it doesn’t cost a fortune to get good sound. it does cost some money, and you can’t quite call it cheap, but you can consider it inexpensive when you look at how much it could cost…but especially so if you commoditize and give value to just how much you are enjoying your sound and the positive effects / benefits having that gives you.
like that experience I shared earlier with the Stellia on an ifi Pro iDSD. I was almost brought to tears. there was a level of ecstasy that you really can’t put a dollar figure on as it was priceless. I will never forget that experience and will reminisce about that moment for the rest of my life, getting to share it’s intensity with others who can only try to imagine how glorious that moment was!
TLDR; $500 will get you mind blowing sound, but so will $5000. get what you can afford and enjoy!
edit - oh, one other word of advise. yes, saving for that extra month or two is worth it. and the exercise in patience is good for you.
Funny we bring up money. I’ve been interested in Ikko OH10 for everything folks have been talking about it. $200 is my upper-end for gear, that price for IEMs makes me question things a little.
Last night was I mindlessly going through Crinacle’s site, and saw Samsung… K. Well, Samsung x AKG EO-IG955 are the stock IEMs that came with my S9. The sound signature is very close to OH10s, so I dragged them out and did some tip rolling. Found Spinfits 100s to work best.
HOLY SHIT. The tonal balance with the proper tips is fantastic! Great vocals, nice sub-bass rumble. Granted, details are grainy and soundstage is iffy (good imaging), bass is a touch bloated. But man I was jamming out with these for hours last night. I swapped to my Blon 03s and kinda preferred the Samsung/AKG more.
If Ikko OH10s can do the same tonal balance, take some bass bloat away and give me soundstage: WINNER.
Oh-so-pleasantly surprised that you don’t need, at all, to spend a lot, to enjoy music a lot.
I started this journey… two years ago? Not knowing what soundstage was. Or planar bass drum/kick slam. A 100$ Sanskrit 10th V2, a 100$ JDS Atom amp, 150$ Fostex T50RPs with 15$ pads, or 100$, refurbished, Nad HP50s with 10$ no-name angled pads added, often makes me feel like I’m in the studio with the artists. Who’d have thought 320kbps mp3s could sound like that, could contain so much information (don’t worry, I buy CDs too).
I started this journey thinking I’d spend 700$+ on headphones one day to achieve “perfection”. I got the total “signal chain” for more or less 500$ and I often think it’s enough.
oh I should contribute, I personally learned that helping others has it’s rewards and I could get very nice audio and not feel bad by adding what I do best to my audio endeavors; which is business.
once you are happy with the sound, move on, stop searching and enjoy.
power matters. I mean, clean power from power socket. One of biggest steps in improving sound of my system, was to buy new refrigerator, as old was doing things to voltage (and level of background noise).
Another one that came to my mind is that if you are participating on a gear tour or loan, you have to be prepared to pay the full price of that gear. I’ve seen some incidents where the participant can’t pay for the missing or broken equipment.
Ha ha! I was actually excited I was getting something free from Linsoul. It took forever to get to me, so it had me guessing for quite some time. When the package arrived, I ripped into with a lot of anticipation. It was a very large rolled up pink mouse pad with Chinese girly graphics on it. I think there was a matching wrist wrest as well. I immediately put it back into the box and ended up giving it to my girlfriend who gave it away to someone she works with.
I was quite disappointed, but the gesture is what counts I guess.
So despite my philosophical learning, this is in the iem thread so… Tips!!! All the tips, try all the things, meaning on all earphones try all the things you have collected lol while there are some mainstays tip tech aka ear coupling is always getting better just like the earphone tech its self… Worth the investment easily.
Could not agree more. It’s pretty amazing to me that many do not explore all the aftermarket tip options. A good fit is incredibly important to hearing what the IEM is truly capable of.
I think the thing that I’ve learned the most during my 2 years in the hobby so far. Is to learn your preferences but not be afraid to try something different, you may be surprised what you find. Coming from my EQ’d Elears I was so focused on detail, imaging and accuracy that I thought that those were the things that really mattered to me about the hobby, having the ability to pick apart each piece of the mix and hear all the subtle detail and micro dynamics was amazing to me, and on more complex tracks it still is very much enjoyable to me. But when I got the mid forward, and basshead like FH5’s, I was shocked by how much more I enjoyed the music for most tracks, here was something that is not even close to the imaging or straight up resolution of my Elears and I found myself much more drawn to it despite that fact. Even the mid forward bias that I thought I would need to eq out when slightly tamed and with the upper mids balanced out became my favorite part of the iem with the bass a close second. These have now become my daily drivers with the exception of when I want to listen to more complex and soundstage dependent tracks, where the Elears are still brilliant when properly EQ’d. My last take away is to me detail has a required threshold but once you meet it ( and it doesn’t have to be HIFI levels) musical enjoyability trumps everything else.
So underrated… It’s so easy to climb the ladder of “better” and get disillusioned.
$200 per component is my max, roughly. This might be blasphemy to some, but if I can’t appreciate a $200 headphone, I think there’s something wrong with my expectations.
