-Achieving Happiness with DM6-
I have now managed to get over 200 hours burn in time and feel that the DM6 and/or the new BGVP OCC cable have benifited from this.
When I first excitedly swapped cables I felt there was some smoothness to the overall signature but it was not enough to fix issues with some music tracks. 6-9k could still sound rough at times. There were still the odd tracks that could become tiresome and I would play with Equ on/off. I was becoming a little disappointed as I had expected a more of an improvement and I was a believer in copper cables. Something didn’t feel right. So I thought I put the cable burn theory to test with nothing to lose and added another 100 hours burn time with the new cable on the DM6.
Than last night I got round to doing a listening session with some of my favourite and also sibilant music tracks. I was pleased to discover a smoother experience throughout the frequencies and even able to listen to music few notches higher than before.
I think this is biggest proof of the improvement.
Cymbals now sounded correct without being too short and sounding zingy. They have better decay and no longer the extreme sharpeness that I refer to as zingy. Is It A Crime - Sade starts with a huge loud splash of cymbals and they are present through the track. Previously I had difficulty listening to this entire track because the cymbals would exhaust me. I thought I would never be able listen to it often with the DM6 without equ.
I recall listening to the track Beautiful Light - Uppermost when I first got the DM6. At 3:00 I was also hit with piercing highs like others and I had to swap tips from Symbio to to the wider bore Philips to tame the highs. This is no longer the case. When I listened to this test track last night the highs stopped just short of being uncomfortable.
Of course if you go listening to recordings that were intentionally recorded with sibilance such as Jesus to a Child - George Michael, the sibilance is still there and the DM6 replicates them faithfully. But again the slight extreme edge of sharpness has been tamed.
I don’t want to intentionally give people the wrong impressions or hype as my audiophile vocabulary doesn’t really exist so take what I say with a pinch of salt. And also we all hear sound little differently.
Last night I felt at last I was hearing a very refined open smooth warm sound from the DM6. I was no longer able to detect graininess across any of the test tracks. The signature was now much warmer and smoother overall and I had to roll tips again. I settled with the Spinfits as they were like the Symbios but with a narrower bore. For me they tightened the bass slightly and bought some more detail into the highs. I don’t beleive I will need to use the Philips tips again as they add bass and tame the highs further. Symbios might have a purpose when I want to do a long extended listening session with a slightly warmer sound than with Spinfits. Maybe good for those bad recordings that were not recorded well for my ears
I feel my perseverance with the DM6 has paid off in the end. I’m now more happy with them and don’t feel an urge to buy another IEM. The plan to maybe buy Moondrop Kanas Pro at next sale is now binned.
Best upgrade I could do now is probably buy a better DAP like the top Sony range.
I originally referred to the DM6 as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because of their nature to sound so different depending on music recording or hardware config.
They have now become much more coherent so I believe they are more like a Wild Stallion. Once tamed they are very special.
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Curious to know if anyone with 200+ hours and still having issues in highs/graininess etc ?