Vanitasmoriendi
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2011
- Posts
- 20
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- 0
First of all let me begin by apologizing if a thread like this has already been started, but i have a few overall questions for the audiophiles out there that can potentially help me out.
I am a music enthusiast. However in no way am i an expert audiophile, yet i would like to start training to get there (if that makes any sense whatsoever). I play in a band, i am constantly listening to music, and i get the best portable music equipment i can find and afford. Currently i own a Cowon J3, replaced from a Creative X-FI2, which is by far a superior music player to my experience. I am a big fan of music quality, but i am also a sucker for bass. I have read on these and other forums that earphones that contribute a great deal to bass have to sacrifice other aspects of the sound such as mids and highs. At first i did not care, but lately it has become an irritation. Consequently i have decided to research and buy something incredible. I used to own different forms of Sony MDR earphones, V-moda, followed by bose ie. When IE2 came out i immediately purchased those. I was extremely satisfied. Yet i was naive to think that the Bose are high end earphones just because of their price. Although they were great, it wasnt enough for me; i allways thought that although the quality produced by them was more than adequate, and the bass output was intense, there was always sound that i missed because of the incredibly large amounts of lows. I researched further only to find the Klipsch image s4 to be rated as number 1 on Cnet. So i bought those, and very much enjoyed them, but not without switching between the bose and the Klipsch every few minutes or so, trying to see which sound better. Ultimately i found the Klipsch to be superior in quality and isolation. I live in NY and am always on the train so isolation is extremely important.
A friend of mine bought the Head direct re-0 headphones. He showed me this website and i was stunned to see that one of the expert audiophile reviewers gave them a sound quality of 6-7. The earphones my friend bought got around an 8. Yet i read that they were fairly neutral in sound and it did not seem to me that it would be enough. Sure enough when i heard them i confirmed my suspicions. They were way too flat for me to enjoy them, even with the bass boosts of the J3 jet effect.
Over the next few weeks i have looked on this website and read forums etc. Eventually i found the Earsonics SM3 to be an extremely amazing earphone. Some people said that the bass on them wasn't too strong but extremely accurate. And with that everything else was close to perfection (at least in that price range). For me the earphones were very expensive, yet i decided to buy them anyway. So far they are about 50 hours burned in, and i cannot stop listening to them. I was wrong about the "lack" of bass intensity on them. They have great bass and is even higher output then the boss or the klipsch in my opinion. Only in this case the quality of the bass is by far better. The highs and mids are just incredible, and the soundstage is just ridiculous. I don't know how else to describe it. It doesnt sound like i am listening to earphones but more like i am in the room where the music is being produced. Earsonics SM3 are simply honest and have a true and clear quality to them.
Now to get to my original dilemma(s) (sorry for the long essay)
1. The chord is ridiculously short, is there anything i can do to get it replaced, for a longer one, and if yes, without losing sound quality and if yes, where?
2. Tips. Very important to me. I have bought this item new from ebay, and it came with gray double flange tips (not sure what company they were made from) They seem to produce a very isolating and very comfortable and great reproduction of sound. (Again i am in no way an expert; for example, when i used the Bose ie2, i though those were amazing, now the bose are a pile of crap in comparison). Anyway, with the tips,l have also received a smaller foam and a larger foam tip. I desperately need someone to please, please explain to me differences in the two, and whether or not i can get a better sound/isolation/comfort etc. from another type of tip, and where i could get one? Also, double flanges from different companies for example, would that make a difference in sound even though they are both double flanges? Are triple flanges better?
3. EQ settings. Can someone throw out some eq settings for the combination of SM3s and Cowon J3? I like my own equalizer but i am fighting different settings, especially in mids and highs.. Narrow? wide? what khz to use in each? I listen to many forms of metal, classical, occasional rap/hip hop; and usually nothing less than 320 quality. Can i even tell the difference between 320 and flac with these earphones?
