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Big Ears?

post #1 of 6
9/30/08 at 4:31pm
Thread Starter 
I'm pretty new to IEMs and now have some SA-6's which seem great to me. I wonder if I'm not getting the best out of them because I'm inserting them properly though.

I got some moderately cheapo Sonys a few months ago and found I got the best sound with the biggest eartips that came with them. The sound, however, was lousy compared to those from my Sennheiser HD25 non-IEM 'phones. A bit of research on Head-Fi led me to the SA-6 which I've had for a week now. I'm very pleased with them. I can get a great sound, not as much bass response as the HD-25 but fabulous clarity and pretty good soundstage (I think this means separation between sources at different virtual angles to your head - see, I'm really a newbie). All of this is with either neutral or + treble and the + bass ports. As with the Sonys, I find I have to use the biggest eartips to get this sound. If I use medium or small ones I can hear lots more external noise and the bass is completely useless. When I insert the 'phones I can feel some, but not all, of the edge of the outer flange of the eartips with my finger. Is this right? Should the outer flange be so far inside your ear that you can't feel it with your finger? Maybe I've just got ears with big holes in them...

I was thinking about trying some other eartips (e.g. Shure black olives) to see what the impact on the bass response was like. If I really need the large size of the Sleek earpieces what size Shure would people reccomend?

many thanks,

Bob
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post #2 of 6
9/30/08 at 4:47pm
Hey Bob,
I'm kind of in between a medium and large. The medium flanges fit well but do not give me as much isolation as the large ones (therefore not as good a bass response). The large ones are a tight fit though, and I'm finding I can't wear them for too long. Only the first flange sits in my ear canal the second flange sticks out enough that I can feel them with my fingers.
So I order some Shure black foams in medium and they fit very well, gives comfort as well as better bass response.
From what you're describing it sounds like you'll need the large Shure black foams.

Hope that helped.
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post #3 of 6
9/30/08 at 5:20pm
Thread Starter 
That's brilliant - thanks for such a quick response (I thought it might just be a silly question). I'll order some large Shure black foams and see how I go...

cheers,

Bob
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post #4 of 6
10/3/08 at 3:46pm
Thread Starter 
I've now got some Shure foam tips - just wanted to ask another quick question though. The black foam tips (PA 910 L) have a soft black 'body' but there is a tube of harder material in the middle where one would have to push through the SA6 treble port. It doesn't look as if the SA6 treble port will fit though (I'm using the + port). I don't want to break anything so I thought I'd ask advice first - does the hard central tube in the Shure tip give easily, is it something I should remove first, or have I got the wrong sort of Shure tip?

thanks,

Bob

(sorry if this is a dim question!!!)
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post #5 of 6
10/10/08 at 6:17am
Thread Starter 
Final follow-up to my own message in case anyone else is interested. I found that it was much easier to insert the treble port into the Shure Olive and then click the Olive/port combination into the SA-6 than it was to get the olive onto the treble port in situ on SA-6.

The bass is indeed imporved and the olives are more comfy than the flanges (although I didn't really mind the flanges comfortwise).

cheers,

Bob
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post #6 of 6
10/10/08 at 10:56am
Yeah the olives are a tight fit because of the flare on the treble tubes. Glad you're getting better bass response.
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