OK, so dumb-ass confession time…I may have had the P1s in the dog house due to some initial issues I had with them. I will say that with a 3db bump in the sub 100hz area along with dsp they fricking rock too. I haven’t listened to them much on my headphone rig, but the thx 788 does them a lot of favors with dirac… like damn did that improve the staging and give them a chance to breath. I like the Tapes cus I don’t have to mess with them at all and can use them mobile easier, but if you got the equipment the P1 prob. edges it(it had better for the price difference btw).
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If you tape over the front vent/port of the P1 it bumps the bass just enough in my opinion and doesn’t affect anything else.
Yea ive been broke and plan on picking up some micropore tape later this week, I will try that on the t2 as well since my roommate thinks they are slightly lacking there as well.
I have a lot of audio gear that I can make sound better with EQ, but if I can do without it I will usually do so even if it’s not the absolute best audio I can get from it (looking at you Audeze). No shame in my book
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Finally found a place for the Tapes in my collection. I guess I will be using them as daily driver paired with the Audiosense BT20 bluetooth cable. It seems to act as some correction cable for the tapes and brings the shoutiness significantly down. This cable is by far the best BT cable that i got along with the KZ 8675 cable. It also connects with 2 devices at the same time so kinda makes life simpler to switch between my Macbook and Mobile. I still don’t know how to change the devices by a trigger, as in now u have to pause one device and the next device in queue automatically takes over. I have asked Audiosense official store for any explanation they could give which I might be getting 2mrw. The cable has its shortcomings, not a perfect one by any stretch of the imagination, I am just super excited to start enjoying the Tapes using these.
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So I’ve spent a lot of time with the Tapes now and my final thoughts are that they are indeed amazing in bass, detail, imaging, even soundstage and I’d recommend them to anyone, but the two major drawbacks for me are definitely 1) the shouty vocals/average mids, and 2) they really DO NOT sound nearly as good if you’re listening loud. BGGAR said this same thing in his review, but I hadn’t noticed in the beginning. I’m a bit of a loudy so that’s unfortunate for me.
(I’d add as a third inconvenience - the MMCX connector, which can be seriously fucky. All of a sudden there’d be a channel imbalance and it’d go away in an hour. Plus the stock cable is an ugly pinkish color and it’s uncomfortable to the touch, and it’s a 2.5 mm with a huge 3.5 adapter so it’s unnecessarily massive)
Seems to me like I’d buy the P1 in an instant for the mids, but I don’t have anything to power them with so that’s a pass
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Sorry for the delay regarding the FH7 bass boost tips, FiiO didn’t reply to my 2 emails but they did finally to a FB message though, they said they would send me 2 pairs foc but i’d need to pay $8 shipping. I’ve just replied letting them know the size I require…here’s a pic of them, the centre stem is thicker than standard silicon tips 
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Maybe I can help you.
The two on the right are Fiio’s bass boost tips,
the two on the left are:
These are also available on Amazon!
By the Way, I use them on almost all of my In-Ears.
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Hmmm, in the case of the P1 I may be alone with my opinion.
But I honestly cannot recommend them at all, they simply have too many weak spots for their relatively high price.
This starts with the fact that you simply need too much output power on the playback device to operate properly.
In fact, they only sound loud reasonably satisfactory.
The entire bass foundation is simply too weak or partly not available at all to carry as many music genres through.
I don’t get the often praised details, the tape, the KXXS and also an OH10 at least as good, but usually much better presented.
Compared to other in-ears, the feeling of space is practically non-existent.
In my eyes there are much better in-ears for this price, or even significantly cheaper.
And please believe me, I wanted them to be good, also because so many were enthusiastic about it.
I was neither valid nor shy away from time or effort to enable them to see positively.
At least 25-30 different tips, about 10 different cables, intermediate rings on the noses, EQ’ing, masking the air holes, various players, I even tried everything, with everything,
all with the result that it was the most unnecessary investment of the year for me as it was in my eyes much better on the market.
In retrospect, I can’t even begin to understand this hype.
Sorry, maybe it was a bit yeasty.
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Well, they also would sell way less Fostex T50RPs at 150$-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.
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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.
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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.
By the way. Apparently still shouty but less shouty. Still estats but 75$.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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I also own the KZs. How much better are the tapes compared to them? And in which aspects?