[Kenny12]

well i've got the er-4P non braded cable on loan from becomethemold and i just did a mini A/B with my iriver.

Source
iriver, the reason why i choose this is because i'm aiming for a no amp setup for portable listining, the player has rockbox installed with no sound adjustments.

Bass boost: 0
Treble boost: 0

Comfort
Having owned many many many canel phones, my ears have become accustomed to their insersion, this being said, the um2 comfort tips are really great, they provide good isolation, are very easy to slide in and out and don't have the itch the silicons can sometime give you.

The etys are also not bad, with the foams u get a very good seal, and the comfort is not bad, but still a notch below the comfort tips. With the silicons they are easier to insert than the foamies but can sometimes be irritating to your ears espically in cases where insersion / removal is frequent.

Sound
I tested the sound with a few different genres, didn't really get to go through all that many though.

Low Bitrate Mp3 files
I don't know why i still have these on my mp3 player, i do plan to get them to FLAC asap but sometimes i can be so lazy.

Led Zeppelin - All my Love in 128KB
out of the ety, these sounded very very bad, no bass, poor treble, very veild.
however out of the um2 this actually sounded very decent, the bass was pretty bloated but it was acceptable where the etys did so poorely i had to skip to the next track

Nelly - Country Grammer
Again the etys performed poorely and the UM2 actually made this sound ok

Higher Bitrate Mp3s

Gorillaz - Kids with guns 256kb mp3
The ETYs did much better with a higher bitrate file, bass is deep, and the vocials were prevalant over the instruments which is something I personally like.
On the UM2, the bass had a lot more quantity than the er-4 but didn't have the same amount of depth. The instrument and actual music was a lot more noticable than the vocals.

Jack Johnson - Taylor 192kb mp3
On this song the ETYs performed great, seperation was top notch, bass was impactful, vocals was very forward.

However with the um2, the whole song was a lot smoother than the ety er-4, i even missed the introduction of a new instrument in it. IMO the music with the um2 overwhelms the vocals.

Conclusions
Thats as far as i've gone in comprasons

The um2 and er-4 are totally differnet headphones, each having their own abilitys.

With the er-4 you will need a good source, the bass is very low in quantity but it makes up for that in quality, the oversound is quite fast although not as fast as the SA5k. Seperation is almost perfect on the er-4s.

With the UM2, the bass is almost sometimes overwhelming, the oversound is a lot more smooth and sometimes musical than the ety, they don't need a good source but they need a source with a very low noise ground. Throughout the test there was a slight hiss with the um2 which wasn't noticed with the etys

I think the um2s also has a bit more synergy with ipods rather than irivers because of their quantity in bass.

Any comments are welcome and sorry for the poor english.....

 

[afobisme]

thanks, cool review. im on the market for an IEM myself. was thinking about the e4c brand new for $160 shipped at amazon (have to apply for the credit, but it's harmless).

now that i've read these reviews on the westone/super.fi/ety cans, im not sure what to do.

oh and by the way, your english is fine. didn't hear your australian accent at all

 

[3lusiv3]

Thanks for the review Kenny12. Have you heard any Ultimate Ears canal phones or any that sound similar to the UM2? Do you think the UM2's are worth the money?

 

[CookieFactory]

Ety ER4S is an absolutely amazing 'phone. With all the hype and buzz surrounding new IEMs, the Etys tend to get forgotten or dismissed off hand. Everyone wants to like these new IEMs, and it's just not fashionable , for lack of a better word, to recommend these aesthetically-challenged 'phones from the past.

However there is a reason an headphone over a decade old is still very much a contender. If you read enough IEM reviews here you tend to notice a few things when the ER4P/S are brought up. People who hate them tend to mention how they "stick out," of one's ears too much, but in actuality, with a correct insertion only the strain relief should be visible. They also complain of a screechy, tinny, bass-less sound; another sign of a poor seal.

As a Shure and Ety user I can attest to the fact that there is a significant difference in how you seal with each respective company's IEMs. It seems when many Shure users try the Etys, they try to achieve a "Shure," seal, which will result in a poor insertion everytime.

