This is my first review on head-fi and the only one I'd feel confident writing. I got these having killed one of the drivers on my ATH-ES7 when resoldering the broken cable again (the third time for that ear I think) after wearing them to bed.
First impressions are good - they come with a nice case and an eye mask, and the finish is perfect and looks well made; indeed three months on they still work perfectly, which is more than could be said for the ES7. But on actually putting them on they lost points as the black backing plate is too large for my ears. Having spent about an hour in total trimming said plates they now no longer leave me in pain as they did on arrival, I could wear them all day and night without discomfort. If you are going to mod them don't do it late at night - I left a "sharp" edge so woke up to a cut ear, which took a couple of weeks to heal.
So to the acoustics - they sound terrible, that's all I need to say. Not a lot of bass (and I'm not saying this because I'm a bass head), cymbals are barely audible and what they do produce sounds muffled across the spectrum on any complicated music. I guess if you're big on mids and listen to solos this could work for you, but not me.
So these are designed for a very specific use - if you need noise to get to sleep and aren't afraid to take a knife to them so they don't hurt they are ideal, but if you want out of the box comfort as well as quality music I would recommend the Phonak PFE IEMs over these all day as their design is just as comfortable to lie on and they're actually made to play music. I'd have used my PFEs except they block out the sound of the smoke alarm - call me paranoid if you like!
Update: The cable broke near both earpieces (not at the same time), due to going stiff as is a common problem with IEM cables. After a couple of shortenings they no longer have enough cable to reach my ears so in just under 10 months they landed up in the bin.
First impressions are good - they come with a nice case and an eye mask, and the finish is perfect and looks well made; indeed three months on they still work perfectly, which is more than could be said for the ES7. But on actually putting them on they lost points as the black backing plate is too large for my ears. Having spent about an hour in total trimming said plates they now no longer leave me in pain as they did on arrival, I could wear them all day and night without discomfort. If you are going to mod them don't do it late at night - I left a "sharp" edge so woke up to a cut ear, which took a couple of weeks to heal.
So to the acoustics - they sound terrible, that's all I need to say. Not a lot of bass (and I'm not saying this because I'm a bass head), cymbals are barely audible and what they do produce sounds muffled across the spectrum on any complicated music. I guess if you're big on mids and listen to solos this could work for you, but not me.
So these are designed for a very specific use - if you need noise to get to sleep and aren't afraid to take a knife to them so they don't hurt they are ideal, but if you want out of the box comfort as well as quality music I would recommend the Phonak PFE IEMs over these all day as their design is just as comfortable to lie on and they're actually made to play music. I'd have used my PFEs except they block out the sound of the smoke alarm - call me paranoid if you like!
Update: The cable broke near both earpieces (not at the same time), due to going stiff as is a common problem with IEM cables. After a couple of shortenings they no longer have enough cable to reach my ears so in just under 10 months they landed up in the bin.
