Every detail matters: Introducing the all-new IE 900

[paulobao]

Okay, well...I can assure you that I am not 90 years old with an upper hearing limit of 8kHz haha. Ironically, I'm probably one of the youngest people on here, and I'm pretty sure Animus is actually even younger than me. So if anyone has their hearing intact, it would probably be us! I don't mind constructive criticism (heck, I encourage it!), but your comments are out of line.

You are right about constructive criticism.
I'm 56 now, so I'm suffering from the "Felix De Laet" syndrome (aka Lost Frequencies ).

But even much younger people may have lost the ability to ear "well"!
The graphs are objective not the perception of "sound quality"!
And then, our echoic memory are not that robust!

With this in mind...how someone can objectively say that, iem X it's "much better" than iem Y? And most of the time, from what I inferred from some reviews, the reviewer not even have iem Y anymore, it's just from his memory!

I understand and really appreciate the effort to make the reviews but I see it as an opinion, nothing more nothing less!

I really would like to see a musician "reviewing" our precious audio gear and tell us "this one are the ones that best reproduce the sound that I imagined for this track". Maybe we would be surprised by the results .
And of course...this is just my opinion .
Cheers.

 

[Scorpio1957]

Funny you should mention that, one of my friends is a world class musician, he has played with the likes of Ronnie Wood, Jeff Beck and Van Morrison.

He is on drums in the video clip, enjoy!

He can tell me straight away within minutes what Dap, IEM or Headphone is like and if it’s any good, like everyone else it’s just his personal opinion. His brother is also a great bass guitarist who has played with the likes of Whitney Houston.

 

[paulobao]

Nice for you. So, did you made the test? I mean, he will give his opinion and how it correlates with yours?
Unfortunately (or not) I have not.

Cheers.

 

[Vitaly2017]

But it’s not copper?

He's on Stainless Steel now LMAO

Just so guys know I sold my sp2000 copper and I got MORE Copper on its way the Mighty WM1Z... Yea it even got gold there wohooo
We need a bit of everything in the mix SS is very welcome, it gives fastests bass and deepests rumbles

 

[gLer]

Just so guys know I sold my sp2000 copper and I got MORE Copper on its way the Mighty WM1Z... Yea it even got gold there wohooo
We need a bit of everything in the mix SS is very welcome, it gives fastests bass and deepests rumbles

I figured the SP2K wouldn't be your sound.

Look forward to your IE900 thoughts.

 

[Vitaly2017]

I figured the SP2K wouldn't be your sound.

Look forward to your IE900 thoughts.

You know it was great but not ultimately the Tigers tastes

 

[Precogvision]

You are right about constructive criticism.
I'm 56 now, so I'm suffering from the "Felix De Laet" syndrome (aka Lost Frequencies ).

But even much younger people may have lost the ability to ear "well"!
The graphs are objective not the perception of "sound quality"!
And then, our echoic memory are not that robust!

With this in mind...how someone can objectively say that, iem X it's "much better" than iem Y? And most of the time, from what I inferred from some reviews, the reviewer not even have iem Y anymore, it's just from his memory!

I understand and really appreciate the effort to make the reviews but I see it as an opinion, nothing more nothing less!

I really would like to see a musician "reviewing" our precious audio gear and tell us "this one are the ones that best reproduce the sound that I imagined for this track". Maybe we would be surprised by the results .
And of course...this is just my opinion .
Cheers.

Yeah, I totally agree with all of this! It’s just that (like anyone else, I'd imagine) I don’t appreciate it being insinuated that I’m deaf and 90 years old . I regularly run sine sweeps as part of my review process, and if that’s any indication, my left ear can hear over 19kHz, whereas my right ear tops out at around 17.5kHz. I also rarely listen at above 75dB; I take my hearing health very seriously.

 

[PhazeCrive]

It's kinda strange how hearing damage works out. I have tinnitus and I can still hear slightly over 21k. To me, it's kinda like a plus. When the tinnitus gets too strong, I turn dowm the music. It's like a hearing danger alert.

I think you should also play music at extremely low volumes for about 10 minutes, like really low. Then turn it up to about 70 decibels and be blown away at how 'loud' it has become.

There'll be times I get off work and put the music on 12 o'clock then crank it to 3, but when I let the music play for a bit on low volume, I find turning it to 12 feels deafening.

