'really good'? No, but quite usable, yes. You can even do pretty well with Centrance 2504 which are 700$. But speakers are tricky business: loads with speakers are no laughing matter and amps quite buggers. Lower end KEF Q series can be had maybe for around that price. I live in Japan so prices are different (much much higher). Pro Audio make some stuff that is in that range, but... the synergy between elements gets pretty tricky.
For bookshelf speakers, the Q300 series is a favourite for the price despite sort of mismatching my taste in headphones.
I bought some second-hand Yamaha's for now, shipped from Japan with DHL and now held hostage in customs, plus I can't find any speaker wire around here yet so I had to order some from HK, it's all a plethora of really cheap PC speakers and some super expensive active studio monitors lol.
The KEF C3 bookshelf speaker is available here but they received a 2 star review from "whathifi". The KEF LS50 looks really nice and pretty much the size and design concepts I like but too expensive for me currently.
Have you heard any British-made bookshelf speakers?
Thanks I'll keep them in mind. Yeah the ESW9 pads are expensive and not easy to find, I'm pretty happy with the standard pads and velour for now.
Got the ES10 today after 1.5 years of contemplation, my only comment is why I did not buy this last year! I got this from their actual shop and was able to negotiate a great deal! Plugged it right into the nano 7th generation and it runs just great, no amp needed :-S
Haha, nice that you're happy with them from a Nano, pretty good looking setup too. I always use mine with an amp but I'll soon try them with a Sony Z1070.
How do they compare in resolution/detail against uhmm triple/quad-driver IEM's?
But man, they are expensive in the eu. 425€(550USD) lowest price...
The only Quad I own is XBA-4 and easily the ES10 are better than them without even thinking about it twice.
They are much better than the Sony XBA-4. I sold my XBA-3 and -4 very quickly though and don't really consider them as 'real' IEM's.
Full-size headphones will [almost] always fall short to IEM's in intimacy, and quite often in layering and detail levels, HP's have more surround sound and typically more delivery of energy.
Apart from these differences, in resolution the ES10 is very high, in layering it's high for a HP, competing with IEM's, however, in detail levels, especially in the higher frequencies it's a little dull, lacking some detail, air and pizazz there.
The ES10 has most of it's merits in resolution, a very 'direct' sound without dissonance, and high energy levels (it's not 'thin'). The frequency response is quite curious with it's almost Skullcandy / Ultrasone tailored bass attack, and zig-zagged shaped FR in the mids and highs, it's a little raw here and a little dry there, still it's a very 'complete' sounding headphone and doesn't instill any direct feelings to reach for an equalizer.
I think the merit of the ES10 is it's a high-end designed portable headphone with nice energy levels, nice voicing a tiny bit ethereal, pretty high resolution and little to zero dissonance, all of this with a very non-typical FR closer to a Skullcandy than a Sony V6. The more typical FR these days is like the Sony V6, flat and a little bright, they keep the bass and mids even while serving a silver platter of detail at let's say 6 or 10kHz. At higher volumes which I use 6kHz spikes are a little annoying IME, 9 and 10kHz are pretty good, except a lot of modern music already increases the volume a lot in the studio around 10kHz.
If you're going to spend $400+ I'd say you really need to make sure the sound of the ES10 is what you want first, or you'll end up like user szadzik in this thread saying it's a joke compared to the icy cold and open-air r-shaped sounds out there, like the Sony SA-5000 - or in his case he compared it directly to the higher resolution, slightly higher energy, and r-shaped sounding Tesla T5p.
In comparison to the T5p, the T5p is technically the better headphone in almost all aspects, and the SA-5000 is more detailed and colder, plus it's open-air, however... the ES10 still has some magic in it those two don't, even if you try to equalize it away! The ES10 achieves a quality of sonic art.
If you want detail, speed and air, Sony SA-3000. If you want detail, air, speed and intimacy, IEM's (like the UE700, CK10). If you want detail, intimacy and resolution, Audio Technica ATH-CKW1000ANV. If you want pretty high resolution and pretty high energy with sonic art, ATH-ES10. Et cetera.
I like the ES10 a lot with rock music, since the magic is most apparent there. However, another portable which sounds really good with rock music - in a different way - is the Shure SRH-940. I respect the SRH-940 for a lot of reasons as a technical performer, while sounding quite fresh and inviting at the same time, except since the SA-3000 has somehow higher detail levels (I did a direct comparison recently), and the ES10 has less dissonance, and more mystery like a dark vial of sound, I don't really need the SRH-940 myself. Plus the ES10 looks so nice.
I think it all comes down to what you want from your sound, it's like for example the Yamaha NS10 speakers, they served as a
tool in studios and yet hardly anyone used or uses them at home. Studio monitors / tools versus Hi-Fi / sonic art, et cetera.
Nice, I read on an Asian forum that someone actually terminated the ES10 to the protector balance termination and they were swearing that it is above many reference headphones out-there and recable it with moon-audio cables. Would cost a lot but would love to try that someday.
I doubt balanced improves anything in particular apart from stereo seperation, and thus a little tightness and imaging etc. It can't improve any raw sound quality. I think recabling HP's / IEM's to balanced is pretty expensive, takes time, plus includes all the associated equipment. I was considering it for a while looking at the iBasso Pelican (balanced) versus the Warbler. The Warbler has ground and virtual ground (3CH / 4CH) which, in my experiments recently, makes a nice subtle difference in the stereo presentation anyway, on a technically different level which the Pelican doesn't use.
For ultimate sound and transparency you'll pretty much need to replace op-amps in any portable amplifier as well, which becomes twice as expensive with balanced portable amp's, i.e. requring 4 mono chips or 2 stereo, instead of 2 mono or 1 stereo.
I think recabling to pure Silver (not Silver-plated Copper) is expensive too, and even if higher quality Copper (like 4N, 7N etc.) and pure Silver really make some notable differences, by altering the character of the electron flow, via higher (or lesser) conductivity and purity of material (in theory), there is still a lot of marketing and tricks in cables (like changing the impedance, capacitance, or inductance, which you can read about here
http://en.goldenears.net/1301), so you have to be very careful when looking for higher quality cables.
Long story short it's cool someone recabled the ATH-ES10 to balanced and Silver, it already looks so good that will only make it look better. The technical differences are questionable but that makes the $600 or so improvements even more cool actually since they are burning cash on fashion. It's a bass-heavy TOTL headphone and will knock the **** out of a Sony V6 with Asian hip-hop. It's made out of Titanium and Fibreglass for a reason not just for show, and it actually sounds like a TOTL bass-heavy headphone unlike other companies which are all for show.
Sorry for the long post.
