[citral23]

The T2 is perfectly fine stock with a good seal, in "in ears monitor" there's monitor, dunno when it started to slip on the consumer heavy bass boost side but that's not very hi-fi IMHO.

 

[westsenkovec]

You might want to have a look at science audio reviews, the various dragonflys are not measuring very well in regard to their price, SMSL for instance has better products in terms of price/quality.

The E1DA creator, who knows his stuff, found the Meizu DAC to measure very well if you just need a 20-25€ portable low output dac.

I got it because small and convenient and I got it for a great price.

 

[Tonymac136]

Measurements don't always mean much anyway. You can't judge detail level or timbre with a graph. Little Dot valve headphone amps measure terribly but sound good

 

[TheoS53]

Tin T4 is launching on 11-11 for $79

https://www.samma3a.com/tech/en/tin-t4-launch-11-11-for-79/

 

[SupremusDoofus]

You might want to have a look at science audio reviews, the various dragonflys are not measuring very well in regard to their price, SMSL for instance has better products in terms of price/quality.

The E1DA creator, who knows his stuff, found the Meizu DAC to measure very well if you just need a 20-25€ portable low output dac.

Little ot, but did he share his measurements?

 

[CoFire]

The T2 is perfectly fine stock with a good seal, in "in ears monitor" there's monitor, dunno when it started to slip on the consumer heavy bass boost side but that's not very hi-fi IMHO.

If your definition of HiFi is light bass or unmodified iems, sure. The T2 are not bass heavy with tape mods hence why you would use porous tape to add some warmth. In any case, you can change the sound of iems drastically with tips so it's very difficult to hear what your experience is. I could go on about how all the new rage in iems is to have subbass presence with no bump in the mids but i guess that has not been HiFi for some time as you put it. And again, what music do you listen to? Try going bass light with edm, rap or hip hop, not gonna be the greatest experience.

The poster asked for more bass than the T2 not a criticism of his/her desire hence i offered some perspective based on my experience.

Edited due to inaccurate swipe words. Makes better sense now.

 

[citral23]

If your definition of HiFi is light bass or unmodified iems, sure. The T2 are not bass heavy with tape mods hence why you would use a porous to add some warmth. In any case, you can change the sound of iems drastically with tips so it's very difficult to hear what your experience is. I could go on about how all the new rage in iems have subbass presence with no bump in the mids but i guess that's not HiFi for some time in the past as you put it. And again, music do you listen to? Try going bass might with edm, rap or hip hop, not gonna be the greatest experience.

The poster after for more bass than the T2 not a criticism of his/her desire hence i offered some perspective based on my experience.

Starting with CP145s I get fine bass and that increases with wider bore tips, that works for EDM, hip-hop, anything. My definition of Hi-Fi is not light bass, you're funny to think the T2 has light bass. It has slightly too much with wide bore tips imo, I prefer something between CP145 and wide bore personally.

But maybe u like this sound and think it's HIFI

 

[nraymond]

Starting with CP145s I get fine bass and that increases with wider bore tips, that works for EDM, hip-hop, anything. My definition of Hi-Fi is not light bass, you're funny to think the T2 has light bass. It has slightly too much with wide bore tips imo, I prefer something between CP145 and wide bore personally.

You are underestimating the complexity of this problem. As Tyll Hertsens once said: "With regular speaker listening, you get a significant amount of visceral input from the low notes through your body. For example: chest and nasal cavity compression is audible; as is bone-conducted sonic impact. With headphones, you don’t get these. (You get a bit of bone conduction with full-size circumaurals --- tap on the skull bone behind the flap of your ear, it’s quite audible.) So I agree that headphones should have some artificially high bass boost beyond what’s technically correct to compensate for these visceral input losses. As an example, Jerry Harvey has a particular low-frequency profile he prefers, and I agree with his tastes. Mead Killion at Etymotic bumped up the lows in the ER4P over the more technically correct ER4S because people wanted more lows. So, yes, more bass can be a good thing."

Not everyone's head is the same shape or has the same bone structure, nor is everyone's ear shape the same, and in-ear headphones are bypassing all the outer features of the ear (and thus it is up to the earphone to re-create the sound profile that most matches a particular listener's outer ear structure for it to sound correct for that listener). And then on top of that we have the problem that Tyll outlined regarding bass and how we experience it and how necessarily unnatural it is when we listen on earphones. I know that I am always chasing a dragon when I try to find the "perfect" set of earphones because NO set of earphones will ever fully re-create bass as you experience it with live music or on speakers. And what each person's particular dragon is like depends on them and their body.

