It's rare I get to listen to new headphones before I've read reviews, but with the 262's that was the case. I won a pair at a raffle at our Bay Area meet from HeadDirect. I had never heard of them, let alone read anything about them. I recently had a chance to listen to them for about a week while on travel, a mix of on the plane, on the move, in the hotel, etc... I have a little mini-impressions thread in the works to share what I heard. It's refreshing to get to listen and make impressions without already having preconcieved notions! It was a fun challenge to listen and evaluate with my own ears, instead of listening for something someone else said they heard!
The impressions here seem pretty close to mine, but I don't feel I was as sensative to the 262's being challenged by more complex music. That may have had a lot to do with my music selection.
One thing I did notice is that bud selection has a large impact on sound with these . I found that selecting the white dual flange buds, which due to the design have a larger chamber, really opened up the sound which for me tended to reduce that sometimes busy sound that I was hearing with the olive style grey/black buds. The olives really pack things up. It also knocked the bass down ever so slightly and got it out of the way of the mids and highs. In my limited experience, These are the first IEM's that I noticed such a difference in sound due to the buds, typically I look at them only as tool to create a seal and provide comfort. As luck would have it, they turned out to be the most comfortable buds for my ears, sealed with ease, and allowed me to listen for hours at a time with no comfort issues. As a matter of fact they are in my ears right now at work!
Before it's mentioned, certainly the buds are going to have no impact on the drivers capabilities, so I'm not suggesting that buds are a cure for the inherent capabilities of an IEM... If a listener is finding them a little slow, that's not likely to change much. But perhaps, opening up the sound with the larger chamber and getting the drivers further out of the canal reduces the impression of the effect? I'll leave that to far more experienced listeners.
As for amplification, I agree that these guys tend to need a little extra to be driven properly. They sounded best to me when I drove them from my Pico set at high gain. That said, I did do some extensive listening from the HPO on several iPod classics and from an iPad. I did not really like the iPad on the HPO, sounded thin and underpowered to me. No problem since when I am listening to the pad I almost always use the digital out through the camera connection to a DAC/AMP combo. I was however pleasantly surprised at the HPO from the Ipod classic. While it won't drive to the volume levels that an amp will, it had plenty of volume for noisy environments and I struggled to find a large difference in SQ when comparing to LOD->amp from the same iPod. I found myself happily just grabbing the ipod and the IEM's when I was running out instead filling my pockets with additional electronics!
When I won these I had no idea what they were all about. What a pleasant surprise to find out that I had some great IEM's! I wouldn't hesistate to recomend the HE-262's. I don't think you can go wrong.
