[d00mhammers]

The product will be used with FiiO KA17 dac

 

[msing539]

I would be curious to see how many people have heard all of these. I have the EA500 LM on order so will see if the hype is justified.

 

[MrFatPants]

I guess it depends how much bass you are looking for.

Imo, though, the 'audiophile' 'bass cannons' seem to be outside of that price range and within that price range you might be best served by something like beats by Dre if you want bass.

I ended up going with campfire audio vega 2020 on drop; currently for $299 priced down from $699 on campfire's own website.

Otherwise moondrop variations seem to be lauded by others for being a bassy iem coming in at $520.

For under 100 fiio fh3 on ebay used or new for about 125 have an online reputation for being bassy.

Tbh though I don't trust those chi-fi brands to bring the bass, I don't think many people listen to 808 hip hop tracks in China and would trust beats by Dre over them.

Imo cough up the 300.

 

[KinGensai]

You've made a few of these topics, and I doubt you are going to get many responses that will help you in any material way. I'll try to explain why this is the case.

Let's start with Head Related Transfer Function, HRTF for short. This is a personalized set of variables that describes how and why you hear sound the way you do. The parameters that define this function vary from physiological to psychological, but include things like chest and shoulder dimensions & density, head size, skull density, amount of space between the ears, ear height differential, ear canal shape, age, level of hydration, etc. This is the reason why there will be no consensus on what IEMs are "good" or "bad" in terms of sound preference. Phrasing your questions with terms like "decent" bass is going to get you a whole lot of conflicting opinions because of HRTF variance, not useful at all to you unless you have a good idea what others judge as natural sounding to them in relation to you.

Use of the term "quality" sound is not useful to people who want to comment because it's vague. Quality could refer to either the technical characteristics of an IEM or how the IEM is tuned to sound. Technical performance is a very useful thing to talk about because it's far easier to record and understand metrics about it, things like Frequency Response graphs, Impulse Response, Total Harmonic Distortion, Sound Pressure Level graphs, etc. Tuning is a whole other thing, you are going to have a relatively unique preference to just about everyone else, so opinions on that are not going to be useful unless you have some idea what your preferred tuning is and what the other person's preferred tuning is.

Decent bass means basically nothing if you don't know what your preferred tuning is. In order to explain this, let's look at a FR graph above. Bass refers to the area from 20Hz to around 300Hz. This is further split up into Sub-bass (100Hz and below) and Mid-bass (101Hz to 300Hz) because of the dynamics at play between the two regions. Your preference in this area will depend not just on your HRTF but also on the physical design of the IEM because the couplers used to get these measurements can not measure bone conducted sound, so bass perception from shell vibration will be absent from these graphs.

Most people will prefer a bias toward either sub-bass or mid-bass as well as a specific level of overall bass, this is something you're going to have to listen to figure out. Sub-bass is felt more than heard, elevated levels of sub-bass will feel like air moving and add physical sensation to bassy sounds like kick drums. Mid-bass is the actual heard part of bass; drum kits and bass guitars get their body from this region.

These two regions have different effects on the quality of sound that you should be aware of when considering. Because of how harmonic distortion and impulse response works, the Sub-bass response of an IEM is going to heavily affect the other frequencies in the range if you are buying an IEM with a single full-range driver because the low principle frequencies in this area are going to spawn a heck of a lot of non-linear harmonics and affect the amplitude of higher frequency sounds. This is a persistent problem with single dynamic driver IEMs because DDs have the longest impulse response relative to other common drivers, so other sounds will start to distort if this area is boosted too high. In most cases, boosting up Sub-bass is tonally ok if your IEM can handle it because acoustic music doesn't typically have much information here.

Mid-bass response is not quite as technically important as Sub-bass in terms of audible accuracy because the principle frequencies are higher and THD tends to drop as a result compared to sub-bass, but mid-bass is arguably much more important because of psychoacoustical masking. The principle here is that lower frequencies affect how audible immediately higher frequencies are. This means that higher mid-bass results in more authoritative presence to instruments that have principle frequencies here, but other instruments that start at higher frequencies and their subsequent harmonics will get drowned out by that bass, leading to a perception of muddiness.

