[Otto Motor]

Personally I own the B150, B200 and B400.

Interesting. I was told the following:
1. All are great
2. B100 and B150 are similar
2. B200 best of the lot (for this guy's taste). If you have the B200, you don't need the B100 (difference lies in resolution)
3. B400 with best mids but treble too soft
4. Pricing of the B400 is good, but they cannot compete with $400 earphones

I only own the B100. Easy fitting on the road, resolution doesn't matter so much considering the background noises.

Why do you have three of this series?

 

[groucho69]

OK, the below photo is how most people wear earbuds. See how it's facing flat and pointing towards the inside "meat" of the ear (ie the acoustic meatus)? The sound has to travel 90 degrees to get down the ear canal. Lots of energy is being lost this way, and the sound is crap due to not having any sort of seal. The volume has to be higher to compensate, often causing distortion as well as more noise leakage to those around you (due to the higher volume). Also the sub bass and bass suffers significantly with this configuration.



To wear them "sideways", I'm saying to rotate them 90 degrees, tucked into the intertragic notch, so the "screen" part of the earbud (where the sound comes out) is facing FORWARDS. You will get a much better seal this way, the sound will instantly become fuller, richer, have significantly more sub bass/bass, and they can be used more efficiently at lower volume (and have less distortion) because the sound is coming out of the driver and POINTING directly at your eardrum. Note that this guy below has the bottom/wire part of the earbud pointing at a ridiculous angle - you can easily wear earbuds with the wire part pointing down, so I'm not sure why he has his pointing straight out like that. It's the only photo I could find on Google, so excuse that part. What you're paying attention to is the main BODY of the earbud (the large round part where the driver is located). See how it's rotated 90 degrees from the 1st photo, and the "screen" part of the earbud (where the sound comes out) is facing FORWARDS?

Damn it this works. How the hell did you think of this?

 

[Selenium]

http://www.thephonograph.net/headphones-frequency-response/kz/kz-zs6-frequency-response-curve/

http://www.thephonograph.net/headph...ennheiser-cx-300-ii-frequency-response-curve/

"I want to stay as far as possible away from V shape, at least the kind of it seen in Sennheiser CX300II."

I think this is exactly what I want to stay away from...

You also said you didn't expect something to meet all of your criteria but hopefully something would get close. And the ZS6 meets all your criteria but one. "V-shaped" is a bad word around here, but the ZS6 really isn't that bad. I've heard much more pronounced Vs. I was using it while listening to classical just yesterday and it works just fine.

 

[pauliunas]

You also said you didn't expect something to meet all of your criteria but hopefully something would get close. And the ZS6 meets all your criteria but one. "V-shaped" is a bad word around here, but the ZS6 really isn't that bad. I've heard much more pronounced Vs. I was using it while listening to classical just yesterday and it works just fine.

Yeah I did say that, but I believe I also said CX300II makes me puke. It's exactly the opposite of what I want to hear, and while I don't expect any IEM to fulfill all my wishes, I have one strict requirement: it has to be vastly different than that Sennheiser. I understand there are sharper V shapes out there, but ZS6 looks extremely similar to what I have and hate.
In the meantime, I've found that ETY-Kids might be a good choice for me. Sansa Clip+ should drive it to sufficient volume (I think) and for now it seems like the logical choice, despite being a bit more expensive. There doesn't seem to be anything even close to that below $30. Of course I'll have to read more until I decide... I don't know how the soundstage and separation is

 

[Selenium]

Yeah I did say that, but I believe I also said CX300II makes me puke. It's exactly the opposite of what I want to hear, and while I don't expect any IEM to fulfill all my wishes, I have one strict requirement: it has to be vastly different than that Sennheiser. I understand there are sharper V shapes out there, but ZS6 looks extremely similar to what I have and hate.
In the meantime, I've found that ETY-Kids might be a good choice for me. Sansa Clip+ should drive it to sufficient volume (I think) and for now it seems like the logical choice, despite being a bit more expensive. There doesn't seem to be anything even close to that below $30. Of course I'll have to read more until I decide... I don't know how the soundstage and separation is

Soundstage is small.

