Shure SE530s harsh? - Page 3

That was also my experience when I switched to Comply tips, better and deeper bass, and they leveled out the spectrum nicely which made the sound more natural than electronic to me.

I've found that EQing the 530s are tricky. You want a treble boost to fight the roll-off, but too big a boost creates hiss and sizzle in the top end. I try to boost at around 7.5 kHz, then roll the treble back down at 10-11 kHz.

I use large Olives at home with them, and triple-flanges on the road.

I really don't like the Comply tips. To my ears, they make the SE530 sound muddy and bloated. But to those who like them, great. I just can't personally recommend them.

I find this a little too. That's why I tend not to.

Also, nice user name .

Good to hear. I personally never had to warm up to the SE530. After having just returned the Westone UM2 (which literally gave me a headache every time I listened to them because of sibilance), the SE530 was immediately enjoyable to me. Hope they end up that way for you.

extremely noticible on Love live @ AOL by Keyshia Cole, I loved listening to this song on my FX500's and the 530's just made it cringeworthy.
What I found was that the 530's suffered from a rather large amount of upper mid energy and when the volume is cranked I found vocals especially female sibilant and like they are screaming at you. The harshness subsided quite a bit when I got custom ACS tips, I believe this to be better seal hence better isolation hence lower listening volume. But yes the 530's have a distinct harshness in the upper mid region that I've actually not experienced with any other IEM, and it has nothing to do with the brightness because the HF5's had plenty of treble sparkle but no sibilance in vocals at all.

and there was another thread discussing something similar to this a while back, I believe it was regarding comparisions to UM3x

Thank you timmyGCSE.

The SE530's were never harsh when I auditioned them 3 times in the past, and I listened to some Death, Krisiun, Behemoth and Immortal IIRC. The volume was only low-to-moderate though.

I agree but I found my new pair aggressive for a while. I think they may have slightly revoiced them due to reports of dull highs or I just don't remember my first pair(lost a channel) before break in which is possible. I ran this second set in for a week at normal levels increasing slightly over time before they sounded more like my used pair. I don't believe in cranking things into submission so I listened for edginess, kept them below that stress point and gradually increased volume over the week. I know it's said that these types don't need break in but I completely disagree with that and these took quite some time. As they are now, I again couldn't part with them. I'm into subtleties and detail without either analytical or soft sound and these rock my world. In Dynamics, I like older Beyer DT 931s and find a lot of the super hi end phones clear but a bit soft. Grado's boogie but these Beyers are also neutral.

I just ordered a pair of inexpensive PL-50s to have around for giggles with laptop movies etc. as I want to try and keep the Shures intact for more critical needs.

Mark, do you think I made the right choice considering my admiration for 530s? My concern was that cheaper dynamics may be a bit furry for my tastes. I find some people confuse a bit of noise around a note for air and thought I'd be safer with an oft described as low distortion balanced armature option.

As an aside, I tried rockboxing my Fuze and went back to stock as I prefer the standard firmware's sound, at least with WMA 320 FBR that I've settled on for my size sound compromise. Rockbox was a bit harsher,flatter sounding for me on this player. If I needed EQ or features, I would have kept Rockbox as it's EQ is vg and the stock Fuze's is pretty useless sonically. I also noticed that the firmwares sound slightly different from one another so this view could also be different for others. I chose 101.22A. Geeky much?