If you still love Etymotic ER4, this is the thread for you...

The er4B with S or P is only differ on the cable.

 

In my opinion, no phone is worth $1000+. Besides that, the most in this price range is a joke, with crappy Frequency Responses and based solely on audiophile bull marketing and hype.

 

The difference in cable is electrical and can bring in a lot of changes. It's very similar to underamping a headphone vs properly amping.

And also, none of etymotic are available in India sadly.

 

I respect your opinion, but I highly disagree. Unless you are using a bad quality cable, there's almost (or any) audible difference on sound between a 15 or a 1000 USD dollar cable on the same earphone. On the "audiophile" cable's marketing is where there's more snake oil bull than any other.

 

I guess you misunderstood my post. I don't believe in changes a cable can bring. I even troll people in my local forums for quoting differences between silver and copper cables as if they can hear. What I'm saying here is that it is an electrical compensation. Which can bring in huge changes.

Please read more about filters, and the imgur parametrization post I made. The er4b cable has a parallel capacitor for better load handling and to compensate for inductive spike of the balanced armature.

 

Having heard Andromeda, I'd agree with you. Was a piece of joke. The midrange ba was struggling to push notes due to the tubeless implementation.

 

Generally I will agree on most of what you are trying to say on cable, but you don't seem to know the older ER4 (P/S/B) very well to speak on the topic. The drivers on all three older ER4 variance are exactly the same, the difference in sound between the models are a result of different circuit put into the cable - thus the cable DOES make a different in older ER4.

The newer ER4 (SR/XR) on the other hand is a different story as the circuit has been moved into the driver's housing (beside the drivers are different), so the cable is exactly the same between the newer ER4.

 

Oh, sorry for the misunderstanding, I'm really tired of people spreading BS on the hobby, especially when they try to impose it on you, disdain what you say and offend you ...

I was a victim of this recently in other groups.

 

I really didn't know about these circuits and filters on the cable of these models. Was a misunderstanding.

 

Those saying cables do not make any difference clearly has no vast experience on cables. Having owned a SE846 before, I can say it really behaved differently on different cables. Is the sound improvement worth it? Yes and No, only you and your pocket can decide for sure.

I envy those people who don’t here any difference on cable rolling. Will save your money in the long run.

I am not a fan of cable rolling though.

 

It's got nothing to do with the cable itself...it's about how the change in impedance can affect the frequency response of the driver(s). Not all headphones/IEMs undergo a change, which is in part why some users will report a change for a particular cable and other will not. The same is true for the output impedance of an amplifier, it can greatly affect the frequency response of some headphones, whilst others will remain constant.

i.e, if you're hearing a difference, you're hearing the change in frequency response, not some magical property of the cable or amplifier.

 

Recently I test borrowed Etymotic ER4PT and ER4XR.

PT are nice with reference midrange, however tuning is somewhat unnatural for me - whole midrange is too close with no deep - it's like all musicians stand in line in front of me.
My FA1 are similar with lower SQ and not so "in your face" midrange and better comfort.

ER4XR... WOW! They are fantastic. The sound is 10/10 in terms of detail and tuning. Soundstage could me more 3D, but it's ok.

Question to IEM experts - are there any IEMs with sound as similar as possible do ER4XR but with better comfort? I would love the sound of XR in my FA1's shell.

 

I can understand your frustration. I have the same frustration. But I really look into proper science. You can fake low thd by inhibiting harmonics (blunted

I do agree with you that, even technically, cables "can" make a "difference". But it is mostly due to load sharing/impedance matching, which can be quite crucial for low impedance headphone/iems, especially ones with crossover. What it doesn't follow is better engineering = better sound. For example, Andromeda sounds bad with low oi and high oi and asks for a sweetspot of 1-2ohm oi. This is just matching and not engineering. If is engineered well it should sound better with low oi given other signal parameters are fixed. Also andro sucks anyway with regards to midrange ba anyway so I don't have any issue.

Regarding technically improving the sound. I personally haven't experienced any such thing yet. Headphones and DACs are more limiting than cable changes from what I understand. I keep myself open to it, however I am not sold on it. There are so many ways cable manufacturers trick people. Inverse polarity is one such example. Adding intentional crossfeed is another. I prefer signal accuracy so both of these jankies I don't buy into. Being able to actually conduct better transients? Technically not out of possibility but I personally haven't experienced anything of that sort.

The way I buy cable is - ergonomics, looks and build quality.

 

I agree with everything you said about the cables. But the cases of impedance matching are Minority. What we vastly see is people being the fooled by cable manufacturers.

About the Andromeda, this was exactly the IEM that I thought when I wrote that about 1000+ USD IEMs. And agree with you about it's mediocre sound.

 

I kinda like the tuning of andromeda when I had it. It’s just the fit that didn’t cut it for me. Did you actually own it at some point or has just tried it for a number of minutes?