Mini Comparison - Vibe (1st gen), C700, PK2, RE0, NE-7M, PFE, ER4S, OK1, TF10, UM3X, SE530, IE8 - Page 3

You should try the ER4S...if you can stand to drop a little on the very bottom end and can give up a little of the effortless dynamics. It's a better overall IEM, better balanced overall, more body in note, and the stage is bigger, in front of you instead of in-head. Depth is similar to the Vibe but not as wide as the Vibe. For as much as some whine about the Vibe in build quality, the stage kicks butt. The depth is great and the width is the only in-ear I've used that sounds beyond the phones themselves.

NE-7M versus PFE, the PFE does sound more open, yeah, but still a in-head experience and still only as wide as the earphones. It just doesn't sound as closed in.

I can't say the same about the black versus gray filters. I just know that frequency response does play a roll in perception. A simile, sort of, is with a car with woofers in the door and tweeters in the a-pillars. A little attenuation or a lower x-over gives the perception of a higher sound stage because emphasis is drawn the tweeters. However with headphones, you can't change location. The only way spacial cues can change is through a change of emphasis and delay to a different set of drivers. The big problem with IEMs, well a lot of headphones is they suffer from vibration on bass notes. Black filters = louder relative volumes = more bass = more vibration = more awareness of the physical headphone = smaller stage. The filter itself only can do what it physically can do, and all it can do is block higher frequencies. The gray filter already does that some, the black more. They both function the same and are built the same. The black is just denser/thicker and provides more blocking. It can't do anything else different and can't affect stage. Because of the physics of the device, the only explanation is the above higher relative volume an added vibration.

Yeah, the format was pulled from ClieOS's reviews. He provides a blank format in one of his review threads:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f103/r...-v-2-a-394365/

Quoted from his thread:
"ABF - Amplification Benefiting Factor"

Basically, it's how much of a benefit does amping make for the headphone.

In most cases, I found amping to not be terribly necessary, but small benefits could be seen when wattage needs outweighed the availability at higher volumes. As well, the amp I ran was FiiO's E5, a nice, little amp, cheap too, but it does have its quirks. The review was done without the amp as it colored some and also knocked out some of the separation, but I used it as a tool to gauge how beneficial more wattage can be for a particular headphone.


On the topic of "smackdown," I take online forums as a knowledge base. It is essentially a collaboration of many, many individuals efforts, interests, and opinions. Because much of this and similar hobbies are based on opinions, people will obviously debate issues. I think it's encourageable. Debate translates to expression of thought and ideas, analyzing, breaking down, and rebuilding understandings.

I'm a logical person. I am also scientific. I like the rational. I don't have most answers, but I can debate perceptions and guesses of those answers. Everyone is free to make up their own minds. This forum is simply a platform of sharing. Sharing is not always pretty. Not everyone gets along. Not everyone is right. Some folks are mean, some stuborn, some like to hear themselves talk. Everyone has their own reasons for being here. For some, it's to learn, others to help, some just for social connection. The social interaction and clash of minds is dynamic. Good, bad, helpful, harmful, it really doesn't matter. It's all good because it is all expression of the mind. It's a powerful thing when you have 100, 1000, or 10,000 minds focused on a single idea. It's dynamic and chaotic, but it's infinitely powerful.

You guys whine about hurt feelings. Frankly, I don't care. I'm here to learn, to teach what I know, and to debate about what I don't. At the very least, I like to make people think. In the case of 50-100 hours of burn in, I ask why. I want people to second guess themselves, what they've heard, or blindly been told. I want people to rationalize and actually think about the subject and come to their own conclusions (right or wrong). The best thing we can do as humans is to question everything, even if it was told to us as the "truth." The truth is never true in our own minds unless we fully understand why it is true. You need the knowledge and understanding to make it true in our own minds. Without it, all we have is faith, and that is really just hearsay and assumptions which can be as dangerous and detrimental as it can be helpful. One challenging side-effect of knowledge is that we also have to question our own results. We need to guarantee our testing methods are free from bias and influence.

In the case of burn-in, our ears/mind and perception of sound vary. What we hear one day isn't what we hear the next day. What type of sound we like one day isn't the same as the next day. We like to do listening tests to gauge the usefulness of burn-in, but at the same time, many will ignore human influence. We change. How can we work around that? Frankly, we can't. What we'd have to do is step to a scientific approach, actually measure the phones on oscilloscopes and other tools. We'd have to be able to measure change and show it through the burn in process. Does frequency response change? Does Thiele-Small paramters? Does decay? Does distortion? What exactly happens through the burn in process? How long does it actually take before additional time becomes pointless? We don't know. None of us do. There are zero tests on this. Zero. All we can do is speculate. All I can do is question the status quo because it does not sit right with my general perception of reality. That's a good thing. It makes all of you think too and question your own understandings. Maybe someone, someday will be so compelled that they actually do test headphone performance/sound quality in relation to burn in time. Or maybe this will compel a massive blind trial using random people and sets of identical headphones at various burn in times to see if anyone could really tell the difference and at what point.

It also helps of the headphone can keep good clarity and separation of information. Sometimes slower, more sluggish, or sloppy headphones have a hard time keeping that additional information distinct and meaningful. A simple example is Linkin Park. They're a great example of a lot of noise jumbled together. I have found very few pieces of hardware capable of maintaining good separation of instruments, singers, etc. A lot of hardware I've listened to has a greater tendency to just throw everything together in a noisy mess. The hardware needs cleanliness and articulation of note, transient, effortless speed, and balance in presentation to present the mess well enough to remain independently discernible we you can actually perceive instruments, singers, sound effects, etc. separately and distinctly. It's hard to do well. Some hardware fails horribly. Some do ok. Some perform amazingly well. This is the difference between hardware capable of creating a good sound stage and one that can not.