 

[paulobao]

Yeah, I totally agree with all of this! It’s just that (like anyone else, I'd imagine) I don’t appreciate it being insinuated that I’m deaf and 90 years old . I regularly run sine sweeps as part of my review process, and if that’s any indication, my left ear can hear over 19kHz, whereas my right ear tops out at around 17.5kHz. I also rarely listen at above 75dB; I take my hearing health very seriously.

I hope you live until 90 years old, deaf or not .
Keep the good job.

Cheers
Paulo

 

[Evshrug]

I hope you live until 90 years old, deaf or not .
Keep the good job.

Cheers
Paulo

Love this sentiment
And hopefully also enjoy beautiful music as long as possible

 

[paulobao]

You know, it's just the internet effect. Face to face people generally are less prone to say this kind of things.
And the reviewers certainly do their best when reviewing.
The "problem" (c'mon it's just an hobbie, relax), imho, it's when someone say X is "much better" (translated as an example...in a ranking list) than Y, because people with Y could not agree and people with both X and Y could not agree too and that's because there are more than just graphs.
I'm not an audiophile, not even close. But I enjoy music and discovering the nuances of this hobbie (including experimenting new stuff). At some time I owned a few iems and, despite having one of the best "ranked" one (ier-z1r), for some reason I spent much more time listening with the less expensive one (IT04). Was it the fit? The tonal balance? I don't know and really don't even care or matters. For me, that one was really the best one because it was the one I ended up listening more, so I kept it.
So, objectively the Sony was "much better" but, subjectively and for this guy (me), the iBasso "won".
So, and again, reviewers keep the good job and you should, you are lucky to have the opportunity to try lots of gear, something not everyone (€€€) can say.

And now, let's ear some music and enjoy it, per se .

Have a nice weekend (unfortunately I had a bike accident last Saturday and I need to stay at home for more 3 weeks...another hobby I have, mtb).

Stay safe.

 

[Vitaly2017]

Some further testing vs MEST MKII... my initial impressions of the bass capability have changed - MEST can indeed deliver powerful bass but I find I need to push the volume up a lot, to the detriment of highs as it becomes quite harsh and fatiguing - the IE 900 delivers on bass at lower volumes and while treble very evident, its by no means harsh. MEST sounds quite bright when switching between the two. Still lots of testing to do... I don't even trust my own first impressions, takes time to adjust and cycle through genres etc.

Absolutely; the more I learn, the more I believe and accept that humanity perceives the world a little bit differently.

I been in this hoby for quite some time now and have been threw many phases in my journey. It gave me a vast enormous experience, I learned a lot of different aspects about audio world. I can say that this hobby is very unique and it has endless ways to enjoy the music.

But whats the most important is to not lose the love to our passionate activity, listening to music with joy, love and deep emotions.

My journey showed owing the best of the best means nothing, you can love your music with inexpensive gear too. Its our desires to always want more and better that makes us jump into the blind buys and discover new gear tuning.

What I realized is before I ripped the ripples of time space and fully jumped in head and toes into the Big Narnia hole of unlimited cash spendings and crazy amount of gear rotation I went threw...
I realized that my most happy days of enjoying music was actually in the beginning of the journey! At that time I had Se846 + stock cable 3.5 and a portable dac amp that sounds 20times wors then mojo lol.
But you know I enjoyed music a lot and that was 2 beautiful years of my music and love.

Now I will never be able to go back because I tasted the nectar of the forbiddens. No mortals get here lol but wata heck! Still not satisfied WHAT

So how is that possible right? Best gear but no joy?

My solution for this is time. Only time can tell if my gear lives or get sold.
Time have showed me wm1z and Tia Fourté are the best gear I ever owned and heard. And we are talking more then 2 years with each gear here. Nothing so far won my heart over this 2 items
See sp2000 cu lost after 2 months, as I got bored and had no drive no soul emotional bliss. So it left.

I have big expectations from ie900, I know HD800s and hd820. I expect absolute supremacy from ie900 for me German engineering is performance and hig quality at their top priorities without compromise.

I cant wait to try ie900 and hear them side by side to my all time favorite Tia Fourté the ultra legendary king of all iems in my book

This is actually a very high statements and I stand strong to it, its a life time experience and carefully chosen and compared against a lot of iems!


Cheers this was TIGER roaarRRSssss

 

[riverground]

Yeah, I totally agree with all of this! It’s just that (like anyone else, I'd imagine) I don’t appreciate it being insinuated that I’m deaf and 90 years old . I regularly run sine sweeps as part of my review process, and if that’s any indication, my left ear can hear over 19kHz, whereas my right ear tops out at around 17.5kHz. I also rarely listen at above 75dB; I take my hearing health very seriously.

