I can for sure say the bass lacks fullness, everything sounds like an upper-mid soup with no presence.
Sorry for the self-quote, but that sure sounded like the textbook definition of the downgrade you suffer with a faulty seal - oh wait, that's because it was
I couldn't find the right screwdriver to open the earpiece, so pissed and impatient I thought I'd give the Zenith one last spin before setting them to rest until the replacement unit arrived. In my haste to audition my new toy I had put on the large foam tips that come in the box - I had noticed the fit wasn't perfect but thought what the heck, I'm at home not moving around, it'll be alright. Yesterday I replaced them with the wide large Symbio I have on the R1, more out of annoyance at the fiddly fit than in the hope it would improve things. But improve things it did, quite immensely!
Like most who received a good unit or flipped the connector themselves, I find the bass slightly less present with the black filter compared to the R1. I can definitely see myself gravitating towards the bassiest filters this time around, which I haven't even tried yet on the R1 (I know, I know
it's just so good out of the box). And the upper-mids are indeed more forward, electric guitars can even grate a bit depending on mastering. That combination can easily evoke out-of-phase sound from what I read, but in my case I believe it's just the proper tuning that's more "audiophile", with crazy detail retrieval capability, instead of the R1 sig that I'd describe as "mainstream with a plus". Imaging is wonderful; on Tigran Hamasyan's "Lilac" you can really tell the mic was quite directional and placed in front of the piano, not above or behind it. I also pick up on lots of subtle new cues in songs I routinely use to evaluate gear, well-produced or otherwise. Lastly I find the open port brings excellent extension to the stage, the difference is more noticeable than on the R1 where I tended to keep the ports closed to extract all the slam of that physical bass. This and the pinpoint imaging has more than once created a remarkable illusion of space, with sounds from the Zenith making me check that my puppies hadn't gotten up behind me
Fits perfectly with my plan to use the R1 outside or at the gym and keep the Zenith for the desktop.
So that's it, if my unit does turn out to be out of phase, there goes my audiophile street cred, you'll all know I have two left ears
But to those underwhelmed, maybe check your tips? I know you are all aware of the power of tip rolling, but so am I and I still assumed the unit was faulty instead of making that simple fix.
If the replacement unit sounds about the same I'll return the first, as it seems the replacement batch will be scrutinized by Bob personally and it's possible the polarity is fine but there's a slight flaw with the filters or ports or what-have-you like he wrote to us after his initial round of inspection.
