(C4) Sony MH1C
reviewed 2012-11-04
Details: budget IEMs bundled with Sony's MW1 ‘Smart Wireless Headset pro', apparently with more
engineering effort than the usual budget IEM
Currently available at: ~$30
Driver:
Dynamic
Impedance: (higher is better) 15ohm
Minimum volume setting required from Fiio E17 (lower is better): without EQ: 22/60 with EQ: 24/60
Cable: flat J-cord with mic and controls on left side, length down to trouser pocket
Nozzle Size (widest part of tip): 4.5mm | Preferred tips: stock small tips
Wear Style:
Straight down (although I've seen one crazy person wear them over ear, the mic would simply not hear your voice that way)
Accessories
(N/A) – Single-flange silicone tips (4 sizes) and shirt clip come with bulk packaging version I bought; no idea what would come in retail packaging
Build Quality
(4/5) – Construction appears to be all plastic but appears sturdy enough; earpieces and plug have adequate strain relief; stock tips provide excellent seal and comfort; looks are quite classy
Isolation
(4/5) – Just a bit shy of ety level isolation
Microphonics
(?) I don't attempt to review this subject; provided shirt clip works well to reduce microphonics and make J-cord style bearable if you clip it on the left side of your shirt high up to relieve and redistribute the weight of the cable on the earpieces
Comfort
(4.5/5) – Light and small housing, medium-small sized nozzles and well-designed (and easy to put on) ear sleeves make for a very comfortable seal. These have a short nozzle for shallow insertion but the stock ear sleeves are longer than average while soft and supple (but not so soft as to lose shape when you're trying to put them on); makes for a secure fit (for me and many others). The only complaint is the J-cord, with the left bud branching DOWN from the split; if you wind it back up to your ear it naturally puts the mic forward nearer to your mouth so this may help with calls, although my experience with calls was that I still needed to hold up the mic for my wife to hear. Again the shirt clip use and positioning is crucial to wear comfort.
Sound without EQ: (11/10) (expect to see some low scores even from many $200+ heavyweights here; I am not tolerant of sound not matching my sound sig preference here. That's for sound *with* EQ)
When I started this review, I calibrated my scale to put the score 10 at the highest point at which I expect any non-EQed IEM to achieve; the main bottleneck to non-EQed performance was the presence of sharp spikes in the treble response, caused by half-wave resonance in the ear canal. Since even Etymotic, the hi-fi company reputedly paying the most attention to actual "high fidelity" and diffuse field equalization produced an IEM with a sharp 11dB spike at 7.5kHz to my ears with the best insertion I could manage, I thought it was physically impossible to design phones that physically cancelled out all resonance peaks in the treble.
The MH1C proved me wrong, and for that reason alone deserves an off-the-scale score.
It would have scored even higher if not for the bass boost, which was designed into the phones on purpose and thus supposedly appeals to most people according to their market research. So they may score even higher for you.
It's hard for me to describe how good these sound in a conventional manner. The main point is that these achieve my usual parametric EQed near-perfection
WITHOUT EQ. The only major thing I need is add a touch of bass rolloff with EQ and these already score an easy 18/20 to my ears. I know that's not strictly 'without EQ' performance but a bit off bass rolloff is easy to achieve with all manner of equipment, from 10-band EQs bundled with most portable players, to the "bass reducer" preset on iPods, to tone control knobs on receivers, to even a little passive hardware circuit you can knock together for $10.
Strictly without EQ, they sound like perfection... with bass boost. It is almost a linear ramp up to the subbass region though so it is a good bass boost that many will enjoy.
FR curve
Linear bass boost peaking at 20Hz and below
Dip at 2150Hz about 2dB (but it's probably just me; I find a dip here with almost every phone; official measurements do not show such a dip)
Gentle, well controlled resonance peak range from 7000-12000Hz (about 3dB)
Sound with EQ: (19/20)
With EQ (mostly just a bass rolloff), a veil of bass is lifted and the perfection that is the MH1C shows itself in its true colours. I find it hard to describe the sound of perfection since I experience near-perfection every day with all kinds of phones with parametric EQ, I'm just so used to it that it doesn't wow me anymore. But the big news is how easily and effortlessly the MH1C attain this level of performance. It's like a master car mechanic used to hot rodding Mustangs and Mitsubishi Evolutions coming across the latest supercar from Ferrari or Lamborghini: I feel almost like I've been put out of a job.
Listening to actual music, it is evident to me that not only is the frequency response impeccable, the driver quality is phenomenal too with presence, impact and decay all done right. If there's a better phone out there, I've yet to hear it. Actually I'm pretty sure that the only way to make major improvement from here would be a Smyth Realiser to accurately simulate loudspeaker soundstage. I've heard that those make your jaw drop with their soundstage portrayal but they have trouble measuring IEMs for making the PRIR profile. Well these should make the perfect candidate for Smyth Realiser augmentation with their impeccable FR profile.
My impression of cheap IEMs has been changed from "possible to beat $300+ heavy hitters using precise parametric EQ" to "possible to beat $300+ heavy hitters without doing much at all" with these gems.
Standard disclaimer: sound with EQ of course changes with the EQ used. Despite the use of tone sweeps and the equal loudness filter standardizing much of the EQ process (and the resulting FR charts), it is still possible to get better sound with further fine tuning of the EQ to real music. The score with EQ is affected by how well I've profiled the EQ for a particular pair of phones. Still I find it worthwhile to dedicate a section of each review to EQ because phones always sound so much better with EQ (
reason).
Value (no EQ available): 10/10
Value (with 10-band graphic EQ or simple tone controls): 20/10
Value (with parametric EQ): 10/10
Pros: awesome sound without EQ, jaw-droppingly good sound with just simple tone controls or 10-band EQ, very comfortable, highly isolating
Cons: j-cord and flat cable make for somewhat awkward ergonomics
How appropriate that these get the designation "C4" in my review list as these are C4 dynamite in the budget IEM, nay, hi-fi IEM world...
well I'll use them a few more days and refine my thoughts on them 
