Harman target curve. Why do people like this? I feel that it makes IEMs sound hollow and unenjoyable while adding “false detail” by bootsing the 1k-4k region. But that’s just this hobby, very subjective. You could probably sell the P1 pretty easy though to make up for some if that investment.
In the near future I will sell all of the rest of my ChiFi’s collection that I acquired in the past year apart from my KXXS and BLON.
Most of them, in my opinion, have too many faulty tonal characteristics to be of interest to me.
It was interesting to test them, but for me ChiFi in-ears and over-ear headphones in the cheaper price regions have not yet reached the level of established brands, unless they land a lucky hit in the tonal tuning, as with the above mentioned two cans.
FIIO, iBaso, Sennheiser, Audeze, Beyerdynamic etc. are still quite a step ahead and in the high-end area we don’t have to discuss quality anyway.
iBasso DC01 with Tape seems like a dream combo. Initial impressions are gr8 but I am sick so i doubt if my perception is accurate. FWIW here goes my impression, DC01 makes the Tape to be OH10 yet retaining the details. It feels so laid back and as if the song is playing at 0.9x. Corrects the shoutiness. I listen at 37 to 43 using UAC volume control app.
The Shuoer Tape took a bit of work for me to finally enjoy. They seem very ear tip sensitive and surprised me by how much the sound changes w/ different style tips. So far the ones that work best for me are the small TCM silicone tips, they tame the high end enough for me to not want to throw them out a window and they blossom out some deep low end to at least make them mostly enjoyable.
They are bright and get fatiguing BUT they have excellent wide soundstage and very nice imaging. I’m amazed at how they pull the music outside and around my head and ears, it’s really cool, none of my other IEM’s come anywhere near providing this kind of wide soundstage.
These things are detail monsters, they can get painfully shouty and bright and the cleaner the sources the more care that has to be taken to use tips that offset these qualities. There is low end bass, you just have to find tips that allow you to hear it. I much prefer them with warmer/dark sounding amplifiers, Dac’s and pre-amps. I also use my warmest/darkest tubes in my pre-amp to tame the mids and high’s enough to enjoy the detail and airiness they are capable of bringing out in the music.
High compression recordings sound real real bad to me w/ these. I enjoy them more with low to mid volume, they get real loud, but again, just too bright for my tastes at very high volume.
Mid-bass, 90 Hz and above is very tight and snappy with excellent detail and separation. I was able to get 40-80hz bass out of them but it took finding the right tips. These are too bass light for me for any genre but blues and jazz. They are OK, the bass they provide is nice and detailed but to me it’s just “present”, which is fine, I guess folks call that neutral.
They are awkward for my ears and I have trouble getting a good seal for more than 1 or 2 tracks before I have to shove them in tight again. I have small ear canals and wish I could use larger ear-tips to better seal in the bass. it’s ok , I deal w/ it.
I paid $102 for mine, at this price I’m perfectly fine w/. them and like having them in my collection. I don’t reach for them often but it’s cool to have IEM’s that have this wide a soundstage and this level of detail retrieval. I prefer a warm sound signature, if you like an extremely bright and detailed sound signature with midrange that screams at you these are for you. Happy Listening.
I’d agree with you on most of what you said, but re: bass, I can’t imagine calling these bass light. Granted, I’m not a basshead, but these make my ear canal vibrate.
IMO, if they weren’t so shouty and had better mids, they’d be a perfect IEM (soundwise. There’s still a lot of comfort/fit issues)
Hmm, there is a solid bass presence but I have not experienced this “heavy bass” some folks speak of with these yet. I’m starting to believe my idea of heavy bass is wayyyy different from what many folks consider bass heavy.
EDIT: So I went and got a few pairs of these ear tips, TCM tornado in size small. I can manage to get them deep enough in my ear canal to finally better experience the bass. This helped me, I repeat, I believe part of my problem is small ear canals and getting the correct fit and seal w/ eartips.
The more I experiment with these the more I like them. I found playing them on on old Sugden headmaster thru my Glow audio dac1.3 gave me, personally, pretty good results and I am enjoying them.
They certainly have a different sound signature (very airy and wide soundstage) and quality about them than all my Tins and my Cardas IEM’s.
