So, since this is about as personal of an attack as one can make without mentioning names, thought I may as well respond, no?
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Originally Posted by dmt1
I'm watching this, and it's incredulous. Does someone have an axe to grind with UE?
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Yup, of course I do, I have a problem with the way they market their products. To claim anything as "Best In the World" is a very bold, and misleading claim. Does any audio manufacturers claim that they are the "Best in the world"? Of course not, because they understand that sound is very subjective, and what's "best for one" cannot be "best for all". To make that type of claim based on a dubious technical claim is near fradulous.
This speaks nothing about the merit of their actual product, there's people who will like UE-10 for whatever reasons of personal preference. However, that is not to be confused with technical achievement. Which is the reason why I started the thread trying to understand more about the reasoning behind "flat curves". If "flat curve" is such a technical superiority, then why doesn't everybody try to do it? It's pretty apparent that almost no high-end headphone or speaker companies really cares all that much about having a flat curve.
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| A thread devoted to the superior workmanship of the Sensa's, based mainly on appearances... |
Another Head-Fier wanted to see them, came over to my house and took beautiful pictures of both. He had no preconception on which one had better workmanship. In fact, he had doubts that silicone can be used in such application without some issues and problems. The conclusion he came away with is that the 2X-S is much better made, in both craftsmanship and ergonomic consideration.
If you had it in your hand, you would probably feel the same way. Just as when I showed them to iamdone the other day. There's no question that the silicone material is superior, and even if appearance is not an issue, the material itself is superior, period.
I also noticed the Sensaphonics had rebranded their material, probably because they're tired of other companies that doesn't have silicone claiming they have a "full-soft" material. They're calling it the "Comfort Gel" silicone now. I would've easily paid a premium for the Comfort Gel over the acrylic material, meanwhile I wouldn't have spend a dime if I knew the full-soft was as ridiculous useless as it was. Like I said before, if you get a UE-10 Pro, save the $50, because full-soft is a joke.
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| A thread devoted to trashing the UE philosophy on flat FR curves (there are also some replies in that thread that give merit to the approach, but those apparently have been discounted). |
Well, I started the thread because I want to know why other manufacturers don't agree to that philosophy. UE is a part of that, because they are the only company that I know of which even adores that philosophy. Wait, all these decades of headphone and speakers, only one manufacturer is making that type of a claim right now? Why is that?
The conclusion I draw from thread is that yes, flat curve is important on a source level, and some people even prefer it on a amp level as well. The reason for the flat curve on the source and amp level is about preserving purity of the original recording itself. Allowing the signal to get through to your playback equipment as cleanly as possible.
That changes once you actually get to the playback equipment though, the speaker/headphone/whatever else. Reason is that in only an ideal world, where we have flat curve microphone, flat curve production, flat curve mastering, that flat curve speakers will make sense. We don't have anything that's anywhere close to that in reality. The recordings are mastered to typical consumer speakers, curves has been adjusted, the original recording might not have been done with a flat curved microphone to begin with.
On top of that you have to calculate in resonance and perception of sound by our ears. Just as mentioned earlier, your ear doesn't perceive sound as flat. This gets very confusing, and I don't quite know what the answer is, since there are so many variables.
Basically, your ear doesn't perceive flat curves, but that's also because that your outer ears are involved in a more normal listening process. There's a shaping of sound when it gets inside your ear from a speaker reproduction. With an IEM, because they seat inside your ear, that "shaping" of sound doesn't happen because your outer ears are not involved.
So the theory is, if you've got a flat curved speaker, playing back sound into your ear a certain way... to get that same sound to play back with an IEM inside your ear,
the curve must not be flat! It must mimick how your outer ear would've shaped the sound.
