[dodap]

I want to listen more to my music collection. The new headphone has to be non leaking (my wife complains if I listen to my Stax phones) and isolate at least enough for listening on the balcony of our inner city flat.
Coming from an old an worn Denon AH-D2000 (which is not very closed but rather open) I first looked for big over ear closed headphones. But neither a Audioquest Nightowl nor an Audeze EL-8 closed back that i bought convinced me in comparison.
Especially as I have bought some new in ears just for fun: First an 1MORE E1010 Quad Driver, with to much upper bass for my liking and then a RHA T20 that so far is the best in ear for me.
But it does not come close to the warm an bassy sound of my Denon. Is there an In Ear with a sound signature of the not so neutral Denon/Fostex cans?

 

[serman005]

Budget?

 

[dodap]

Under $1000 better under $750.

 

[serman005]

Check out a Campfire Polaris or a Noble Sage and see what you think. Both are outstanding at their price-points. It would be a bit if a stretch but it would be worth it IMO.

 

[dodap]

To check these kind of high end IEMs out is a bit of a problem for me. I live in Berlin, Germany, and the nearest Noble dealer for instance would be in France and Campfire in Heidelberg, the other end of my state.
According to the few reviews I read Noble Sage is one of the IEMs that I should take into account indeed (I ran into it in a review of the Massdrop Plus).
What do you think of highly customizable IEMs like the FLC 8? (With my RHA T20 the sound shaping did not bring that much of a difference though.)

 

[tansand]

Final E3000 are warm, soundmagic E50 are less warm, but still warmer than most. These are both 50 dollar ear phones, they both sound good, though the E3000 are a little too warm for me. "Too much upper bass" can also be caused by your source/amp.

 

[tansand]

Looking at these, the E3000 seems very similar to your denon, edit:maybe not, I just found the chart for the E3000. I was going by my impressions of the E3000, and what the denon chart looks like. I think you should try the soundmagic e50, it suits me very well. It seems to be a tiny bit less detailed than many IEM, but tonality and soundstage are excellent. I think I read somewhere the E50 and E80 have paper diaphragms...


https://www.head-fi.org/threads/acc...ing-and-general-listening-for-200-400.616640/

https://m.imgur.com/fE3gNI6

 

[dodap]

" "Too much upper bass" can also be caused by your source/amp.!"
My sources, at least for test purposes are FLAC to HiRes Files from demo CDs or download sites. I can play them with several (cheaper) headphone amps, either from my LG G5 with the DAC added or from the the PC via a SMSL DAC and a Meier Corda Headphone amp (Jan Meier is one of the better headphone designers in Germany). I tried to find out the output impedance as obviously modern low input impedance phones especially balanced armature ones demand very low amp Ohm values. I just ordered the ifi iEMatch to get this problem out of the way, if this is the reason anyway for my distaste of the 1MORE Quad..

 

[tansand]

I think it's caused/affected by capacitors between the output amp and the headphone, either DC blocking (tantalum?!) or in zobels, or some interaction between both of those. But I don't know for sure. It's a hardness to the kick drums that makes them really annoying, that can be caused by the amp, I say 'source' only because your amp may be included in your source, depending.