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I have to be around 400 hours to 500 of listening and I don't notice the shout effect much at all any more. Contribute it to what you will but everyone will have a different degree of sensitivity to this so I'm curious to see how everyone's perception changes, or not, as they get really acclimated to these phones.
I'll play devil as I see a lot of people stating that the 1kHz shoutiness has calmed down from prolonged burn-in.
My ASG-1 have passed the 200 hours of burn-in, and I alternated between ASG-1 and SE535Ltd to avoid potential "brain burn-in".
To be frank, what I expected happened: bass came out of the box, as it happened before with ALL my dynamic driver-based IEMs.
But concerning the mids, not much happened in my opinion. I still can't listen to any music having high-pitch voices without EQ-ing down the 1,2kHz area by a nice 4-5dB.
After having done this, and not touched the rest of the equalizer, I certainly enjoy the nice soundstage and gorgeous bass. I really don't see the reason for this EQ hate, this is a bit of a dream to try dozens of IEMs until you find one which you don't have to EQ at all. And if you change source, why do you do? Change IEMs again to get back the "perfect match" ?
I guess some people just have too much time and money...
I EQ-ed all my IEMs (differently) to fit MY taste, with the exception of Yamaha EPH-100. Does that mean they're perfect? No, I still prefer my SE535Ltd, although they're EQ-ed a lot more (flat V).
Of course, overall the ASG-1 sound is relatively dry (versus the lush mids of the SE535Ltd, it's striking) but the concert hall sound with intimate vocals is certainly unique.
Definitely a special SQ amongst IEMs, I wouldn't recommend these at all to people not used to forward mids.
I can imagine people getting used to SE535Ltd's intimate mids pretty quickly (I did, coming from V-shaped and neutral IEMs), but the ASG-1 are much harder to get used to.
It definitely explains the amount of people reacting negatively. If these ASG-1 had not come after SE535Ltd, I would have abandoned them after a week...