antonyfirst
Headphoneus Supremus
Hello. I decided to get a cheap toy for the summer in order to have some fun with something new.
I did have a depodded Altec in the past, but can't really remember what I thought of it, so I was intrigued by buying another pair from the classfieds.
I was expecting them to be one of the few listenable alternatives under 100usd, price was inviting, they are made by Etymotic... You get the picture.
I am using a set of modded tips, basically they are biflanges with the inner width of Sennheiser/Sony. They fit around a silicon ring which I made by cutting the third small flange from a couple Ety "babyblue" triflanged tips. This made possible to use high quality biflanges I previously bought for Sonys and such, on Ety-like nozzles, with perfect isolation, fit, seal, and theorically less treble than the stock triflanges (Ety usual tips have narrow inner nozzle, which conditions treble increasing its sharpness).
I will try foam tips tomorrow (comply wide/narrow diameter, olives, ue foamies).
My impressions so far, regarding the HD mode, are those of an interesting earphone with a few fatal flaws.
The earphone has similar bass quality as the Apuresound ER4P, although more mid-upper bass, providing more musicality and a livelier sound. There is less bass extension, so certain trance songs lose sense of rhytm when it should be provided by very low frequency samples.
Midrange is similar in quality, although warmer. There is a nice sense of clarity. Slightly forward, I'd say less prominent upper midrange compared to ER4P. No signs of stridency, even with a limited quality source like the iAudio 7.
Where things are screwed up is treble. There is a horrible peak at 9kHz, not really wide, but pretty strong. It adds up to sibilance, and also can make many songs thin and metallic.
I use a Cowon iAudio 7, which has a very flexible equalizer, sort of parametric. It allowed me to bring the horrible peak precisely, and I needed subctractive equalization to do so: -5dB at 9kHz.
This brought the tone to a whole new level, musicality was wonderful, the peak and its related sibilance were gone, taken away precisely, without screwing up any kind of details. Seemed like I could be a happy camper with my new "Cinderella" giant killer...
...but not all is good like it initially seems. The iAudio 7, forcing that kind of equalization, turned the sound quality to crap. Too much distortion, grain everywhere, whenever there was a trebly passage through the peak/filter combination. So, my experiment so far has fallen short, the iAudio 7 is unusable this way, sound seems made of ripped paper, full of eq-driven artifacts.
Pity, because tonality seemed just about perfect otherwise, more musical than the Apuresound Etys out of a poor source like the Cowon, although less extended in the lows (around 40-50 Hz here, I'd say, after which things are more attenuated). Soundstage is wider too, I think because it couples well with the output impedance of the Cowon.
Right now I am trying a wider band equalization, by lowering the wider range of just 1 dB. There is much less sense of grain, but unfortunately sibilance cuts through, since this way of filtering is not ideal for contrasting a narrow peak like the present one.
I'll try both the "BASS Mode" and "foam tips+HD mode" later or tomorrow, and keep my report going.
Tony
I did have a depodded Altec in the past, but can't really remember what I thought of it, so I was intrigued by buying another pair from the classfieds.
I was expecting them to be one of the few listenable alternatives under 100usd, price was inviting, they are made by Etymotic... You get the picture.
I am using a set of modded tips, basically they are biflanges with the inner width of Sennheiser/Sony. They fit around a silicon ring which I made by cutting the third small flange from a couple Ety "babyblue" triflanged tips. This made possible to use high quality biflanges I previously bought for Sonys and such, on Ety-like nozzles, with perfect isolation, fit, seal, and theorically less treble than the stock triflanges (Ety usual tips have narrow inner nozzle, which conditions treble increasing its sharpness).
I will try foam tips tomorrow (comply wide/narrow diameter, olives, ue foamies).
My impressions so far, regarding the HD mode, are those of an interesting earphone with a few fatal flaws.
The earphone has similar bass quality as the Apuresound ER4P, although more mid-upper bass, providing more musicality and a livelier sound. There is less bass extension, so certain trance songs lose sense of rhytm when it should be provided by very low frequency samples.
Midrange is similar in quality, although warmer. There is a nice sense of clarity. Slightly forward, I'd say less prominent upper midrange compared to ER4P. No signs of stridency, even with a limited quality source like the iAudio 7.
Where things are screwed up is treble. There is a horrible peak at 9kHz, not really wide, but pretty strong. It adds up to sibilance, and also can make many songs thin and metallic.
I use a Cowon iAudio 7, which has a very flexible equalizer, sort of parametric. It allowed me to bring the horrible peak precisely, and I needed subctractive equalization to do so: -5dB at 9kHz.
This brought the tone to a whole new level, musicality was wonderful, the peak and its related sibilance were gone, taken away precisely, without screwing up any kind of details. Seemed like I could be a happy camper with my new "Cinderella" giant killer...
...but not all is good like it initially seems. The iAudio 7, forcing that kind of equalization, turned the sound quality to crap. Too much distortion, grain everywhere, whenever there was a trebly passage through the peak/filter combination. So, my experiment so far has fallen short, the iAudio 7 is unusable this way, sound seems made of ripped paper, full of eq-driven artifacts.
Pity, because tonality seemed just about perfect otherwise, more musical than the Apuresound Etys out of a poor source like the Cowon, although less extended in the lows (around 40-50 Hz here, I'd say, after which things are more attenuated). Soundstage is wider too, I think because it couples well with the output impedance of the Cowon.
Right now I am trying a wider band equalization, by lowering the wider range of just 1 dB. There is much less sense of grain, but unfortunately sibilance cuts through, since this way of filtering is not ideal for contrasting a narrow peak like the present one.
I'll try both the "BASS Mode" and "foam tips+HD mode" later or tomorrow, and keep my report going.
Tony
