triple fi: coherent sound?

I wouldn't say so. I've had a pair of triple.fi's for something like a year and a half, everything I hear through them has always sounded decently spaced and where it "should" be to me.

I would say the Triple Fi 10 Pro soundstage destroys the single driver ER4 soundstage in every regard. The ER4 has the smallest soundstage of any IEM I have ever heard. It's more of a headstage.

Correct. The staging of the ER4 is razor-thin in every direction. It represents a paradigm level of imaging without a sufficient sense of space. I didn't think the 10 pro beat the ER4 in imaging, but felt the added space was very helpful.

x2. TF10 easily wins the s/s battle between these two - hardly a battle really, a quick skirmish is all it takes....

The triple.fi has the best sonic imaging of any earphones I have heard. Instruments and voices seem to occupy distinct positions in the wide soundstage. They can be spooky.
Sandy.

IMO as good as the IE8.

I had a pair of Triple Fi 10 Pros I liked very much. I liked them better than the SE530, but not because of "rolled-off highs." I'm not sure what it was about the SE530 that I liked less, but I think I preferred more recessed mids. A typical hi-fi arrangement is to boost the extremes, creating an EQ smile. The SE530 has a very flat response, with minimal bass boost. It does roll off at the high end, but so do most monitors. That's not a defect; it's intentional. When you jam earpieces into your ear canals, a little HF goes a long, long way. That's why the drivers are damped.

The SE530 is not designed to have bass come out of one earpiece, though the lack of crossfeed in any kind of heaphone may emphasize imbalances in a recording, which is why high-end amps have crossfeed circuits you can use to restore a certain neutrality to the experience. The SE530 broken down looks like a nerd sitting on two pezes. http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/yhst-...1se530blow.jpg

Your 530 may have been defective. The drivers may have been mismatched. There may have been an issue with the circuitry or the filter in one of the earpieces. The real difference between the 530 and the Triple Fi is the 530's emphasis on mids, a difference in sound signature based on different driver configurations. The Triple Fi has two drivers (one of which is a dual, allowing it call itself a "triple driver" earphone). The Triple Fi's tweeter is more of a dedicated tweeter, probably something close to KA's FK 26260. With a dual doing double duty as mid and woofer, the Triple Fi backs off the midrange a little. What you hear most of is the bass and sparkling treble. With the SE530, you're actually getting three discrete drivers, not two drivers with one doing double-duty as a dual. The larger mid/bass drivers look identical. Unless they're filtered differently, this should give the 530 plenty of bass but also plenty of midrange. In fact, its specs show it to have more bass than mids. It's just that both outperform the treble, particularly after about 2kHz. But when you compare its performance to that of many other drivers, that roll-off is hardly unusual. Build A Graph - HeadRoom: Stereo Headphones, Amps & DACs, Wireless, Noise Canceling, Ear Canal, Earbud, Audio Cables & Accessories

Actually there two different TF10Pro, the very first one came out was early 500 batch for only offered it to who order it first before it's official release and it's sound signature was like pronounced highs but clear n sweet with great midrange(all the details was there as on Shure E500) and feels little behind the highs with great deep bass response. Then after official release UE changed the cable and now TF10pro(to me) is more refind version of SF5Pro with large soundstage, forward midrange as SE530 but open with heavy punchy bass. It's also happen with Shure E500 after launch Shure added more bass response with new name SE530. To me earlier TF10Pro was amazing to show details in highs and mids, specialy where the instrument start till finish and overall had more details with less widen soundstage as now on current TF10Pro.

I don't have any to compare with my triple's, but I'm surprised about the 'Rolled off highs' comment.

@ ZARIM: Triple Fi now has 'Forward midrange as SE530'? Not to these ears...& neither of my Trips are from the initial ltd edition afaik...

For the record I had one of the original versions from a few years back with the slippery cable with the L-plug. I have another pair with the new cable and straight plug. I think they sound identical. As far as I know UE never layed any claim that the different versions sounded any different.

That's really weird. Sometimes, on old recordings which were engineered for hi-fi's where the speakers were practically next to each other, you'll have one set of instruments dominate the left speaker while another set dominate the right - with the effect that imaging is extremely dynamic (e.g. The Who's Pinball Wizard). But if you're regularly hearing bass out of one earpiece and treble out of the other, that's nowhere near acceptable. I had no similar experience with my Triple Fi's - and I'm glad. I think I would have gone out of my mind.

It's possible that the wiring was wrong and you had phase issues, but who knows?

On what planet? If the speakers are wired up properly, there shouldn't be a problem in phase coherence. If you have a driver sucking when the other is blowing, or you have drivers that aren't vertically aligned, well, that's a screw-up with consequence. It's not a fault of multi-driver designs. Single-driver designs are almost always those plastic boomboxes you see at Walmart, the ones with the fake woofers and the non-existent tweeters. I'll take my chances with my four-way at home. The wiring really isn't that complicated.

Hahaha, you're killing me. Stop. Oh, wow, I think I just peed my pants. Yeah, good times.

But seriously, laugh all you want after you've looked at a frequency response graph. I gave you a link. Did you check it, or were you too busy laughing to click. I'll tell you what. Here it is. Look at it carefully and then tell me about the SE530's horrible HF roll-off. To my eyes, there's plenty of roll-off to go around. Why pick on the SE530?

Build A Graph - HeadRoom: Stereo Headphones, Amps & DACs, Wireless, Noise Canceling, Ear Canal, Earbud, Audio Cables & Accessories

While we're laughing our sixteen-year-old pants off, lets stop and read an excerpt from "How to Interpret Headphone Data" at Headroom.com. I just love this little excerpt and I'm sure you will as well: Eh, but what do they know at Headroom? Maybe we should do a Chicken Little Dance while we throw the SE530 down a mineshaft.

Well, you'll have to forgive me. I go with what I hear, not with what I read. You might want to do the same.

Oh, wait a minute. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!