The wait is over (at least for me
, as my retail IE80 from cyberport.de arrived yesterday evening. Right out of the box they appeared already clearer than my IE8, so I let them play from my home stereo overnight.
Today morning I only found time for a short A/B before heading off to work, so take these first impressions with a grain of salt. Make no mistake, the apple didn't fall far from the tree, these are still bassy IEMs! While I prefer to EQ my IE8 by -8db@80Hz to achieve a reasonable flat bass response, I'd need about -4 or -5db with the IE80 to achieve the same result. So my read is, Sennheiser chopped a few decibel off that mid-bass hump, but didn't dare to go all the way.
That said, bass peak seems to have shifted a bit towards deep bass, from 80-100Hz to maybe 60 or 70Hz, not a night and day difference, but together with its reduced impact a notable relief for the lower mids. What's more, they seem to have upped treble ever so slightly, which helps to give the IE80 better presence in comparison to the IE8. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the veil is completely gone (after all it's part of Senn's house sound
, but vocals appear distinctly clearer and also a tad less chesty than on the IE8. But to put things into perspective, overall clarity is still a notch below IEMs like the Sony EX600/1000 or the Ortofon e-Q5.
Well, good things usually come at a price, and in case of the IE80 it's (a bit of) soundstage size. The IE8 are famed for having one of the most generous soundstage presentations among IEMs and giving a stunning out-of-head experience. Now, as a consequence of more clarity and better presence on the IE80, things seem to happen closer to the listener than with the IE8, meaning you get a bit less forward projection and slightly reduced soundstage size.
So far for the results of my short morning A/B session, after which I headed off to my daily commute. Isolation is unchanged from the IE8 (meaning only so-so) and the IE80's emphasized bass did a decent job in compensating for ambient noise, which tends to drown out bass more than higher frequencies. Vocal clarity remained pretty good and overall I was quite pleased with the IE80's performance on the move, except for some vague suspicion regarding the cable, but I'll get into this a little later.