Quote:
Will have to say that the GR07 are still technical beasts, but the added warmth and cohesiveness might be more to your liking. Would skip other popular, "heavy-hitters in value" stuff like the GR01, A161P, R50s, completely as they seem to be antithetical to your preferences. Other warmer "balanced" phones would be again, the PFE112, not to mention the RE262 (252s are more balanced, but harder to find)
i might have described the treble on xcape ie wrongly, let me try again. on the xcape ie, all of of the highest pitch sounds (orchestra) comes on and sound a little short, disappearing quickly before the point/pitch where a listener will expect it to reach before moving on to the next sound. i've only had this and the panasonic for comparison and on the panasonic it seems to reach that height/pitch/point for the high note before fading out naturally to the next sound in the song.
oh and i left out movie OSTs in my musical preference, most of these music are called 'epic mixes' on youtube. not sure what genre these belong to, maybe cinematic rock?
are the re-262s warmer than the 252s? i see in other thread the 252 is categorized as analytical while the 262 is under the list of warm earphones. also will the 262 run from iphone (without amp) if i buy it since it has impedance of 150 ohms which seems huge in earphones, not saying that i already want the 262 but just out of curiosity.
listening to the black eyed peas song <boom boom pow>, the panasonic earphone can actually produce throbbing bass, not sure if it's basshead level kind of bass i am experiencing here but it sure
sounds natural and nice. oh yes 1 more thing, i
REALLY love the sound of violin.
could i be a mini basshead without myself knowing?, if i am, it probably spells trouble wanting bass and good violin sounds on top of overall natural sound. lol it will be a big joke if i try a couple more earphones in the future only to find this pair of cheapo badly abused panasonic earphone to be the best i always wanted. it will be such a big joke, i dare not imagine further. :l
also, very important to explain is that whenever i use the word 'natural sounding' in music, i mean the natural sound you normally hear from external speakers like 5.1 setup home theatre system, that sort of natural. and i think this kind of natural that most people are used to might be very different from the sound signature of neutral in-ear earphones as i read (from ClieOS's link) that sound emitted by all in-ear earphones (including those with neutral frequency response) do not interact with the surrounding much before hitting our eardrums and thus it might sound very different from the 'natural sounding' most people are used to from external speakers.
whenever i say natural, the sound i am seeking is the kind similar to the ones i hear in home theatre systems and such.
sorry if i have to post the article of another user here, as i think his words and referencing best explains what i agree with to a large extent. and i think this is the kind of earphones that i have been looking for. http://www.inearmatters.net/2008/12/neutral-vs-natural-thought.html
correct me if i am wrong. now i am trying to visualise my preferences in the form of a frequency response curve. the sound signature i am looking for is probably best described as a 'balanced' profile. with good,
fast bass just slightly below basshead/bass focused earphones and better bass than warm/sweet earphones. mids should be above average and that will probably translate to slightly forward. treble has to be sparkly but i cannot accept any sibilance as it is the most annoying and undesirable. the visual picture in mind is a U shape, not V, since i do not want recessed mids. recessed mids will make the whole listening experience sound non realistic or live i presume. and slightly forward mids probably help me to hear the details better which i suppose will be a pleasing experience in terms of musicality? (correct me if wrong)
probably what i need will be a bigger bass than the curve in the graph above. treble wise i do not know how to gauge from the graph but it has to be nice, natural, sparkly just before anything hits sibilance regardless of the type of genre of music played and of course it also must not overpower the mids which is where all the vocals and most of the music is. i see that the mids in the graph are above the 0 line, and i interpret that as slightly forward. of course all of these layman explanation and interpretation of graphs are from my non audiophile user experience, writing in length hoping that you can understand what i really want and open to your correction and professional opinion.
i read that the re252s are also lacking in bass although generally balanced sounding and specially good due to the silicon interaction with the ear, maybe assisted through bone/tissue conduction. from what i try to interpret of my own preferences above, maybe what i really like isn't the phonak or re252, 262 kind of sound signature as i presume all of them lack 'natural sounding' bass that i like. looking forward to your recommendation here.
if the above opinions still do not change your recommendations, considering all the phonaks (including the ones you didn't list, 232, 022,122,012 etc) and the re262, re252, are you still saying that the hifiman re252 should be the most suited for my preference? because i found a place to buy the re252 for 100 dollars.
also what do you think of the sony xba-3 and their iphone version? i just read minutes ago on this forum that they are 'dynamic sounding' balanced armatures with good clarity? and detail and soundstage (though i still dont really know what soundstage feels like, my interpretation is the 3d/2dness of sound but i hope soundstage and separation are two different matters as i hope it isnt that overly exaggerated separation of vocals and instrument in terms of distance that i heard on the sunrise xcape impressive edition) and some reviews say the treble is metallic sounding, probably from the spike in impedance at 8k Hz frequency? also i am worried if the xba 3 are muddled in vocals/mids, as the xcape ie already sounds a little veiled, i don't think i can accept anything that is veiled since you also pointed out that i am sensitive to timbre of instruments. how do you think the xba3 will compare against the xcape ie?
can't thank you enough for your patience.
