[Review] HiFiMAN RE262 - Sophisticated and Beautiful - Page 14

I retract my anger and disappointment towards these iems. Turns out they needed about another damn 20 hours of LOUD burn in.. much louder then I would listen to. They seem to be coming around finally.
Edited by syphen606 - 3/29/12 at 5:32pm

262 get better with a decent amp BUT the highs are rolled-off nevertheless

 

if you want airy crispy highs , 262 is not for you

 

 

Thanks so much SS , I followed your instructions. I have been in touch with Hifiman & they were very quick to respond, and would send me out another pair, first I need to recieve the reciept from the seller.

Wow that is pretty much awesome customer service dont you think.....

I really dig the 262's, infact I have become a bit of a Hifiman fanboy as I also have their 252 & 272, which I am also digging very much.

I like all 3 for different reasons SS,

 

252 : Is in my opinion so neutral sounding, strange as it may sound... the 252 to my ears has no particular sound that i can describe...Just presents the music kinda like it was intended, no particular color really. Well I could be wrong as all IEM's have some sort of coloring but I just cant describe it somehow.....

I also like how they can be driven really easily, just plug in n play. Only thing I wish I could change however is the 252's shell , Kinda really wierd silicone rubber & an absolute Dust Magnet. Now if the shell was more like the other 2, then I would love these even more. 

 

262 : Properly driven, I can't stress this enough... as I run this from my desktop amp which is my Aussie amp called Counterpoint really has some grunt behind it really bringing out deep well definde bass, mids especially are to die for making the human voice sound like its there & also unlike unamped really shimmers out such crisp clear treble. Warning.....Do not run these just through your ipod.....you wont like them. Kinda really would love to hear these fully balanced mode through Hifiman's flagship player the HM-801.

 

272 : Well  I think when amped you will hear the best from these guys, again would love to hear them balanced as with 262's through HM-801, as I have a feeling this is what Fang intended to have them played through as the Source is warm & these guys well...you can hardly call warm, they are so fast and precise, again amped brings out the best in them. The Detail these things bring out is amazing, Bass is also well defined tight and super quick. I love my Etymotic ER4's but I believe the 272 is the new reighning champion now. It has taken a while for these guy's to be trumped but for my ears 272 does it.

 

I had 262 and after it broke i went and i got 272 and i never looked back

 

too bad these get so little love - then again at 250$ they ain't exactly cheap

 

very nice balanced iems those 72

 

How long did it take to break your 262?  I've had mine a year and I'm not very nice to them.  I throw them in my messenger bag, no hard case for them.  When the time comes I'll have to decide on the 272 or something else.  I'm dreading that decision because there are so many IEMs out there.  More daunting than finding full-size headphones.  
 

 

i did a big mistake and i paid for my ignorance with them breaking up - i took them at the gym (yeah i am stupid i know)

 

from the day they broke , i only use cheap stock buds at the gym.

 

my 272/eq5 stay home all the time (sometimes i take them with me on my car rides - don't ask)

 

at least them breaking meant i could go and buy a pair of 272

so i went from the re-zero and re-262 to the re-272 and eq-5 which was a major upgrade in both iems i bought....
 

 

Great review! Reading this gave me the final push to pull the trigger on the RE262. They arrived on Saturday.

 

I must say that I agree with everything you wrote. These are easily the best IEMs I've heard to date, and I got them for $120. The sound is somewhat like the UM3X, but with better clarity. That's pretty amazing, considering the UM3X needs three drivers and a passive crossover to achieve that level of sound quality, while the RE262 needs only one driver and cost me less than half of what I paid for the UM3X.

 

As for amping, I currently use them with my iPod Video (rockboxed) and a Fiio E11 (via LOD). The bass level is just about perfect with EQ1.

 

All in all, thanks for your review. I think this may be my last IEM purchase for a long time 

Quote:

 

I think UM3X needs it for marketing, not sound quality as do most if not all other multi drivers. I've heard a large number of single driver IEMs, including single driver balanced aramtures already that I found on par or better than UM3X or most other multi BAs I heard in just about everything. Customs are even more about marketing IMO, but I won't get into that to avoid criticism and derailing the thread.

 

I love my RE262 as well. It is a truly excellent single driver dynamic IEM. I actually preferred it over the RE272 in the long run - I found RE262 richer and more musical sounding, while mantaining most of the technical strengths of the RE272. The real difference between the two is that RE272 is lower impedance and thus will sound great with a wider variety of sources than RE262. Other than that, I found the two very similar actually, except for the tuning with the RE272 having a significantly brighter sounding treble. In the end, I sold the latter and kept the former because I felt that RE272 is not worth the extra money for me. I do believe that single driver balanced armatures can have more potential, but for a dynamic, RE262 is one of the best you can buy and much more coherent and accurate sounding than most multi driver BAs.

I went a year before buying another IEM.   It's that good.  
 

Agreed, I just received my 272.  It has more clarity and is more resolving IEM but the 262 has more weight at the low end and lovely warmth to it.

 

As usual, Pianist is absolutely right -- the UM3X is absolutely awful! The UM2 and UM1 are awful, too, but not nearly as horribly-sounding as the it's-all-just-about-shameless-marketing UM3X.

Quote:

 

I actually think UM2 sounds better than UM3X and is not at all awful. I don't think neither are awful actually - they sounded pleasant and enjoyable to me under some circumstances. Just not as good to my ears as the best single drivers I tried and although I understand that nothing is perfect, I feel that multi driver BAs create more problems than they address. Am I absolutely right about this? I don't think so. But I don't think there's any absolute truth anyway - there's no truth outside of subjective experience in my view. Someone may prefer a $10 Skullcandy 'phone to a $1000 high end one because the Skullcandys have more bass. Is that person right? Yes. Becuase in his/her subjective experience Skullcandys are better. That's the truth for that person. The absolute truth IMO is the truth that there is no truth that every human follows and that applies to everything in nature because truth is just a certain specific, momentary state of things and nature of things is such that they keep on changing and thus the truth as we understand it keeps on changing along with them. That's a topic for a philosophy forum though.

Edited by Pianist - 3/13/12 at 8:19am

I would argue there is no such thing as absolute truth, maybe relative truth but I have yet to find absolute anything