Another interesting thing I've noticed in reviews is that other IEMs don't scale up well. E4C, UM2, Superfi Pros all are claimed to be better than the Etys, but these same IEMs are dismissed resoundingly when compared to full-sized cans. Rarely do I see people say they prefer their UM2s to say, their RS-1s. However it is not uncommon to see people say their ER4S easily hang, or even trounce, their high end full-sized cans. Just recently I read someone say he is "wowed," by his ER4S even when coming from K1000s!

 

[Kenny12]

no i have not personally heard any um products.

and yes the er-4S is a great great headphone, i have used it as my full time home cans for a long time and i would rate them very highly. However the er-4P straight out of an iriver sounds to me quite different from the er-4S driven out of my dtpa amp. on the amp the bass is much more impactful, the mids more frontal and the detail just a bit more revealing than the er-4P.

I also agree with the comment about the look of the er-4P when correctly inserted they are hardly visible and i actually perfer the way of insersion of the er4 than the um2 because you can get a deeper seal with the er4.

So if you want a headphone where you can improve the sound quite a bit with an amp, go for the er-4P.

 

[ken36]

I am totallly pleased with the er4p/s. Thanks for the review.

 

[MarcusH]

I'm not the only one who owns the UE10 but still keeps his Etys - I guess there's nothing to be added in favour of them....

Marcus

 

[exkgb]

etys sound "different" from other headphones due to their artificial sound, lack of decay and fake detail. IMO this is why people still keep them around. I have no idea how you can find bass on the 4P deeper than the UM2, I can barely hear the bass on the 4P; they exist, but there's a lack of depth and impact which makes them sound so "castrated".

 

[jp11801]

Quote:

Originally Posted by exkgb etys sound "different" from other headphones due to their artificial sound, lack of decay and fake detail. IMO this is why people still keep them around. I have no idea how you can find bass on the 4P deeper than the UM2, I can barely hear the bass on the 4P; they exist, but there's a lack of depth and impact which makes them sound so "castrated".

I could not disagree more with you as far as I know there is no such thing as fake detail, some thing is either in the recording or is not. When compared to full sized phones they stand up well (akg 501, akg 340 and Grado hf-1s)
They have better bass than the 501s all together but they are not as impactfull (slam factor) as the 340s or hf-1s.
Bass on the etys are very dependant on seal and quaility of source/amp.

 

[CookieFactory]

Quote:

Originally Posted by exkgb etys sound "different" from other headphones due to their artificial sound, lack of decay and fake detail. IMO this is why people still keep them around. I have no idea how you can find bass on the 4P deeper than the UM2, I can barely hear the bass on the 4P; they exist, but there's a lack of depth and impact which makes them sound so "castrated".

The ER4P you tried must be radically different from ours. Indeed the ones you have must have a little recording studio inside them to add so called "fake details" to the music.

 

[false]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CookieFactory The ER4P you tried must be radically different from ours. Indeed the ones you have must have a little recording studio inside them to add so called "fake details" to the music.

There was actually a fairly large thread about Ety "fake detail" about a year ago started by Bangraman.

 

[K2Grey]

The Er-4s seem great, however, I'm still scared of the "breaking transducers tube" problem That's why I sold the Studiophonics. If Etymotic gets around to releasing the updated version though, I would definitely jump on it.

 

[CookieFactory]

Quote:

Originally Posted by false There was actually a fairly large thread about Ety "fake detail" about a year ago started by Bangraman.

and I'll take that thread for exactly what it is: speculation and nothing more.

 

[exkgb]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CookieFactory and I'll take that thread for exactly what it is: speculation and nothing more.

And I'll take you as an ignorant person who refuse to keep an open mind to new possibilities. If you read the thread you will see that he backs up his claims with a lot of evidence and many users including myself shares similiar experience.

What is fake detail? its something that is there which is not suppose to be there. For me I think its harmonic distortion of the etys canalphone which is orders of magnitude higher than those other IEMs. Check out the headroom graphs.

 

[Emon]

Hearing a clarinet player's lips pull from a drying reed is not fake detail. Though I just made that sound more disgusting that it really is.