[sulkoudai]

Quote:

i've just received my hippo vb today. I was looking for a more bassier iem coming from an m6, and chose hippo vb as the best upgrade. With no burn-ins yet they seem to sound too warm even for my taste. And the bass seemed to be muffled from the sound of it. I've tried different bass plates, and am currently at the two dot plate.
 
Do you guys experienced the same harshness and extreme warmness from your vb at the start? I'm worried if burn-in will not give the vb the sound signature i was expecting as many others described.
 
Thanks in advance

 
Yes, they sound very bright and harsh outta the box, very very echoey (if you know what i mean...)
 
 

 

[H20Fidelity]

 
Quote:

My experience with Uncle Wilson was great, but the experience with the VB was not so good.  I was looking for the best bassy IEM I could buy under $100, and the VBs sure seemed to fit the bill.  I bought them and was surprised how quickly they arrived.  I listened to them for a good 3 weeks and really liked the sound signature, but something wasn't right.  After quite a bit of listening, testing, and switching ears, I determined that one driver was not reaching the same output as the other which lead to an odd, unbalanced feeling in my head.
 
I contacted UW and they were more than happy to send a replacement.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that the replacement was even more polar than the first set.  One ear piece was just plain muffled compared to the other.  I didn't need to do much listening at all with that set and requested another replacement.  The third set finally came and it was much more like the first, but something was still off.  Was it my ears?  Maybe they were fine and it was just me....that thought went through my head so many times, but switching them back and forth between ears proved that it was indeed the earbuds.
 
I really wanted to find out what the problem was.  The exact problem was that one channel was slightly quieter overall and had dramatically less bass compared to the good side.  So, I got my flashlight and removed the screw plate from each IEM to try and get a better look.  Nothing inside gave a clue.  I thought about it some more, and it akin to one earbud not having a good seal.  I knew the seal wasn't an issue because I was using Comply foamies.  Then I thought, what if the driver is not sealed properly?  I know from my experience in car audio and my acoustics class that a speaker in a lossy enclosure, that is one that does not isolate the front and rear waves from the speaker cone, will have lossy performance.  Turns out I was right.  By using my mouth, I created an ever so slight amount of suction on the good earbud.  As expected, no air moved and there was a slight crackle from the driver being pressurized.  When I did this on the bad side, there was quite a bit of airflow across the driver.  For the skeptics, air was not entering through the wire entry because placing a finger on the backside of the enclosure to cover up the screw plate port immediately halted the airflow.
 
I wish I had thought of trying that on the first two pairs as I am fairly confident it was the same problem.  I know that a few Headfiers described a similar issue with their VBs.  For these reasons, I have to advise against purchasing them.  However, I will say that Uncle Wilson has EXCELLENT customer service, and they turned a really crappy experience into something positive.

I read this post a few days ago and was reluctant to purchase these after wards. I found a seller in my country and pulled the trigger, they arrived today. When I first plugged them in this problem was the first thing I listened for. There was no hint of this problem for the first 5 minutes  (mind you at low volume) until...I changed the bass plates. Sure enough the left side had  heavier bass then the right (only bass), not much, but noticeable enough to make me sigh.

I tinkered with the bass plates making sure they were screwed in correctly but the problem was still there. After changing tracks, tips and headphones to confirm I was 100% several times I was about 45 minutes into using them. Something changed.......the right side that was lower started waking up. 15 minutes later more so, now 2 hours in the problem has all but gone. I think it's merely the drivers are stiff and not 100% in sync with each other until they loosen up (hence burn in) 

I believe in the next 10 hours this problem will disappear all together in my case. . 


EDIT: Update


The problem is still there, it was only one or two albums without any sub bass that weren't affected. I'm pretty unhappy about it. Rather than put up with it (this is the sort of problem some might not notice) it's very mild to ones ears and unless you listen carefully or use bass heavy tracks. Rather than listen any longer I've put them straight back in the box. (yes, it's frustrating)

It's a sub bass problem, the left side for me is deeper how it should sound, while the right sounds lighter, not huge by amounts but still... causing an in-balance. I've rung the seller directly and they have agreed to send me another pair right away which should be here soon. I also asked if they could test them first before sending hopefully solving any further problems.

Again this is something that almost plays tricks on your mind, and I understand how people could just let it pass. but I listen to my music carefully and can pick it up right away now. Apart from this problem they sounded great.  

 

[H20Fidelity]

My second pair hasn't arrived, but I found out what the problem was for me.

It was a seal problem, these things produce massive amounts of bass and as we know without a decent seal bass is highly affected. even down to tiny difference. I changed to the large silicon tips and used the "pull your ear up / relax jaw and insert" technique and they were fine after some minor hassle getting the right fit.. It was very misleading as I thought the med tips were giving me a decent seal. Now the bass is perfect, and the fit is excellent, with the large tips they actually cause suction in my ear and turn inside out when removing them which I believe is needed with these VB's and boy they're comfortable.

I've owned a few IEM's now, I know to well about getting a good seal but these really did trick me at first I'd tried several tips: double flange / triple flange / T500 Comply / large silicon and only after using the largest tips supplied in the package I got the correct response. Probably because they are such bass monsters they're very fussy about a 'perfect seal' to correspond with each side. 

I can highly recommend them now.

 

[Tun3rbboi]

I heard the CKS77 are very nice bass, are those better than HippoVB. I like buying things on amazon, unfortunate that the Hippo VB are not on amazon.