This is where the measuring method for such a thing comes in contention. I listed UE's testing product earlier in the thread. That equipment is typically used to measure capabilies of hearing aids, they were not specifically developed for testing musical equipments. Even though they did say they are supposed to mimick ear canal response, if you read the product sheet (the PDF file from the site), it doesn't explain a whole lot, and there's a plethora of different fittings to fit different type of hearing aids that all could affect the sound. When put plainly, there's just no universally right way to measure curves from an IEM.
There's no organization governing these type of benchmarks, and there's so many variables involved, it's hard to identify simply one right way to measure them to begin with. There's enough debate about this type of measurement just with speakers alone, room placement, environment and acoustic resonance of the room and such. IEM measurements are just as complicated.
So for one company to come out and make a huge deal about how they've got flat curve under such a ridiculously varying and unsubstantiated condition is close to fradulent. At least in my opinion.
It's just like when Apple first came out with the Mac G5, they had an advertisement that said, "The fastest personal computer on earth." Even computer benchmarks are often questionable, and truthfully in third party tests, the G5 was no faster than similiar equipped computer running the Opteron (soon to be followed by Athlon 64) at the time. Some companies filed lawsuit against Apple's ad, and the court issued that Apple stop using that ad because of its claims are very questionable. Of course, Apple just simply said, "We're done with that advertising campaign anyway" and just pulled the ad.
This situation with Ultimate Ear's claim is no different. If you're truly, really educated about the way that hearing and the ear works, you'll see there's a lot of flaw in both claims of any curves (not just for Ultimate Ears, but for any company in that respect, but Ultimate Ears is the foremost in basing their marketing campaign around this particular concept) in order to sell products.
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| Let's just compare the phones. Some people actually prefer UE5C's to Sensa's |
Let's call that "some people" what it really is, shall we? You mean MacObserver's single, one, ever so definitive article? Can you find another person that's auditioned them both extensively? Heck, I haven't even done that, so I can't even say much about it.
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| some people actually prefer UE10PRO's to Sensa's, and vice-versa. From reading some of these threads, you'd think the UE's are crap, and the Sensa's are in a league of their own--the gulf continues to widen from Lindrone's initial review at an alarming rate. |
This I agree with to an extent. There are some people that'll like the UE-10 Pro sound. However, I think we've determined that to be neither people who like Shure earphones, and not people who like the Sennheiser headphones either.
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| I think both are great companies, but it appears there is almost an agenda here trying to steer folks to Sensa. It reminds me of when a certain someone, for all practical purposes, became a spokesman for Shure, and was so intertwined with the company they were sending him free products to trial, all the while maintaining a total lack of bias. |
"Someone"? Why don't you just call me out? It'll be a little more manly that way, as if I wouldn't read this?
For your record, plenty of people did like the Shure more than Ety, you may not be one of them, but it is certainly not only my opinion alone. Not only the Shure E5c, but even the E3c has its own legion of fans against the Ety ER-4. Perhaps not as numerous, but nevertheless it was a very valid opinion.
Even some other guys, like Bangraman, has switched over to using only the E5c for all portable purposes, although he doesn't use them for home, mostly because of other headphones that's even superior. He doesn't use the Ety ER-4's at all now, because there's no room for them at home or portably.
Bangraman also thought much the same as I did in regards to the Shure E3c, except I liked it more out of personal preference than he did. He most certainly thought that they were a competitive product to the ER-4 as well.
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| Although the sound signature of the UE5C's isn't what I was after, there were no issues with quality--eq'd, they were the best thing I'd ever heard. We'll see about the UE10PRO's, but I'm not too worried about it. |
That's not quite the point, is it? You can equalize everything and anything so they sound okay. With a good equalizer you can make the ER-4's sound more exciting, you can make Shure E5c's highs sound more apparent and more detailed.
I'm not a believer in equalization, simply because the source, amp and headphone all work together to achieve a sound signature that's already "equalized" in their own respect in some way. There's already enough adjustments and distortions. If I still can't get to the sound signature that you wanted via those methods, then I know I just got the wrong headphone. I shouldn't *have to* use an equalizer to get to the sound that I want.