 

[audionab]

Which cable under 10$ works well with tin t2?
I am looking to get one during 11.11 sale

 

[citral23]

You are underestimating the complexity of this problem. As Tyll Hertsens once said: "With regular speaker listening, you get a significant amount of visceral input from the low notes through your body. For example: chest and nasal cavity compression is audible; as is bone-conducted sonic impact. With headphones, you don’t get these. (You get a bit of bone conduction with full-size circumaurals --- tap on the skull bone behind the flap of your ear, it’s quite audible.) So I agree that headphones should have some artificially high bass boost beyond what’s technically correct to compensate for these visceral input losses. As an example, Jerry Harvey has a particular low-frequency profile he prefers, and I agree with his tastes. Mead Killion at Etymotic bumped up the lows in the ER4P over the more technically correct ER4S because people wanted more lows. So, yes, more bass can be a good thing."

Not everyone's head is the same shape or has the same bone structure, nor is everyone's ear shape the same, and in-ear headphones are bypassing all the outer features of the ear (and thus it is up to the earphone to re-create the sound profile that most matches a particular listener's outer ear structure for it to sound correct for that listener). And then on top of that we have the problem that Tyll outlined regarding bass and how we experience it and how necessarily unnatural it is when we listen on earphones. I know that I am always chasing a dragon when I try to find the "perfect" set of earphones because NO set of earphones will ever fully re-create bass as you experience it with live music or on speakers. And what each person's particular dragon is like depends on them and their body.

Ok but regardless, too much bass to try to recreate a "visceral" impact is bad for fidelity, it distorts the driver(s), bleeds into the mids etc.

 

[oneula]

I need an inexpensive IEM (so I won't regret it if I lose it) with a design that will completely block out all external sounds, that's easy to drive and sounds super clear and (musical?) even with airplane noise and screaming kids nearby. I lost my Bose QC20s and need to find some IEMs to replace them for an business trip next week. A 10 hour flight over and back.
I have the Tape, BGVP DM6, BLON 03, TIN T2, **** ****, GuideRay GR-i18, RevoNext 202, and a bunch of others but only the Tape and the DM6 truly block external noise without having to crank up the volume. I was think of the Sony 755 or Final E1000 but they don't block out all noise like the other 2.
Been thinking of making some custom ear pieces to fit one of my IEMs into

Suggestions?

 

[TheoS53]

I need an inexpensive IEM (so I won't regret it if I lose it) with a design that will completely block out all external sounds, that's easy to drive and sounds super clear and (musical?) even with airplane noise and screaming kids nearby. I lost my Bose QC20s and need to find some IEMs to replace them for an business trip next week. A 10 hour flight over and back.
I have the Tape, BGVP DM6, BLON 03, TIN T2, **** ****, GuideRay GR-i18, RevoNext 202, and a bunch of others but only the Tape and the DM6 truly block external noise without having to crank up the volume. I was think of the Sony 755 or Final E1000 but they don't block out all noise like the other 2.
Been thinking of making some custom ear pieces to fit one of my IEMs into

Suggestions?

If you're willing to stretch your budget a bit then have a look at the ER2XR or ER2SE. XR has more bass and possibly a bit warmer, so I'm guessing the SE might fit your needs better. They're going for $125 on Amazon

 

[nraymond]

Ok but regardless, too much bass to try to recreate a "visceral" impact is bad for fidelity, it distorts the driver(s), bleeds into the mids etc.

I wish I had a simple reply to a statement like that, but I don't... but let me give you an example of my process. I have found what for me is a good ear tip pairing for the BQYEZ Spring1. I also have the LZ A6mini. Someone had asked me to compare the two, I gave a quick comparison, based on the ideal (for me) Spring1 tips and the best tips I had found while using the black ("reference") filter set with the A6mini. After a few days I was reflecting on what I had written, I realized I should revisit my comparison since I hadn't really done comprehensive tests with the other A6mini tuning filters and all the ear tips I have (several dozen different varieties). I plan to follow up in the future, and I'm currently testing the red filters (3-7kHz -3dB cut) with different ear tips and I've found a combination that I think is much better than what I could get with the black filters. I've read a review or two of the A6mini that completely dismissed the red filters, but I don't recall either reviewer talking much about ear tips, which in my experience can make a great difference in the experience, especially in terms of bass (some of which I think is due to bass conduction, because the higher mass/greater density silicone ear tips give me a greater sense of bass impact, especially sub-bass). But there are also factors such as the length of the eartip which can create it's own resonances when coupled with the ear canal, and bass is also impacted by the inner diameter or bore size of the eartip. For most of my tests, I'm not encountering driver distortion (modern drivers I think do a much better job not distorting these days, especially when they have nano carbon and DLC coatings). Certainly bass can "bleed" into the mids (i.e. overwhelm our perception of the mids at many listening volumes if the bass is too high in volume relative to the mids), and I try to find the best set of overall compromises when searching for the ideal balance, which I think is tricky.

