Here’s my general feelings of the SE11 after few days of listening.
SE11’s sound can be characterized as reference tuned as it boasts (to my ears) spectacular clarity with a high level of transparency. Even compared to my IER-Z1R and Spark, SE11 is clearly a bit more.. well clear. Almost all frequency range are surgically resolved and reveal fine details in music that most other in ear speakers struggle to convey. In my experience, the bass digs very deep and provide a low end that feels very supportive and quite well integrated. Bass is unmistakably DD. Low-end extension, texture, timbre, is all where it should be. Quantity is also adequate and transient behavior is pretty clean and snappy for my taste and bass bleed is nowhere to be found. The SE11’s transients do definitely lean on the faster side of things, which plays nicely with the driver coherency on this fairly complicated IEM. But if I had to nit pick, I feel like the SE11’s bass doesn’t quite slam hard enough. It certainly slams harder than a BA, but I do wish it had a bit more mid bass substance. The other thing is that it has a low end that comes off as a bit dry. However the slight lack of slam and more subbass focus lends itself better to the SE11’s more airy sound. In either case, the SE11’s bass is not the best in class, but it certainly is not bad.
The mids are perhaps the show stopper for the SE11 as they convey extremely natural sounding vocals and instruments with a high clarity, without overloading too much on upper mids region. The particularly snappy midrange transients sound quite right in combination with the faster DD decay.
Electret treble tuned better than most others I’ve heard with a good amplitude, but I do find myself desiring more extension, and perhaps more incisiveness on attack transients to bring out more stick impact, but I find little fault with the SE11’s treble as a whole.
On resolving ability, the clean sound of the SE11 really does shine through. Possibly one of the most resolving IEMs I’ve heard in the macrodetail department next to the Thieaudio Monarch, especially in the midrange.
So in a nutshell, I’d say the SE11 delivers an impressive experience as it sounds great with most of my music, but definitely shines best with genres like jazz, classical, folk, or anything acoustic. You may consider something else if your main material is stadium rock, R&B or metal.
Will compare with the GD3A when it arrives.
