Sherwood
Headphoneus Supremus
Quote:
Sure, but will your skepticism give you an accurate mix?
Let me step you through my decision. I was gonna just write you off, as the last comment was extremely rude, but I'm in a generous mood and you're new here.
1) You have small ears. I don't know what size your ears are, but your saying this indicates to me that you're concerned about the fit from universal IEMs. Fair enough, my wife has the same problem. Best to stick to customs, then.
2) You want to use these on stage. They'll be rolled up improperly, yanked out of your ears accidentally, etc. You'll therefore need something with detachable cables, since you'll eventually mangle them.
3) You'll use these while mastering. It'd be advisable to master on speakers, or full size headphones, but you're trying to justify a significant purchase by getting the most out of these, so you need a reasonably flat FR.
4) Your previous pairs didn't have the bass you wanted. That makes sense, a lot of folks have had this same complaint about livewires. While the situation you described was actually a fit issue, not really a shortcoming of the headphones, it indicates that a slightly boosted deep bass would be a good idea for you. Not every headphone has this, but the JH5 does, as do all of Jerry's models. If you go a different direction, I'd just have your FOH guy fix it in EQ. If he's willing to run your guitar in stereo, he'd be willing to do this as well.
5) you need clean treble. The 10-14khz accentuation you described is, to a degree, one of the shortcomings of balanced armature designs. They aren't as full range as dynamics, though in crossover networks they're generally more accurate. Boosting 10-14 gives the impression of more balanced treble energy when the IEMs can't extend to 20khz, as none of them in your price range can. The JH5 has a very flat FR through this region, however, and just gives up very high frequencies gracefully.
6) You need ambient ports, or crowd mics in your mix. I don't know if there are any universals with ambient ports. There may be, but by and large we don't care about that option here. A very few of us do what you do, though, and know why they are offered. One of the only ambient port headphones I found aside from the JH5 was the Alien Ears C1000, which looks very bogus. A single BA with an FR of 20Hz-20kHz? Please. Without a +- dB figure, that spec is useless, but they won't include it because you can't build a fullrange single BA, and the specs would show it. The only decent one in this price range is, again, the JH5. Before it came out, you'd have to go with something lesser.
So that's pretty much 6 for 6. Really, what you want is the JH13, but if you balk at the JH5 you'll never spring for the real deal.
If you need direct comparisons between a number of different custom earpieces, you're out of luck with me. I've heard a number of universals, though, and the JH5 is the best IEM of any sort for under $500 to my ears. That it also happens to come with an ambient vent option is just icing on the cake for you.
| Originally Posted by geehoof /img/forum/go_quote.gif I know how groupthink works, and I'm deeply skeptical of people who say anything without backing it up with detailed information (the most knowledgable or relevant people don't always give the best advice). |
Sure, but will your skepticism give you an accurate mix?
Let me step you through my decision. I was gonna just write you off, as the last comment was extremely rude, but I'm in a generous mood and you're new here.
1) You have small ears. I don't know what size your ears are, but your saying this indicates to me that you're concerned about the fit from universal IEMs. Fair enough, my wife has the same problem. Best to stick to customs, then.
2) You want to use these on stage. They'll be rolled up improperly, yanked out of your ears accidentally, etc. You'll therefore need something with detachable cables, since you'll eventually mangle them.
3) You'll use these while mastering. It'd be advisable to master on speakers, or full size headphones, but you're trying to justify a significant purchase by getting the most out of these, so you need a reasonably flat FR.
4) Your previous pairs didn't have the bass you wanted. That makes sense, a lot of folks have had this same complaint about livewires. While the situation you described was actually a fit issue, not really a shortcoming of the headphones, it indicates that a slightly boosted deep bass would be a good idea for you. Not every headphone has this, but the JH5 does, as do all of Jerry's models. If you go a different direction, I'd just have your FOH guy fix it in EQ. If he's willing to run your guitar in stereo, he'd be willing to do this as well.
5) you need clean treble. The 10-14khz accentuation you described is, to a degree, one of the shortcomings of balanced armature designs. They aren't as full range as dynamics, though in crossover networks they're generally more accurate. Boosting 10-14 gives the impression of more balanced treble energy when the IEMs can't extend to 20khz, as none of them in your price range can. The JH5 has a very flat FR through this region, however, and just gives up very high frequencies gracefully.
6) You need ambient ports, or crowd mics in your mix. I don't know if there are any universals with ambient ports. There may be, but by and large we don't care about that option here. A very few of us do what you do, though, and know why they are offered. One of the only ambient port headphones I found aside from the JH5 was the Alien Ears C1000, which looks very bogus. A single BA with an FR of 20Hz-20kHz? Please. Without a +- dB figure, that spec is useless, but they won't include it because you can't build a fullrange single BA, and the specs would show it. The only decent one in this price range is, again, the JH5. Before it came out, you'd have to go with something lesser.
So that's pretty much 6 for 6. Really, what you want is the JH13, but if you balk at the JH5 you'll never spring for the real deal.
If you need direct comparisons between a number of different custom earpieces, you're out of luck with me. I've heard a number of universals, though, and the JH5 is the best IEM of any sort for under $500 to my ears. That it also happens to come with an ambient vent option is just icing on the cake for you.
