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CHIFI LOVE Thread-A never ending IEM-Heaphones-DAP-Dongles Sound Value Quest
Dec 7, 2017 at 7:53 PM Post #4,982 of 31,833
Skullophile said:
About the Zs5 being balanced or neutral?

I found this on the internet, is a good read, here's a snippet.

"A truly neutral headphone or speaker would reproduce every frequency of sound across the whole range of hearing in equal measure, with nary a decibel of difference between them. The laws of physics make this pretty tough. Every speaker or headphone driver is going to have its own voicing depending on the design, just as every human voice sounds different."

Credit goes to https://medium.com/@Xander51/audio-...ole-your-brain-plays-in-all-this-2ec761759f7b

This is what etymotic is trying to achieve with their iems and using the Harman curve to adjust to the sound coming from inside the ear and not being affected by the outer ear.
It's widely accepted that an Er4S is a neutralish iem.
Now compare that to the ZS5 and you have a polar opposite in my opinion.
Ety bass is impossibly tight and controlled, mids are in line and highs are in line also.
Zs5 bass is enhanced and boomy, mids get overshadowed by the huge bass and highs are bright, sibilant and peaky.
Would you call the ZS5 bright? If so it's not neutral it's bright.

Balanced is just a quick way to describe to someone else that nothing is too out of place.
If something sounds balanced it does not suffer from something like for example, a tuning that is the old consumer tuning with enhanced bass and hugely rolled off highs.

So in summary a neutral iem does not add any colour to the sound similar to an etymotic.
To my ears the ZS5 is very coloured and one of the most coloured I've ever heard so I don't consider it close to neutral.
And for balanced the ZS5 has more bass and highs than it has mids so to my ears it is not balanced.
Click to expand...
Personally I'd call the ZS5v1 U-shaped... But if you're going to make claims like that, you should at least back them up... so let's have a bit of fun:

ER-4S Harman target compensated (source):
Etymotic%252520Research%252520ER-4S%252520-%252520ow.png


And here's a rough one of the ZS5v1:
zs5_harman.png


PS: Those are from different standards compliant couplers, so data past 10kHz shouldn't be considered relevant.

Also the ER-4S is targeted to diffuse field neutral, not Harman target neutral, and it hits its target very precisely (ref).
 
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Dec 7, 2017 at 8:27 PM Post #4,984 of 31,833
B9Scrambler said:
Sure, but if you issue the charge in two halves each half is below 100 USD. It's basically the same thing. :kissing_smiling_eyes:
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B400 was $150 all during black friday and cyber monday. You didn't pay $200 did you?
 
Dec 7, 2017 at 8:42 PM Post #4,985 of 31,833
they are $161 now if you use the coupon code.
 
Dec 7, 2017 at 9:37 PM Post #4,987 of 31,833
Otto Motor said:
But for CDN $44, you get decent earphones with the B100.
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More than decent. The B100 is awesome and I'd take it 10/10 times over the more expensive B150, and a whole heap of other iems for that matter. All I was saying was that I'd spend the extra and get the B400 because it's worth it, which I did. However, in the spirit of the thread I'd not turn anyone from the B100. It's great.
 
Dec 7, 2017 at 11:47 PM Post #4,988 of 31,833
Otto Motor said:
I'd say the ZS5 are a waste of money! Horrible sound signature with tinny mids for the price. Get the Brainwavz B100, they are balanced and neutral.
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How can 20$ be a waste of money....I really don,t understand harsh statement like this...must of time its from people that get alot of money. So money didnt mean anything to them, subjectivity became very dangerous in this type of assumption. KZ ZS5 are incredible for the price, and they got very present mids, little harsh, but never overshadowed by bass exactly because they got 4 drivers. Are they colored? Hell yes. But soundsignature is like....pushing every freqs spectrum so it create a wow effect, for some it create nausea, its okay, but other find it very entertaining, like me wich enjoy real neutral iem too and even own Etymotic (sell them) wich I personally find extremely boring (I listen to classical and jazz mustly, but in both, bass need some roundness and impact, and soundstage I like it airy, not intimate like sound is screw in your head).
 
Dec 7, 2017 at 11:49 PM Post #4,989 of 31,833
B9Scrambler said:
Almost. They gave me an additional discount but even with that I spent almost 200 USD. 30 USD premium for the Crimson Red model. Worth every penny.
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Hi man, its out of topic a little, but I see you picture have the Faudio S1 player....is it any good??? This brand really intrigue me!
 
Dec 8, 2017 at 9:07 AM Post #4,992 of 31,833
mine had extremely low output and sounded muffled (tried cable-rolling, to no effect)--given the high praise bestowed here i'm sure that i got a bad set. no hassles from hck on the return, so i don't want to pile up on him
 
Dec 8, 2017 at 9:31 AM Post #4,993 of 31,833
Nymphonomaniac said:
How can 20$ be a waste of money....I really don,t understand harsh statement like this...must of time its from people that get alot of money. So money didnt mean anything to them, subjectivity became very dangerous in this type of assumption. KZ ZS5 are incredible for the price, and they got very present mids, little harsh, but never overshadowed by bass exactly because they got 4 drivers. Are they colored? Hell yes. But soundsignature is like....pushing every freqs spectrum so it create a wow effect, for some it create nausea, its okay, but other find it very entertaining, like me wich enjoy real neutral iem too and even own Etymotic (sell them) wich I personally find extremely boring (I listen to classical and jazz mustly, but in both, bass need some roundness and impact, and soundstage I like it airy, not intimate like sound is screw in your head).
Click to expand...
Fair enough. I should have explained myself better. First, I paid CDN $36 for the ZS5, second, they were totally overhyped, third, you got decent KZ over-ear cabled earphones at CDN $15, fourth, I have a bucket full of similar cheepoes (all at a lower price), and fifth, they have terrible mids (for their money/hype) and are overly harsh sounding to my ears. They do work well on an airplane or bus because they have much oomph. In this price category, I fared infinitely better with the Tin Audio T2 at CDN $38. A hugely better sounding earphone with a relatively neutral tuning.
 
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