Quote:
Originally Posted by
zowki 
I've been listening to my FitEar TG334s every day for two weeks trying to get accustomed to the sound but I still miss the Fostex TH900 treble whenever I switch to my TG334s. I mentioned this before and my opinion still stands after the two week "burn in" period, the TG334s lack treble extension and air. The treble sounds dry and lacking like the LCD2s (the very reason I sold my LCD2s). Its a big shame because the bass is fantastic and the mids are unmatched by IEMs and headphones of any type that I've heard. I'll still hold on to my TG334s because I can't give up the amazing bass and mids just yet. I should also mention that the sound is very dynamic driver like despite being a multi balanced armature IEM. The bass hits deep, with authority and doesn't lack any impact.
Perhaps the treble issue is due to the fact that Mitsuhara Harada (Fitear TG334's engineer) is growing old and has upper frequency hearing loss while I'm a teenager who can still hear "mosquito tones". Or perhaps it was purposefully tuned that way to be less fatiguing for sound producers who use IEMs for monitoring for long periods (judging from FitEar's website the TG334s seem targeted to producers).
The treble is a driver issue, and a personal preference issue.
Yes, the 334 don't have the same upper end presence as some others out there, but it's really not far off from how normal human hearing works. Most people just prefer listening brighter than they should, just like how everyone likes listening louder than they should. The high driver in the 334 was chosen for its mid to lower-treble accuracy, not for its absolute extension, and thus its bread and butter is in the mids.
Harada's "hearing loss" is not likely an issue. Besides, he wasn't the one who engineered the product; he merely worked with Suyama to determine the best tonal balance to the earphone. Engineering the crossover and choosing the drivers is a very different issue from voicing the product, and yes, the choice was the make the treble not as present in order to not distract from the midrange and to reduce listener fatigue while still giving just enough treble presence to hear what's needed in a mix. If Harada wanted something that he could use with hearing absolutely everything in the spectrum and he had the hearing loss that you purport, wouldn't he want a brighter sounding earphone?
Also, people need to understand the constraints of engineering a custom in-ear monitor. With full-sized headphones, you get much more flexibility in damping unwanted resonances and pulling the most out of a sizable driver diaphragm. If they added another driver to the top end of the 334, they'd have to contend with designing a proper 4-way crossover that likely runs into more technical problems than it's worth. 4-way crossovers are a lot more complex than 3-way or 2-way crossovers, and they easily run into issues with phase shift. There's no doubt that FitEar is one of the best CIEM manufacturers in the industry, but they're not infallible. FitEar's Private C435 will have better high-end extension than the MH334 because of the choice of using a TWFK instead of an ED (or 2389), but FitEar is easily much more proud of the 334 than they are of the C435, to the point that they actively downplay the availability of the C435.
