scottgarrett
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2009
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I have had a pair of T1s for about a week now. I came to them by a roundabout route... I used to work for a Formula One team and was fitted with a custom radio earpiece, input into one ear and a blank sound-excluding earpiece in the other. Anyway, I owned and enjoyed a set of UE 10 Pros but the damned things wouldn't stay in... I think I have very small ears! The way forward seemed to be customs and having been impressed by the sound of the UE 10 Pros, I researched there first and decided on some UE 10 Customs. UE send you some fairly specific instructions as to how to have your ear impressions made, but I recalled having had impressions done for my old F1 earpieces so to save me the expense of an audiologist, I contacted the radio company to see if they still had my impressions and they told me that they subcontract their impression work to ACS; when I went on the ACS website to get their phone number, I found that they made custom earphones too. Rather than go to UE in the US I thought I'd go 45 minutes up the road to Banbury instead.
So ACS made me some T1s from existing impressions that they'd taken for a different purpose about 2 years before. They fit perfectly... but you need to get used to putting them in and taking them out. It's not a simple task and it can be a bit of a pain on a plane, say, when you're constantly interrupted by a stewardess with menus and washbags and food and stuff... the earpieces block out everything. Conversation is impossible. This means you shouldn't use them while driving, cycling or anything where some sound (like the horn of an oncoming truck) might be useful.
When they're correctly seated in the ear, allow them a few minutes to come up to body temperature. You'll know when that is because it's about the same time that you stop noticing they're there at all. They really are that comfortable. Phenomenal.
Now listen. Every instrument is clear. Every note seems to stand out... it's easy to pick an instrument and follow it, or to bask in the whole of the sound. The T1s seem to me to be absolutely neutral and without colouration of any kind. They are incredibly detailed and good enough to expose poor recordings. I can now tell the difference, for example, between iPod tracks recorded at different bitrates. 128 just seems poor and muffled by comparison to lossless recordings.
The longer I listen, the better they get. They have excited me sufficiently that I find myself listening to tracks, to styles of music I would not have listened to before. They have revealed layers of my music collection that I have never discovered and some tracks manage to produce genuine soundstage, where placement of individual instruments is eminently possible not only with width but with depth as well. This is not supposed to be possible with IEMs, but it happens here.
I love them, of course, and cannot see myself ever needing to upgrade. Mind you, at £649 a set, I shouldn't have to. If the service I received and the care taken to educate me on how to get the best out of them (just give ACS a call) is anything to go by, they'll give me years of lasting service and pleasure.
Very highly recommended.
So ACS made me some T1s from existing impressions that they'd taken for a different purpose about 2 years before. They fit perfectly... but you need to get used to putting them in and taking them out. It's not a simple task and it can be a bit of a pain on a plane, say, when you're constantly interrupted by a stewardess with menus and washbags and food and stuff... the earpieces block out everything. Conversation is impossible. This means you shouldn't use them while driving, cycling or anything where some sound (like the horn of an oncoming truck) might be useful.
When they're correctly seated in the ear, allow them a few minutes to come up to body temperature. You'll know when that is because it's about the same time that you stop noticing they're there at all. They really are that comfortable. Phenomenal.
Now listen. Every instrument is clear. Every note seems to stand out... it's easy to pick an instrument and follow it, or to bask in the whole of the sound. The T1s seem to me to be absolutely neutral and without colouration of any kind. They are incredibly detailed and good enough to expose poor recordings. I can now tell the difference, for example, between iPod tracks recorded at different bitrates. 128 just seems poor and muffled by comparison to lossless recordings.
The longer I listen, the better they get. They have excited me sufficiently that I find myself listening to tracks, to styles of music I would not have listened to before. They have revealed layers of my music collection that I have never discovered and some tracks manage to produce genuine soundstage, where placement of individual instruments is eminently possible not only with width but with depth as well. This is not supposed to be possible with IEMs, but it happens here.
I love them, of course, and cannot see myself ever needing to upgrade. Mind you, at £649 a set, I shouldn't have to. If the service I received and the care taken to educate me on how to get the best out of them (just give ACS a call) is anything to go by, they'll give me years of lasting service and pleasure.
Very highly recommended.