One more thing - don't forget about the the Fetcher Munson Curve. That is, in human hearing as the actual loudness changes, the perceived loudness our brains hear will change at a different rate, depending on the frequency. On this forum we aren't level matching (i.e. making sure we're all listening at the same dB at our ears) when we talk about headphones or earphones, and the level we're listening at can make a big difference in terms of how much bass and treble we hear (and that's ignoring any other factors, like driver performance at a particular dB!) This makes equating our experiences even more tricky. For my part, I do my best to remember to test headphones and earphones at a range of dB as well as my preferred dB and then relate a kind of snapshot composite of that experience, so that it has the best chance of mapping to the widest range of other people's probable experiences (but it's not like we've collectively formalized a process for having a dialog on performance characterization here).

 

[dharmasteve]

You are underestimating the complexity of this problem. As Tyll Hertsens once said: "With regular speaker listening, you get a significant amount of visceral input from the low notes through your body. For example: chest and nasal cavity compression is audible; as is bone-conducted sonic impact. With headphones, you don’t get these. (You get a bit of bone conduction with full-size circumaurals --- tap on the skull bone behind the flap of your ear, it’s quite audible.) So I agree that headphones should have some artificially high bass boost beyond what’s technically correct to compensate for these visceral input losses. As an example, Jerry Harvey has a particular low-frequency profile he prefers, and I agree with his tastes. Mead Killion at Etymotic bumped up the lows in the ER4P over the more technically correct ER4S because people wanted more lows. So, yes, more bass can be a good thing."

Not everyone's head is the same shape or has the same bone structure, nor is everyone's ear shape the same, and in-ear headphones are bypassing all the outer features of the ear (and thus it is up to the earphone to re-create the sound profile that most matches a particular listener's outer ear structure for it to sound correct for that listener). And then on top of that we have the problem that Tyll outlined regarding bass and how we experience it and how necessarily unnatural it is when we listen on earphones. I know that I am always chasing a dragon when I try to find the "perfect" set of earphones because NO set of earphones will ever fully re-create bass as you experience it with live music or on speakers. And what each person's particular dragon is like depends on them and their body.

Many many years ago I had a a HiFi system comprising of a Dual 505 turntable, a Musical Fidelity B1 amplifier and some very large stand mounted Tannoy Mercury speakers of that time. My bedroom was just a bed and some draws and a covered concrete floor, basically there were no furnishings. I had a vinyl LP of Peter Gabriel's 'Passion The Sources'. Track 9 was "Wedding Song" by Unknown Morrocan Musicians. Played loudly through the speaker in that room, the bass was like a punch in the guts...talk about visceral input. Since then I have had the 'Passion Sources' CD, digital track, streaming, all in a different furnished room with bassy floor mounted speakers but cannot recreate it. IEM's, buds, bassy headphones, and every method of transmitting sound, yet I cannot recreate that incredible empirical visceral experience. At just a couple of small concerts near the speaker systems I got it, but the sound was too loud for my ears and overwhelmed the visceral experience. So headphones, IEMs and buds cannot transmit it in anyway, in my experience, or recreate even a facsimile of that visceral experience. So nowadays, CDs etc cannot do it for me. Perhaps there is someone with a vinyl setup who has all the room conditions that create that amazing wallop in the solar plexus? How do you get it? Do you get it?

 

[SiggyFraud]

I need an inexpensive IEM (so I won't regret it if I lose it) with a design that will completely block out all external sounds, that's easy to drive and sounds super clear and (musical?) even with airplane noise and screaming kids nearby. I lost my Bose QC20s and need to find some IEMs to replace them for an business trip next week. A 10 hour flight over and back.
I have the Tape, BGVP DM6, BLON 03, TIN T2, **** ****, GuideRay GR-i18, RevoNext 202, and a bunch of others but only the Tape and the DM6 truly block external noise without having to crank up the volume. I was think of the Sony 755 or Final E1000 but they don't block out all noise like the other 2.
Been thinking of making some custom ear pieces to fit one of my IEMs into

Suggestions?

You can't go wrong with KZ ZS3E. It's practically an ear plug that plays music.