Wyd4
Headphoneus Supremus
Given that the original Alien was FFR, and that I heard absolutely no hiss from my PFE232's connected (even on wickedly high volumes) I am not sure I would notice a slightest bit of difference in the Gold Edition. That is unless they tweaked the FFR, which they shouldn't.
In terms of hiss and noise, the original was spookly quiet imo. You could put yer IEMs in ears, switch on, and be fooled to thinking the thing was bust as you got no noise whatsoever to signal that it was even on! No bumps, clicks or anything! Then the music started playing to ease those anxieties... hehe.
So yeh to lower it (noise) even further sounds utterly insane to me, like how can it go lower than what I have experienced lol.
I am really just looking at the Gold as a slightly different original version, sound wise I am pretty convinced there will be little to nothing in it, and those hunting for a difference will be more than likely tricked by what they are hearing, subtle differences are very hard to trust when it comes to purely subjective hearing. If the listener believes there will be a sound difference between the two, then they will most likely report as such, if a listener doesn't believe there is a difference, then that is what will be reported.
While I am usually quite agreeable I can not agree. While I am willing to look past the aliens hissing because I love it's form and sound quality, lowering he noise floor is a huge bonus in my eyes.
As I own the regular alien I don't think I will spend the $300au or whatever it is on the gold one. But that is only because I don't currently have &300 to spend. On an incremental upgrade when I don't currently have a nice pair of iems or headphones so I am saving my pennies.
I don't think there will be a huge difference between the two in sound it's self. And I hope there isn't tbh.