How much bass you need from an IEM in order to be "decent" for you depends on you alone, you are going to have to figure that out for yourself. To that end, I would suggest that you seek out an IEM that has a dedicated bass driver(s) so that you have some flexibility when using an Equalizer to adjust that region and try different tunings.

 

[icnaiwhimor1975]

try KZ PR3 - its my current flagman

 

[d00mhammers]

You've made a few of these topics, and I doubt you are going to get many responses that will help you in any material way. I'll try to explain why this is the case.

Let's start with Head Related Transfer Function, HRTF for short. This is a personalized set of variables that describes how and why you hear sound the way you do. The parameters that define this function vary from physiological to psychological, but include things like chest and shoulder dimensions & density, head size, skull density, amount of space between the ears, ear height differential, ear canal shape, age, level of hydration, etc. This is the reason why there will be no consensus on what IEMs are "good" or "bad" in terms of sound preference. Phrasing your questions with terms like "decent" bass is going to get you a whole lot of conflicting opinions because of HRTF variance, not useful at all to you unless you have a good idea what others judge as natural sounding to them in relation to you.

Use of the term "quality" sound is not useful to people who want to comment because it's vague. Quality could refer to either the technical characteristics of an IEM or how the IEM is tuned to sound. Technical performance is a very useful thing to talk about because it's far easier to record and understand metrics about it, things like Frequency Response graphs, Impulse Response, Total Harmonic Distortion, Sound Pressure Level graphs, etc. Tuning is a whole other thing, you are going to have a relatively unique preference to just about everyone else, so opinions on that are not going to be useful unless you have some idea what your preferred tuning is and what the other person's preferred tuning is.


Decent bass means basically nothing if you don't know what your preferred tuning is. In order to explain this, let's look at a FR graph above. Bass refers to the area from 20Hz to around 300Hz. This is further split up into Sub-bass (100Hz and below) and Mid-bass (101Hz to 300Hz) because of the dynamics at play between the two regions. Your preference in this area will depend not just on your HRTF but also on the physical design of the IEM because the couplers used to get these measurements can not measure bone conducted sound, so bass perception from shell vibration will be absent from these graphs.

Most people will prefer a bias toward either sub-bass or mid-bass as well as a specific level of overall bass, this is something you're going to have to listen to figure out. Sub-bass is felt more than heard, elevated levels of sub-bass will feel like air moving and add physical sensation to bassy sounds like kick drums. Mid-bass is the actual heard part of bass; drum kits and bass guitars get their body from this region.

These two regions have different effects on the quality of sound that you should be aware of when considering. Because of how harmonic distortion and impulse response works, the Sub-bass response of an IEM is going to heavily affect the other frequencies in the range if you are buying an IEM with a single full-range driver because the low principle frequencies in this area are going to spawn a heck of a lot of non-linear harmonics and affect the amplitude of higher frequency sounds. This is a persistent problem with single dynamic driver IEMs because DDs have the longest impulse response relative to other common drivers, so other sounds will start to distort if this area is boosted too high. In most cases, boosting up Sub-bass is tonally ok if your IEM can handle it because acoustic music doesn't typically have much information here.

Mid-bass response is not quite as technically important as Sub-bass in terms of audible accuracy because the principle frequencies are higher and THD tends to drop as a result compared to sub-bass, but mid-bass is arguably much more important because of psychoacoustical masking. The principle here is that lower frequencies affect how audible immediately higher frequencies are. This means that higher mid-bass results in more authoritative presence to instruments that have principle frequencies here, but other instruments that start at higher frequencies and their subsequent harmonics will get drowned out by that bass, leading to a perception of muddiness.

How much bass you need from an IEM in order to be "decent" for you depends on you alone, you are going to have to figure that out for yourself. To that end, I would suggest that you seek out an IEM that has a dedicated bass driver(s) so that you have some flexibility when using an Equalizer to adjust that region and try different tunings.