I’m pretty new to IEMs and only got the KZ-ZS10 Pros and theeese (Shouer Tape). When i got my KZs i was more than impressed, because i never heard anything like this from such a small “headphone”. So my expectations were pretty high for the Shouer (more than 3x the price). Electrostatic must be amazing. So i bought these and when i put them in my ears i was like WTF? That can’t be true… They sound like absolut crap compared to the KZs. Really, really shallow airy sound with absolut no bass at all. Sounded like a real cheap headphone you get on an airplane. I was f. disappointed. No such a huge community can’t like such a sound, no?! So i realized that when i pressed them more in my ears the bass became louder. OK let’s change tips. I tried ALL the tips which came with my Shouer and they still sounded very poor. So last chance could be the not silicone tips i got with my KZ’s. HOLY MOLY! There it was the sound everybody was talking about. Bass is now perfect and everything else as well. F*** they sound great So much detail, clarity and this dry punshy bass which was completely missing is now here . I absolute love it. Problem is my loundspeakers sound like crap now compared to theeese. Such a sound on loudspeakers would be amazing, but i guess you would also need a pefect arcoustic room for such a result.
The Tapes were the first pieces of audio kit i was tempted to sell and be rid of to someone who wanted them cheap. The first few times i put them in were just bad, nothing at all pleased me about them. Then i decided to get stubborn, wtf was wrong with these things, from re-reading so many posts i decided to keep trying them and swap ear tips. Well that worked! I finally found s pair of small silicone tips that got these things deep into my tiny little ear canals and somehow they are now one of my favorite IEM’s with a few different genres. These are picky it sseems to each individual and may require a bit of efffort to get right for you. I’m happy is kept trying, they were worth the effort to me.
This has gone a little quiet, so I’ll bump it with my impressions.
The Tapes are definitely worth having and complement the P1’s where they are weakest.
Tin P1’s are my current favourite earphones, as they remind me of my beloved albeit very old and dilapidated Grado Sr60’s. They just do guitar and vocals so well it’s the perfect match for a sizeable portion of music I listen to. Steely Dan through Sonic Youth. I’m running them off the Hiby R5 balanced after the Fiio M9 got part of the way there, but not all the way!
On the other hand the Shuoer Tapes fill in for the rest of it. All the electronica and stuff that needs more bass or lots of detail in the treble. Caribou and Four Tet for example. I’m running them balanced off of the Fiio M9 and I reckon the balance boost makes them sound a bit better, although everything I’ve read has said they don’t need much power to get the best out of them.
I have a pair of Jubilees that are now gathering dust. Shame.
@leafmulch I have the Tape and Jubilee too, have you eq’ed and felt modded the 58x? There’s two eq set available, the oratory and I forgot the other one. I’m using the other one and the sound is nice enough to make me stop looking at other headphone.
I’ve never gone down the modding route and I’m using streaming services, currently Amazon HD, so can’t EQ. When I’ve EQ’d local files I’ve never felt that it sounded natural, like the EQ sounded artificial, but I’m very inexperienced in that area. I don’t have an external physical EQ, but I’m assuming that’s not what you meant.
I’ve tried MSEB on the Hiby R5 and it sounds okay, but I’m not entirely convinced.
I’ll be honest though, you’ll never make the 58X sound remotely like a grado and I’m sure I prefer the P1 over anything in its price range. But I’ll use this as motivation to listen to the jubilees some more tomorrow. Thanks.
I see, If you use neutron Player, their parametric equalizer is da bomb. I would never use graphic equalizer due to the lack of accuracy, but with param eq I really have no regrets. It changed M50x to a very smooth harman like sound with a deep bass for example.
Felt Mod is the other thing I recommend because it is reversible. It’s easy to apply and remove. Just check the DIYaudioheaven website. I still remember the stock 58x sounds quite compressed and a bit too dark for me. If you like the sound with the foam off, the felt mod is a good middle ground. It still can protect dust from entering.
This is my setting for 58x on peace equalizer. It’s not the oratory1990, I forgot where I found it but for me it sounded the best. You could try remove the foam and use this eq on your desktop setup. No harm to try right
Ive bought the tapes on Amazon a few weeks ago without really reading anything about them. Since I have the Koss Esp95x estat I was curious how they are for just 100€. It’s the second iem I have tried, the only other one was the Fiio FH5, which I didn’t like so much. They sounded good, but they were too much in my head in a way. I really enjoy the tapes so far. They feel way less in my head I think( if I remember right).Noticed the little shouty vocals, but besides that, I think they sound really really good. Comfort is not really an issue now, I can use them with the stock tips. I have read the thread 3 times now, but I always forget - If I want to get other tips to try, which are the tips to go? Since I never tried aftermarket tips till now, I want to!
Sorry, maybe it was a bit yeasty.
So last chance could be the not silicone tips i got with my KZ’s. HOLY MOLY! 
There it was the sound everybody was talking about. Bass is now perfect and everything else as well. F*** they sound great 
So much detail, clarity and this dry punshy bass which was completely missing is now here 
. I absolute love it. Problem is my loundspeakers sound like crap now compared to theeese. Such a sound on loudspeakers would be amazing, but i guess you would also need a pefect arcoustic room for such a result.
- If I want to get other tips to try, which are the tips to go? Since I never tried aftermarket tips till now, I want to!