[shrimants]

My RHA T10i bit the dust again (memory wire inside ear hook broke, AGAIN, same place. OF COURSE the cable isnt replaceable, its the only weak point in the product).

I use the neutral filter, which still makes for a very bassy headphone with excellent sub bass.

I'm looking for a bluetooth IEM that can replace the rha t10i. Good bass, microphone, pause/play button would be the minimum requirements.

I have almost 400 bucks in points on amazon, so i can get pretty spendy on it.

They'll be used to listen to audiobooks and music while biking, driving, mowing the lawn, doing chores, working out (eventually, or so i keep telling myself), and potentially sleeping. I'd consider just using some cheapo earbuds for sleep as thats probably the most physically taxing thing they'll put up with. That and a lot of sweat.

i'd use them for a lot of conference calls too, probably, for work.

EDIT: i saw shure sells a bluetooth cable thing. The 215 has a pretty gross sound signature, way too warm and bloated. plus the plastic housing nozzle tends to crack. I've had housing issues before, which is why I went with RHA's stainless steel design. Alas, they found a different way to cripple the product.

 

[buke9]

You might take a look at KZ ZS10. I purchased the Bluetooth adapter for them and it doesn’t sound half bad. I’m not real big on Bluetooth headphones but at work it does good enough for me. I have yet to take a call on it and left it at work so I test it out but it does pause and switches to next song and does volume as well. It was right at $12 so not a budget breaker to try and the ZS10’s run about $43 so also fairly cheap to try and next Monday is Prime day at Amazon so it could be cheaper who knows.

 

[shrimants]

i mean my budget is like 400-600, im not terribly concerned about breaking the bank. How is the passive sound isolation on the KZ? I wouldnt mind having a cheap bs beater pair that i dont really need to care about.

for conference calls i do have a regular plantronics bluetooth headset, a usb headset for the computer, and also sennheiser HD650 in the event my phone is being wonky and i want to try using google voice for the call instead.

I should clarify, i work from home. For at-the-desk I use HD650 (which are almost perfect but lacking in bass for me). for quite literally every other minute of the day except showers I use earbuds. Doesnt sound like the KZ is the right fit for me, but if it is decent enough at blocking out external noise i could probably use them as a carefree lawnmowing headphone. I do feel a little bad taking the t10i when i lawnmow.

 

[buke9]

Sound isolation is not too bad as I work construction and on a piece of heavy equipment most of the time . Just re read and the cheapo would be for sleep sorry. Most higher end stuff usually doesn’t do Bluetooth or a mic but have seen mics on a few. Bluetooth is fine for convenience but not that great for sound quality but it is getting better all the time. My wife’s HD-1’s still sound much better plugged in. I’m just not going to pay that much for Bluetooth earphones but that is me . I’m not a big iem person but have heard quite a few of them at the 2 CanJams I’ve been to and didn’t see many that did Bluetooth but will look when I go to RMAF this fall.
On a side note if you really want to hear the 650’s get a Bottlehead Crack it’s like it was made for them.

 

[shrimants]

I'm with you there, i was thinking bluetooth should have more or less caught up by now. IE between ldac and aptx and all that, the sound quality should be there. I'm a little iffy on whether those little modules can house enough power to properly drive things, but for IEms i dont see it being much of a problem.

Ideally a set that i can switch between bluetooth and wired would be absolutely perfect. But i dont know of a set that i can get the bass I crave. Theres the shure SE215 but those were pretty awful from what I remember. great if you like a warm signature like the hd598 but apart from that nothing special. The brittle housing is something i wanted to avoid, as i've seen too many fail. Theres the 535, but those dont have the right sound signature. Theres the 846, but now we're up at like a grand and i'd be too terrified to actually use them anywhere.

the 400-600 dollar range seems to be a sweet spot for me where I'm careful enough with them that i'd use a separate beater pair for beater tasks. But given the only real abuse my headphones see is getting the wire tugged or shoving them unceremoniously in my pocket, i figured bluetooth would pretty much only see sweat as an actual physical threat.