There might be more questions in the future and again, i appreciate and thank anyone and everyone who takes their time to read this post and help me out. If i am in the wrong place, i am sorry for that as well. Thank you in advance.
I am a music enthusiast. However in no way am i an expert audiophile, yet i would like to start training to get there (if that makes any sense whatsoever). I play in a band, i am constantly listening to music, and i get the best portable music equipment i can find and afford. Currently i own a Cowon J3, replaced from a Creative X-FI2, which is by far a superior music player to my experience. I am a big fan of music quality, but i am also a sucker for bass. I have read on these and other forums that earphones that contribute a great deal to bass have to sacrifice other aspects of the sound such as mids and highs. At first i did not care, but lately it has become an irritation. Consequently i have decided to research and buy something incredible. I used to own different forms of Sony MDR earphones, V-moda, followed by bose ie. When IE2 came out i immediately purchased those. I was extremely satisfied. Yet i was naive to think that the Bose are high end earphones just because of their price. Although they were great, it wasnt enough for me; i allways thought that although the quality produced by them was more than adequate, and the bass output was intense, there was always sound that i missed because of the incredibly large amounts of lows. I researched further only to find the Klipsch image s4 to be rated as number 1 on Cnet. So i bought those, and very much enjoyed them, but not without switching between the bose and the Klipsch every few minutes or so, trying to see which sound better. Ultimately i found the Klipsch to be superior in quality and isolation. I live in NY and am always on the train so isolation is extremely important.
A friend of mine bought the Head direct re-0 headphones. He showed me this website and i was stunned to see that one of the expert audiophile reviewers gave them a sound quality of 6-7. The earphones my friend bought got around an 8. Yet i read that they were fairly neutral in sound and it did not seem to me that it would be enough. Sure enough when i heard them i confirmed my suspicions. They were way too flat for me to enjoy them, even with the bass boosts of the J3 jet effect.
Over the next few weeks i have looked on this website and read forums etc. Eventually i found the Earsonics SM3 to be an extremely amazing earphone. Some people said that the bass on them wasn't too strong but extremely accurate. And with that everything else was close to perfection (at least in that price range). For me the earphones were very expensive, yet i decided to buy them anyway. So far they are about 50 hours burned in, and i cannot stop listening to them. I was wrong about the "lack" of bass intensity on them. They have great bass and is even higher output then the boss or the klipsch in my opinion. Only in this case the quality of the bass is by far better. The highs and mids are just incredible, and the soundstage is just ridiculous. I don't know how else to describe it. It doesnt sound like i am listening to earphones but more like i am in the room where the music is being produced. Earsonics SM3 are simply honest and have a true and clear quality to them.
Now to get to my original dilemma(s) (sorry for the long essay)
1. The chord is ridiculously short, is there anything i can do to get it replaced, for a longer one, and if yes, without losing sound quality and if yes, where?
2. Tips. Very important to me. I have bought this item new from ebay, and it came with gray double flange tips (not sure what company they were made from) They seem to produce a very isolating and very comfortable and great reproduction of sound. (Again i am in no way an expert; for example, when i used the Bose ie2, i though those were amazing, now the bose are a pile of crap in comparison). Anyway, with the tips,l have also received a smaller foam and a larger foam tip. I desperately need someone to please, please explain to me differences in the two, and whether or not i can get a better sound/isolation/comfort etc. from another type of tip, and where i could get one? Also, double flanges from different companies for example, would that make a difference in sound even though they are both double flanges? Are triple flanges better?
3. EQ settings. Can someone throw out some eq settings for the combination of SM3s and Cowon J3? I like my own equalizer but i am fighting different settings, especially in mids and highs.. Narrow? wide? what khz to use in each? I listen to many forms of metal, classical, occasional rap/hip hop; and usually nothing less than 320 quality. Can i even tell the difference between 320 and flac with these earphones?
There might be more questions in the future and again, i appreciate and thank anyone and everyone who takes their time to read this post and help me out. If i am in the wrong place, i am sorry for that as well. Thank you in advance.