 

[trumpethead]

middle

This is how I wear earbuds as well, driver facing forward not towards my head. I actually think that 90% of earbuds have a fundamentally flawed design and I don't get why big earbud manufacturers didn't adopt Apple earpod design (probably because it uses a relatively speaking small 13.5mm drivers and no one wanted to battle the issues of making it larger to fit regular 15.4 drivers). It's a shame given how good earbuds are and how much value you get IF your ears allow you to extract the most out of buds.

(Might be going slightly off topic but the things that I will mention here are all from China and well below 100$.)
I tried quite hard to make my own Final Audio Piano Forte, bought the shells and tried all kinds of drivers in them (EMX500, Vido, MS16, RY4s...) with a million of different tuning configurations and I could never escape the bass-low mid range just overwhelming other frequencies. Earbuds are tuned to compensate for some leakage and once you force it into canal bad things happen, mostly because drivers end up having way too much pressure to the front of membrane resulting in a massive change to frequency response.

I found out about this method of wearing earbuds while experimenting with my Monks and out made an absolute 100 percent difference in the sound quality. It's really the only way I can wear EB and get the best sound out of them. Looks a little weird though....

 

[Slater]

That just looks to me like most of the sound would be going out into the air. I thought you were going to take a picture of your pt15 in YOUR ear! Please do that. Surely you can do it as a selfie or have someone help you...

Yeah, that guy above had it sticking out in an unrealistic way.

When you get them positioned properly, pretty much all of the sound shoots right into the ear canal, as seen in this photo of my PT15 (click for closeup view):



The other way to wear them in the manner I recommend is to wear them up like a behind the ear IEM. You still insert them into the same spot in the ear, you just point the cables up instead of down. This still gives the same huge sound, but provides much more stability to the earbud when moving around (also getting rid of microphonics). This is a great way to wear the lightweight all-plastic earbuds, as those always want to fall out of the ear (when worn down) due to being so light. Here’s a photo of that method (click for larger view):

 

[Otto Motor]

This Really Works - Amazing!

Thank you everybody for the advice to push the earbuds into the intertragic notch. You have to push them down deep and fiddle a bit to find the right angle but the result is AMAZING. I unwrapped one of my numerous orphaned, antique earbuds that came with the iPod classics. Using the "Tragic" method, these Apple Buds actually sound good: fluffy, airy...and fuller. A little rotation up and down and forwards and backwards can make a big difference in the fullness of the sound.

And that's where the satire starts: ACHTUNG SATIRE!

The bass can be adjusted in two ways:
1. Wearing glasses adds depth the degree of which is controlled by the resonance of the material. A sturdy acrylic frame, "handmade in Japan", works best for me.
2. Rotating the long ends of the buds [that's where the cables come out from) up towards the "scaphoid fossa" adds volume.

With the Apple earbuds, I use ears "Made in Germany" with a burn-in history of >47,000 hrs at an elevation of 1109 m [really!]. The combination of "Made in Germany" ears [burnt in with Bach, Beethoven, Scorpions, and Can] with Canadian air molecules at a high elevation with very low humidity produces a rather dry and relaxed sound.

Trying the same bud placement with the Koss KSC75 failed because my "acoustic meatus" was not flexible enough to accommodate their size.

I wonder whether this works equally well at sea level and with more salt in the air, let's say, close to the ocean. What do our British friends have to report?

OVERALL RESULT: historically, I have hated the Soft-Rock band "Toto" with a passion. Africa, Rosanna...horror! But with the "Tragic" method, I am now craving these titles and can't get enough of them. They simply sound awesome with the Apple earbuds. Next, I will fiddle with some old Sennheiser Sports buds (with ear hooks). If I get these to work, I may even progress to "REO Speedwagon" for the weekend.

 

[Slater]

I found out about this method of wearing earbuds while experimenting with my Monks and out made an absolute 100 percent difference in the sound quality. It's really the only way I can wear EB and get the best sound out of them. Looks a little weird though....

Exactly! I wish more people would try this method - once you do you’ll never go back to the “old way”.

