Hmmm...I am impressed by the clarity, soundstage, instrument placement, and bass, I will definitely say that, but first impressions of the overall sound are
This is with about two hours of burn in. I definitely hear the shouty mids; they seem to color the sound in a rather unnatural way, IMO. Everything above the lower midrage sounds veeeery dry; cymbals sound well textured but note-wise somewhat flat to me, not bright enough, kind of shimmery but not sparkly; the effect reminds me of a more accurate, darker version of the trick that the EPH100 plays on treble; something about the timbre and decay just seems a bit off, although its like there is more upper mids coloration in the cymbals, as opposed to lower highs in the EPH100. It seems like they tuned the highs for lower listening fatigue, but rather than making the treble smooth and/or recessed, they just sucked out the highest notes and replaced them with hiss. The vocals are also placed strangely...they seem intimate from the standpoint of their objective positioning in the soundstage, in that they almost feel like they are coming from right behind/below me, but I don't find the vocal presentation to be enveloping the way I had assumed stage monitors were, after reading reviews on the SM2/3, UM3x, etc. I don't think the ASG-1 sounds unnatural on the whole, though; when I EQ some of the mid frequencies back about 1 dB, they definitely sound very natural and have a very good all-around presentation with a very coherent sound, good timbre in the lower mids and bass, and GREAT bass punch, though it's not my favorite presentation. The decay on some of the notes in upper registers makes me miss my Klipsch X10, though...they aren't really very fast, hoping this will improve with burn-in (I've never experienced tremendous changes with burn-in, though). Detail retrieval is probably the best I have heard yet, maybe a step behind the W3, but that's from memory and the W3 are also BAs which are faster and sound more precise, which
seems more detailed sometimes. The soundstage, I have to say, is really impressive. Separation and placement blow my EPH-100 out of the water; to me, these almost sound like full-sized headphones. There is something odd about the soundstage, though...
this next part is very subjective, but it feels oddly spherical in shape. I can see how others might hear them as cavernous and empty with a bad seal, but even with a perfect seal these seem to have a soundstage that begins behind my head between my ears and extends outward, with the bass coming from dead center, almost beneath my chin. Everything seems to sit low in the soundstage. Very odd.
As far as fit goes, the ASG-1 fit in my ears well size-wise, similar to my ex-beloved SE215, and I get a good seal using Sennheiser double flanges, but the shape of the inside of the IEM is different from the shape of my concha and it puts pressure in a weird place.
I think I will most likely be selling/trading these, but I am going to let them burn in a while and give them another chance tomorrow.