Thank you for taking the time to write all this. It was an interesting read. I learned new things. Im still confused since I didnt use IEM a long time ago. My daily driver is Ananda, and I wanted something for commuting, hence I looked into IEMs. Im trying to make a final choice between LetShuoer S12 Pro and Nova or bynari acoustics x gizaudio chopin but im not sure what to pick

 

[KinGensai]

Thank you for taking the time to write all this. It was an interesting read. I learned new things. Im still confused since I didnt use IEM a long time ago. My daily driver is Ananda, and I wanted something for commuting, hence I looked into IEMs. Im trying to make a final choice between LetShuoer S12 Pro and Nova or bynari acoustics x gizaudio chopin but im not sure what to pick

Here's two comparison graphs. HBB has a more comprehensive database of IEMs, but Super has a setup that reveals some nuances that I don't generally see in others' graphs.

I would suggest against the S12 Pro. Planar magnetic IEMs tend to have trouble with treble, and by the looks of it this one is typical of the type. 8kHz elevation is a coupler resonance artifact, but the S12 reads exceptionally hot there, which means it's going to be very unpleasant with upper harmonics of cymbals and electric guitars, not a good thing if you are going to listen to classic metal.

The choice between the Nova and the Chopin is going to be what you want out of bass. Both use DDs for bass, so you'll get similar harmonic profiles out of both. Nova is clearly angling for sub-bass bias, it will sound slightly cleaner than the Chopin, but also be a bit more subdued with drums & bass.

One thing to note: You will prefer more measured bass in IEMs than over-ear HPs. HPs transmit more kinetic energy to the ear and the bone around your ears, so you perceive more bass despite a typical coupler measuring less.

 

[d00mhammers]

Here's two comparison graphs. HBB has a more comprehensive database of IEMs, but Super has a setup that reveals some nuances that I don't generally see in others' graphs.

I would suggest against the S12 Pro. Planar magnetic IEMs tend to have trouble with treble, and by the looks of it this one is typical of the type. 8kHz elevation is a coupler resonance artifact, but the S12 reads exceptionally hot there, which means it's going to be very unpleasant with upper harmonics of cymbals and electric guitars, not a good thing if you are going to listen to classic metal.

The choice between the Nova and the Chopin is going to be what you want out of bass. Both use DDs for bass, so you'll get similar harmonic profiles out of both. Nova is clearly angling for sub-bass bias, it will sound slightly cleaner than the Chopin, but also be a bit more subdued with drums & bass.

One thing to note: You will prefer more measured bass in IEMs than over-ear HPs. HPs transmit more kinetic energy to the ear and the bone around your ears, so you perceive more bass despite a typical coupler measuring less.

I see, thank you so much for all this information. Currently, the Chopin is about 60$ more than the nova. Do you think that is worth it at the 210$ mark, or I should i just get the nova and call it a day?

 

[KinGensai]

I would go for Nova. I can't say for sure because I haven't heard these which is why I didn't respond at first.

 

[d00mhammers]

I would go for Nova. I can't say for sure because I haven't heard these which is why I didn't respond at first.

alright, nova it is then. COuld you recommend some BT adaptor for it

 

[KinGensai]

Sorry, I don't have anything on that, I only listen wired. Hopefully someone else can help with that.

 

[d00mhammers]

Sorry, I don't have anything on that, I only listen wired. Hopefully someone else can help with that.

NO worries, thank you so much for your help! i really appreciate it

 

[bamboostreet]

Nova dont have mid bass, its a "boring tuning". This is what you want? What do you already own, what genre do you listen to?

 

[d00mhammers]

Nova dont have mid bass, its a "boring tuning". This is what you want? What do you already own, what genre do you listen to?

i just have an AKG iem that comes with samsung mobile phones. My daily driver is Ananda Stealth. I listen to everything from classical to metal bisides pop and rap/r&b.