Hello Head-Fi-ers,

 

I recently had an opportunity to use a set of Sennheiser IE800's for a while. Wow! I loved what I heard but the microphonics were awful, considering the price.... I also felt like the tips were constantly trying to fall out of my ears and the isolation was not great either. All of this put me off from purchasing (not to mention the eye-watering price) - for that sort of money I would expect better than that .... but what I liked about them was the Sennheiser sound I suppose - slightly bass heavy (but not too much), mids and highs perfect, no harshness at all, revealing of the great detail in the music. They seem to suit my main musical genres (choral and classical) really well. I tried IE8's as well and found the bass to be overpowering enough to make the mids sound a bit muddy. I also tried the Klipsch X11i unit, which I also liked a lot but the mids sounded a bit veiled or muffled to me and the bass is not strong enough for my taste but I liked the warmness and smoothness. I think I'm quite sensitive to a harsh treble sound though, and there is a lot of that in choral music sometimes. 

 

So, I suppose what I am looking for is some help in narrowing down the field a bit. I am looking for some IEMs with a similar sound signature and sound quality to the Senn's but with excellent isolation and minimal microphonics. I use an iPhone 5 and I wanted something that will work OK with that and suit a daily bus & train commute. I'm not a fan of over the ear types though. Budget-wise I'm probably happy to go up to around $400-500 AUD for something of good SQ and build, that will last me for a while.

 

Cheers

The best way to avoid microphonics is to wrap the cable around your ear, as you do with Shure, Westone, etc. You can also try using a shirt clip to hold the cable, but I never found those very effective.

Thanks, but any recommendations?