gazzington
Headphoneus Supremus
I have 3xr and love them. Not sure whether to get 4sr or 4xr as an upgrade. I love metal, rock, classical and jazz
4sr as a reference for Classical and Jazz; the 3xr taking care of Metal and Rock. That would cover it. The Er4sr is perfect for Classical.....I have 3xr and love them. Not sure whether to get 4sr or 4xr as an upgrade. I love metal, rock, classical and jazz
Good morning from office with my old and faithful ER-4P, wishing a great week to all Etyheads!
May supreme isolation and holy accuracy be with you
From last checking of several IEM measurement equipment maker, none of them really have accurate measurement over bass and upper treble region due to technical constraint of artificial ears. If very accurate measurement can not be done, then it is impossible to fully match the channels over these regions.
Contact etymotic directly for that. You should get a new pair.QUOTE="ClieOS, post: 14635758, member: 11725"]From last checking of several IEM measurement equipment maker, none of them really have accurate measurement over bass and upper treble region due to technical constraint of artificial ears. If very accurate measurement can not be done, then it is impossible to fully match the channels over these regions.
using a desktop microphone with an electret mic, i was able to detect the discrepancy between my drivers
my method was to use the REW program to test each driver, by alternating between the drivers 3 times, so that variations as a result of insertion are accounted for
as you can see, its obvious from the graphs that 3 of them are different from the other 3
unfortunately because i have no fixed address, the logistics of sending and receiving things from Etymotic are difficult for me... plus, even though this is the first time i have used this test setup, i could hear the same bass imbalance in all 3 of the Etymotic ER-4 series that i bought new, as well as both of the replacements they have sent me over the last few years, as well as my current pair of ER-3XR'sContact etymotic directly for that. You should get a new pair.
using a desktop microphone with an electret mic, i was able to detect the discrepancy between my drivers
my method was to use the REW program to test each driver, testing them with the same eartip, as well as disconnecting and reconnecting them to the same channel, so that variations between eartips and between the channels of the amplifier are avoided... each driver is tested 3 times, by removing them and reinserting them onto the earpiece, so that variations between insertions can be accounted for
as you can see, its obvious from the graphs that 3 of them are different from the other 3
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unfortunately because i have no fixed address, the logistics of sending and receiving things from Etymotic are difficult for me... plus, even though this is the first time i have used this test setup, i could hear the same bass imbalance in all 3 of the Etymotic ER-4 series that i bought new, as well as both of the replacements they have sent me over the last few years, as well as my current pair of ER-3XR's
the first thing i do when i hear a difference is detach the drivers and swap them around, and it is by doing this that i am certain that the bass responses differ between the driversIs it always on the same side, even if you swap the driver around?
such is the scale of the problem that even with all the artifacting from the setup, the difference is still clearly visibleThere is a lot of artifact in your graph that might have came from the mic or the setup instead of the IEM itself, such as the spike on 50Hz. But let assuming the artifact is indeed the problem of the mic and just purely consider the comparison between the two channels
also remember that the mic is not calibrated, and we dont know about the linearity of its response, and from the curvature of the graph, the mic seems less sensitive on the low end, the test is about the relative responses of the drivers, not the true outputI can see the biggest gap is probably around 40Hz and it is about 1dB to 1.5dB or so - I am not sure how tight Etymotic tolerance is over sub-bass region, but the mismatch is actually not that bad as far as IEM matching goes and typically this will pass as a match for most IEM out there, consider that 3dB is usually recognized as the smallest difference most people can distinguish
Since you said that 3 pairs of etymotic iems have same "issue" I guess it's your ears. Or maybe you didn't fit them correctly. There is very low chance that they all becomes imbalance. Also remember that er4 series is hand matched. It's very low possibility it's the iem themselves. You may try different amplifiers, swap left and right drivers, different songs(or tone generators) etc.i could mitigate the problem by using equalizer APO, and its ability to selectively equalize one channel across all the programs in windows, including the test program
there is still what looks like a 1db difference above 80hz , this is possibly imbalance from the amplifier since i am testing across both channels now, but with more adjustments in equalizer APO that can be solved as well, and my listening experience is much improved, at least when im on my computer
perhaps this method can apply to every IEM out there? so that we can have objectively matched sound