Top-Tier Universal IEM Comparison Chart, Frequency Response Charts, & Discussion - Page 6

Originally Posted by mark2410

erm no, you may like the FX500 but in no way is it top tier or really any where close to it

Originally Posted by midoo1990

Why not?give me some reasons.and why does the ck10 in this table,I have no idea.it is not a top tier iem,I think it high mid level but not top.

Originally Posted by mvw2

To answer: Completely a matter of personal opinion? That's going a bit too far. This matter can be judged beyond simple personal preference. You can hate a product and still think it's a very good product...
Yes, I do think that it is a matter of personal opinion. Our posts are informed by our own perceptions and experiences, which are inherently subjective. We exchange our impressions and opinions here. I find it hard to believe that anyone who used a product and actually hated it, could possess the objectivity to acknowledge that it is a good product. I think it's more plausible to argue that you can hate a product and acknowledge that there are others who do not.

An example is the RE0. It's an earphone that is very unlike my ideal and I would have a slew of functionally worse earphones over it. I still see it as a largely good product that does very little wrong. For the price, it's one of the best functioning options available...but I still dislike it personally...
Yes, but this is your opinion. I might completely disagree with your assessment of the REO's performance based on my own experience.

ClieOS is an example of a person who's used/tested/reviewed a LOT of products. Joker's another who has used/tested/reviewed nearly 50 IEMs, although limited to low and mid level products. These are the kinds of levels of experience that give a person a broad spectrum view of the head-fi world and what it has to offer...
With respect to ClieOS and Joker, who are both enthusiastic Head-Fiers, this does not make their aural perceptions more correct than anyone else's. They approach their reviewing seriously and with impartiality, which is admirable but it is not objective and nor are the results. I have little doubt that they would be prepared to acknowledge this.

Most people can't accurately define a product. Our perception is based off our experience. It can be based off some logical conclusions too. We create this measuring stick and stick our experieces on it and define a scale. This stick can only measure what we know or can understand logically. We are effectively bound by our own individual takes on reality. My measuring stick is different then yours. My points of experience are in different places and scaled along my stick differently. My perceptions of bright, warm, crisp, muddy, fast, smooth, etc. will be different. What I define as high level and low level will be different. Sometimes you don't know better unless you've had better and realized what you were missing. To accurately measure a product and place aspects in a more true to reality manner, one must have a very well defined measuring device, one with a high resolution of points and spread over a wide spectrum that covers most of the actual realistic range. If you've used 50 or 100 earphones, you have a pretty well defined measuring tool. If you've used 4, it might be pretty crappy. This measuring device has more then one dimension too. It might have 10 or 20 dimensions defining things like level of detail, speed, transparency, impact, stage size, etc., and every single earphone only adds one point in some spot on this measuring stick for each dimension. It's simply that for someone's words to be realistically accurate, they have to have vast experience...
You are describing the subjective nature of our listening perceptions and experiences here, and showing just how difficult it is to devise an acceptable method of measuring them empirically.

99.9% of the people here simply do not...
This is an example of an opinion without any factual basis.

My definition of top tier didn't say weakness. It said flaw...
This is nothing more than semantics. A weakness is described as a fault. A flaw is also described as a fault and as a weakness.

I also want to clarify that flaw can not be a subjective value...
This does not make any sense to me.

Frequency response isn't subjective. It's objective, measurable, numerical. I can put a value to it...
Yes, frequency response is measurable, however, those measurements do not necessarily translate into what we actually hear when listening to a headphone. HeadRoom provide headphone frequency measurement graphs as a guide but again, if you read the forum threads, you will find debate over the accuracy of these graphs, particularly where earphones are concerned. You will also read impressions from people who cannot reconcile what they hear from listening to a headphone, with what's shown in the frequency graph. In the end, we're listening to music through headphones, not frequency graphs.

Subjective could be me saying the IE8 is too laid back, and I could by opinion call that a weakness. However, to someone else's own opinion it could be a strength and a desirable attribute. My perception of how laid back would also be scaled differently. I can't say the IE8 is flawed because it was geared a certain way. Even the midbass hump could have been specifically geared into the product. I can't exactly hold those things against it. I pick on the SE530 because it rolls off heavily in the lower frequencies, pretty much starting at 1kHz. I could say it was "geared" that way, and it sort of was by driver choice, but it's also a 3 driver earphone that completely lacks low end sensitivity. I actually does worse off then some single driver earphones. In my eyes, something like that is a fundamental flaw. There's absolutely no reason it should be that way or still be that way even after revisions.
What you are describing here is the subjective nature of our headphone/earphone listening experience. You are entitled to your opinion about the SE530 or any other IEM that you have heard. My point is that the SE530 has its strengths and weaknesses, but so do the other IEMs that are nominated as "top tier" universals in this thread. That doesn't mean that the SE530 is any less worthy of inclusion.

Originally Posted by james444

Now if that wasn't complicated enough, I'd like to throw in a tiny little foam mod. After that the highs are much better and I actually prefer the FX500 over the CK10 or SE530 now.

Originally Posted by KLS

@iponderous, I see that you are in the 'Oppose to Top-Tier' for CK10, so you finally got a pair of these?

Originally Posted by iponderous

Am I? That's odd. I've been so busy arguing with other Head-Fiers that I haven't noticed. No, I don't have the CK10 and haven't posted about it in this thread. The only IEMs that I have commented upon here are the TF10, SE530 and the UM3X.