Man... unfortunately, I can only hear around 16kHz now. It must've been all the times I've used stage monitors when I used to do live gigs and not using hearing protection when I used to go to live events when I was a lot younger and didn't know better. Oh well lol

Do protect your ears as much as you can buddy!

I respect and always look forward to your reviews since we pretty much have similar music taste even tho we do have a different preference with how we like our music to sound haha

 

[Scubadevils]

I been in this hoby for quite some time now and have been threw many phases in my journey. It gave me a vast enormous experience, I learned a lot of different aspects about audio world. I can say that this hobby is very unique and it has endless ways to enjoy the music.

But whats the most important is to not lose the love to our passionate activity, listening to music with joy, love and deep emotions.

My journey showed owing the best of the best means nothing, you can love your music with inexpensive gear too. Its our desires to always want more and better that makes us jump into the blind buys and discover new gear tuning.

What I realized is before I ripped the ripples of time space and fully jumped in head and toes into the Big Narnia hole of unlimited cash spendings and crazy amount of gear rotation I went threw...
I realized that my most happy days of enjoying music was actually in the beginning of the journey! At that time I had Se846 + stock cable 3.5 and a portable dac amp that sounds 20times wors then mojo lol.
But you know I enjoyed music a lot and that was 2 beautiful years of my music and love.

Now I will never be able to go back because I tasted the nectar of the forbiddens. No mortals get here lol but wata heck! Still not satisfied WHAT

So how is that possible right? Best gear but no joy?

My solution for this is time. Only time can tell if my gear lives or get sold.
Time have showed me wm1z and Tia Fourté are the best gear I ever owned and heard. And we are talking more then 2 years with each gear here. Nothing so far won my heart over this 2 items
See sp2000 cu lost after 2 months, as I got bored and had no drive no soul emotional bliss. So it left.

I have big expectations from ie900, I know HD800s and hd820. I expect absolute supremacy from ie900 for me German engineering is performance and hig quality at their top priorities without compromise.

I cant wait to try ie900 and hear them side by side to my all time favorite Tia Fourté the ultra legendary king of all iems in my book

This is actually a very high statements and I stand strong to it, its a life time experience and carefully chosen and compared against a lot of iems!


Cheers this was TIGER roaarRRSssss

Something from 64 Audio or Fir Audio (the M4 most likely) were shaping up as my next purchase before the IE900 was brought to my attention. I've no doubt I'll take that plunge at some point...

I completely agree also, very important to remember why this hobby exists - the love of music.

 

[Vitaly2017]

Something from 64 Audio or Fir Audio (the M4 most likely) were shaping up as my next purchase before the IE900 was brought to my attention. I've no doubt I'll take that plunge at some point...

I completely agree also, very important to remember why this hobby exists - the love of music.

I had experience with Fir Audio, M5, M4 and new VxV, heard empire ears phantoms, Lx and zeus.

What I can say is EE brand is a very flavorful tuning they like to impress you and create wow factor. They are very technically strong contenders and lot of fun to listen. Not something I would use for reference or careful analysis iem, but it has strong capabilities and unique in its own.

Fir Audio is a brand similar to 64a because Bogdan the ceo is the brother of Vitaly the ceo of 64a, so I think they have split and this why we see fir to be so close in the concept.
Though they quite very different when it comes to tuning presentation.

64a is more cleaner, precise and nuanced. When you do careful close a/b you will see that 64a has an edge on treble, sub bass, resolution, very nuanced details like speed and transitions between notes and decays. They can be very phenomenal on Fourté and Trio.

Fir audio is more toward on the stage artists, cause when you listen to M5 you feel the sound like its been played from a speaker setup on the stage! It doesn't reach deep or as black in the background presentation. With M5 you hear the atmosphere the air and a very open sound like. It is a good iem very strong craftsman built and the Rcx conector is rock solide it does stand for what they say.

But me I love EDM music and Tia Fourté owns M5 and M4 eyes closed. It has those very fine thin and very lucid effects in the tuning that I have yet felt in any other iem. Its made so sensible and true to its source that fourté is a true chameleon. You can fine tune it with cables and dap, it responds instantly to any changes in the audio path, with fourté you can understand how each cable sounds with its all different strands and alloys that have been used.
You can even compare cable soldering quality lol its that sharp and precised.

It is the reason why I call Tia Fourté a world class iem its extremely strong and nuanced sound.


Hope that helps and I am sorry for your wallet