As for my HD650, i've heard them out of the magni/modi combo and the odac/o2 combo and i was pretty unimpressed. They definitely sounded effortless but they also sounded pretty dang boring. Right now im just powering them out of my 1st gen fiio X3 in DAC mode. My previous motherboard used to be able to power them directly but this mobo doesnt have anywhere near the output needed. On a side note, i really REALLY like how they sounded out of a harman kardon avr235, especially when I had it set to downmix multichannel. Still havent found anything that does as good of a job at downmixing as that receiver did, especially for gaming. Havent gamed in a while though and I have a dedicated home theater now so theres not much incentive for me to spend more money on my work setup.

Another case to be made for IEMs for me is that i have very poofy hair and i hate putting on over-ear headphones because it leaves an indent in my hair. So post shower i pretty much never use the HD650 otherwise my head looks absolutely ridiculous.

 

[buke9]

There are lots of iems in that price range but not for sure how many have a Bluetooth option that is not something I look for. When I go to meets and CanJam I tend to go for the TOTL stuff but do listen to the others when time permits. I just don’t know if there is a Bluetooth option for say Campfire Audio or Noble and RHA or the others in that price range.
I also have a decent Home Theatre setup with a pair of Polk LSi15’s on the mains but most of the time to keep the wife happy as she is upstairs watching crap tv shows it is better to don a pair of headphones than to hear can you turn that down a bit sweetie.

 

[shrimants]

do you have any non-bluetooth recommendations in that price range? Bluetooth in general was just a "maybe i should try it" sort of thing. but anything that sounds like the rha t10i (overall neutral but slight bass emphasis and BIG CLEAN sub bass) would also work even if it isnt bluetooth.

I can always get one of those 30-40 dollar anker bluetooth earbuds if the cable gets in the way. between the lawnmower noise and the horrible audiobook recording quality i really dont need much from specifically the bluetooth aspect. Everywhere else a wired headphone would be better.

Basically looking for HD650's sound signature but more bass and sub bass. Treble tends to sound rather harsh and hissy and fatiguing to me and the heavy bass tends to cover that up well.

 

[buke9]

Sorry don’t think I can as it has been a while since CanJam and the memory isn’t that good. You might need to start a new thread will your preferred sound saying you want a iem close to the 650 for your budget. If you think the 650’s are harsh you might have a problem. Not that they are the kings of warm but the high end is rolled off quite a bit. It is good that you said that because you are looking for Warm earphones then. The 650’s are known for rolled off highs.

 

[EddHarbin]

Go for some higher end JVC iems, the wood ones 750,850 . Great bass but it is wired.

 

[PaganDL]

Hi Shrimants,

I may be late to the party but it's hard to go wrong with the iBasso IT 01, pretty much my daily in ear though I alternate on a weekly basis or situation dependant with the IT 04.

As a partial side note, Shure does have build & quality control issues with some of its IEMs and headphones which is a pain, most notably 525 has a lot of build issues.
In terms of sound, in personal & subjective experience, only way you can get bloated sound from ANY Shure product, is if your source is crap &/or the thing has been EQ to death with no real understanding of the process, not saying yours is or was, just been my experience from a semi pro sound monitoring standpoint but that's a whole other conversation...

So far, aside from finding a good BT capable headphone which fits your needs, suggest Sony WH-1000 X M2 there, I would look at the Shure BT cable which I just picked up & works very well provided your chosen in ears are good in the first place.

Just my humble opinion.

I still own the 215 SE & SRH 940, which I have no issues with, especially the 215 SE which is different in sound to the standard 215.

 

[shrimants]

So literally 20 minutes ago I impulse bought the massdrop plus iems. So now I'm just looking for a microphone/remote cable for 0.78mm 2 pin and maybe a Bluetooth cable for the same, preferably one with replaceable batteries or at the very least, aptx (if not aptx hd).

I was honestly considering the se215 but I was worried about build quality and muddy mids, and I kept finding conflicting measurements. What really cinched it was realizing that one dude rated the 215 a D while the massdrop was up in the A category. Sooooooo yeah. I figure now I'll use my Amazon points for actual bill related purchases instead of splurging on myself.