 

[bsoplinger]

Interesting. I was told the following:
1. All are great
2. B100 and B150 are similar
2. B200 best of the lot (for this guy's taste). If you have the B200, you don't need the B100 (difference lies in resolution)
3. B400 with best mids but treble too soft
4. Pricing of the B400 is good, but they cannot compete with $400 earphones

I only own the B100. Easy fitting on the road, resolution doesn't matter so much considering the background noises.

Why do you have three of this series?

I'd purchased the B150 because it was within my budget. At some point about a week before Black Friday sales I got an email directly from Brainwavz offering quite the deal on the B200. I later learned that because they'd updated the design to now have MMCX connectors unlike the fixed cable of the original (and my huge savings purchase) and the shell was more like the B400 now where the original shell is the same as the ones on the B100 and B150 but that supposedly there was no change to the sound. Then there was a really great half price if you pre-order Black Friday or Cyber Monday or Holiday Season or whatever reason on the B400.

So I pretty much only made the first purchase by design and sort of tripped over the other two in deals so good that if I got half the price I paid for the previous model I'd be netting a price of about a third list price, ie deal too good not to get.

I agreed or perhaps I didn't word it well enough that the B100 and B150 are similar. The B200 is a definite improvement over the single BA models. I paid under $150 for my B400 so I don't think of them as a $400 IEM. In fact I'm not sure where that comparison comes from as I believe that the list for the B400 is about $225. As far as preferring the B200 over the B400 I'd speculate that some people really don't care for the bass produced by a BA versus a dynamic driver. It just sounds wrong to them because it definitely does sound different. And since the B400 has more of that BA bass and sub bass I could see why the B200 would be preferable.

 

[Otto Motor]

In fact I'm not sure where that comparison comes from as I believe that the list for the B400 is about $225.

Allegedly, Brainwavz originally planned to price the B400 at $400. Nomen est omen?

And yes, my colleague likes a more neutral tuning and may have therefore preferred the bass of the B200 over the B400.

I am presently waiting for the B200 to drop to $100. In Canada, we didn't get your previous deals.

 

[Slater]

Damn it this works. How the hell did you think of this?

Way back in 2005 when I had my iPod Nano gen 1, I couldn’t get the Apple earbuds to stay in using the “normal” method. They’d stay for a few minutes and then fall out, killing all sound, falling on the ground, etc. I got irritated and was like “I’ll show these darn POS things” and jammed them into my ear sideways. Low and behold they styed in place and sounded AMAZING. I’ve been doing earbuds “sideways” ever since.

 

[Slater]

This Really Works - Amazing!

Thank you everybody for the advice to push the earbuds into the intertragic notch. You have to push them down deep and fiddle a bit to find the right angle but the result is AMAZING. I unwrapped one of my numerous orphaned, antique earbuds that came with the iPod classics. Using the "Tragic" method, these Apple Buds actually sound good: fluffy, airy...and fuller. A little rotation up and down and forwards and backwards can make a big difference in the fullness of the sound.

Yeah, using this method the Apple earbuds are surprisingly good. Like really good.

I almost wonder if Apple intended people to wear the earbuds like this from the get go, and just did an extremely poor job at explaining to people the proper way to wear earbuds.

Who knows? It’s like the best kept secret in audio!

 

[groucho69]

Way back in 2005 when I had my iPod Nano gen 1, I couldn’t get the Apple earbuds to stay in using the “normal” method. They’d stay for a few minutes and then fall out, killing all sound, falling on the ground, etc. I got irritated and was like “I’ll show these darn POS things” and jammed them into my ear sideways. Low and behold they styed in place and sounded AMAZING. I’ve been doing earbuds “sideways” ever since.

You can't beat determination and dumb luck!

 

[Narayan23]

Exactly! I wish more people would try this method - once you do you’ll never go back to the “old way”.

Well guys I tried this and the traditional way is better in my case, no way is it working with larger type buds for me and with the smaller ones such as Qian 39 & 69 better seal and no loss of musical information with the old way. Also the point of earbuds for me is "plug and enjoy" no messing around with tips, seal and positioning, thanks for the tip nonetheless!