Xymordos - Please tell me more about Chinese CM's and JH, I haven't seen seen those two in the same sentence ever! (talking about erji.net as well here).
Piotrus-g - thanks for your informative post but I still don't buy that ER-4 and TWFK are "dedicated mid and high drivers, that's all", since the CK10 (in this instance) has high quality bass and even sub-bass, with a linear presentation. I don't need JH16 bass, and I don't want the bass to dominate the spectrum which is what happened to Xymordos in his reshelling project!
The CK10 has very good bass I just don't buy it that I need to use a CI-22955 and everyone keeps insisting on that particular driver, not just in this thread but custom IEM companies in a couple emails I've sent as well, why? Why CI-22955?
You don't need to present FR graphs however that would be quite useful yes? As for crossovers there are passive crossovers and hard crossovers of the 2nd order (whatever the h3ll that is) but I don't think a custom IEM designer will like me if I start going into that level of detail.
If the q-Jays, CK10 and UE700 (<- I've heard all of these, btw) all use different crossovers, that is news to me, if that's the case then I think I understand more what this whole "tuning" thing is that everyone keeps repeating without going into any detail whatsoever - it's a crossover along with a damper, right..? Like you said in your reply to Original Dolt, the "motor" inside the q-Jays, CK10 and UE700 is exactly identical, and there is only one version of TWFK, there's not multiple versions a custom IEM company has tried to trick me with that already claiming they use a "unique" version of the TWFK, my reaction to that is they have slightly higher profit margins on their original custom IEM products than they have on reshelling, which is perfectly fine (and I don't think they're very keen on reshelling sometimes, since not every universal IEM is that easy to take apart, there is this extra process involved for them).
For "tuning", a valid example for me would be the MDR-E888, there is the diaphragm, the metal grille, a thin ricepaper like filter, a plastic shell, and then a foamy on top... that is 4 components between the diaphragm and the human ear, that is what I call "tuning" I suppose, however there's nothing really being tuned (as in, like a Piano) it's just altering the sound and FR response.
For silicone and acryl having different sound, I think that is only in relation to the silicone and acryl resting in our inner ear, which will create a different resonance, you skipped the sound-tube part, the sound-tube is also important, in the case of the CK10 the driver is sending the sound along a titanium nozzle, which is known for having a positive acoustic resonance, if you reshell the CK10 into a custom IEM the sound will be travelling down a [insert material here] nozzle, which will alter the sound.
One valid case is Starkey, they have a patented material they use for their sound tubes which they believe is better than the standard-issue sound tubes, and this might explain how they've achieved such a high quality sound in for instance their Starkey SA-43, not to mention you can turn drivers on/off at will, I wish I knew the technical details behind that but it does tell me one thing and that is that the synergy between the different drivers in their flagship product isn't of high importance to achieve an overall good sound, since all interactions with the switches still result in a good sound, unless I'm missing something here, it's really outside of my project so I don't intend on sending an email to Starkey and pestering them with how their switches work Lol.
Anyway as for the different "tuning" (I don't like this term now, I'll call it altering) between the q-Jays, UE700 and CK10, yes... the CK10 has achieved the highest level of altering the sound of the TWFK driver, however having heard all of them I still think they are pretty close, and it's the fundamental sound of the TWFK that is vital, in the case of the UE700 the mids and highs (as to my preference) are in a sense almost exceeding the CK10, actually I prefer the mids of the UE700, and I think the highs are a bit airier (it seems like they shifted the spike from 10kHz up to 12khz?) however I do prefer the bass and sub-bass of the CK10, not that that is relevant here, if I use the UE700 driver as the mids/highs driver, and something else as the bass driver.
I really don't think I need a super-tweeter, that's excessive for the UE700, but would be kinda.. interesting... a 12kHz and 16kHz spike? Lol.
