[vwinter]

   
I'm in New Zealand, so will be a couple of weeks I think before I have the chance to do that.

 
Whoops. 

Let us know what you think when you have the opportunity.
 
 
 
Methinks this thread might experience rapid growth soon =/

 

[NZtechfreak]

   
Whoops. 

Let us know what you think when you have the opportunity.

 
I certainly will!
 
I'll do a blind and volume matched test with the 4S/5S and a few Android contemporaries at some point.
 
The iPhone 4/4S is almost the only phone where I could live with the straight headphone output (Nokia 808 being the other), so I will definitely be giving the 5S a whirl in due course. I'm not really an iOS fan though, so even despite that it'll have an uphill battle to be my daily.

 

[vwinter]

   
I certainly will!
 
I'll do a blind and volume matched test with the 4S/5S and a few Android contemporaries at some point.
 
The iPhone 4/4S is almost the only phone where I could live with the straight headphone output (Nokia 808 being the other), so I will definitely be giving the 5S a whirl in due course. I'm not really an iOS fan though, so even despite that it'll have an uphill battle to be my daily.

 
Nice!
 
If you have access to the HTC One and the Galaxy S4 with the Wolfson chip, I'm very curious.
 
If you haven't tried iOS 7, it's a bit different and has taken me a bit of acclimating.

 

[NZtechfreak]

   
Nice!
 
If you have access to the HTC One and the Galaxy S4 with the Wolfson chip, I'm very curious.
 
If you haven't tried iOS 7, it's a bit different and has taken me a bit of acclimating.

 
The HTC One I have ready access to. The S4 Exynos version with the Wolfson would be more difficult, as I just sold mine and it isn't very available here.

 

[vwinter]

The HTC One I have ready access to. The S4 Exynos version with the Wolfson would be more difficult, as I just sold mine and it isn't very available here.

That's awesome, I was just being hopeful. The HTC One was my other choice for my phone upgrade.


[rule]

In case anyone is interested, the 5S would not accept a 24/96 ALAC file I converted from FLAC through iTunes for the stock music player. Tried twice with 2 different files.

 

[_js_]

   
That'll be caused by eustachian tube dysfunction, the question being what is causing said dysfunction.
 
Do you suffer any allergies? If there is a seasonal pattern to your issue it's fairly suspicious for an allergic exposure of some kind.

 
NZtechfreak,
 
It is fairly suspicious in this way, and in point of fact, the treatment has been for me to take Claritin--an alergy medicine--and that usually works, although sometimes I need to do the Claritin D thing.  So yeah.  The thing is that when it happens it's usually hard to mistake or miss--in the past there's been no doubt about it--whereas right now, if it's happening, it's pretty mild relative to past episodes.
 
However, the other thing that makes me suspect this is that I've been doing A/B testing for the last 30 minutes between the 5S and my Apogee Duet, both driving my Grado SR225's, and I've been sitting up, whereas before I was lying down to listen.  And I'm not experiencing the listening fatigue--so far.
 
More importantly, I'm pretty impressed by how well the iPhone 5S is doing in this A/B test!  As I said before, I like the sound I've been hearing straight out of the headphone jack.  This is the way I always listened to music on my iPhone 4.

   
I hear it as more aggressive than the 4S which I don't remember sounding very different than my previous 4. That could cause fatigue.

 
The 5S is more aggressive than the 4--no question--but what I am (was?) experiencing couldn't really be explained by this, I don't think.  More like high intensity 19kHz noise spikes or other sorts of hard to pin down distortions.  But I'm not hearing any distortions, though!  In fact, I fired up my Signal Generator app and listened to a straight sine wave output, sweeping up and down the frequency range, and all seemed as it should be.
 
I'm hoping that this all has nothing to do with the phone, and everything to do with me and a seasonal allergy.  Because most of what I use my iPhone for is listening to music, and if that is going to be pain inducing, then obviously I need to return my 5S and figure something else out. 

 

[customNuts]

Loading some FLAC's on my new gold 64gb 5s. Looking forward to seeing how it compares to my 4. 
Any recommendations for the best flac player for ios7?

 

[elfary]

   
I brought it down to mute and brought it back up with 9 volume up button presses, ie 9 volume boxes on each. The volume output into a 16 Ohm load is very very similar. The 5S might even sound a bit louder sometimes because it's more aggressive and crisp.
 
Edit: Mine are the US models if that matters since I've read of volume limiters on EU models.
 
Edit2: I will not max out the volume lol.

 
Thanks for the comparison.
 
Anyway to assess the volume comparison it would be required to max out the volume slider on both devices. In order to do that you'll need a track with very low intrinsic volume like 'Peg' from Steely Dan 'Aja' album or something from Leonard Cohen "Various Positions". If you max out volume with a loudness war crippled tune you'll damage your hearing.

 

[_js_]

So, after more investigation, it seems that the issue--or my issue--with listening fatigue on the iPhone 5S had to do with the Sennheiser PX-100's.  They really do not sound good out of the 5S!  Not to my ears, anyway.  I loved the way they sounded out of the 4.  But they sound bad out of the 5S.  Constricted, strained sound that is fatiguing to listen to.  Or such is my experience so far.
 
I'm wondering if it simply isn't an impedance issue?  The 4 has an output impedance of 1 ohm, right?  If the 5S is, say, 4 ohms, (the 5 is 4.5 ohms, and the 5S is less than that, so worst case scenario here) and we want our headphones to be greater than 8 times that, then maybe the PX100's impedance drops below 32 ohms at some point.  Their nominal impedance is 32 ohms, but I haven't seen an impedance vs. frequency graph.  It certainly isn't flat, so it will be less than 32 ohms at some point.  So it's response could be discernibly different when driven by the 5S vs. the 4.
 
Meanwhile, the Sony MDR-7506 has a nominal impedance of 63 ohms, and they sound great right out of the 5S!  I'll just use them for now, but long term I'd like to find a better sounding more portable option.
 
Can anyone recommend some IEM's that they think sound good straight out of the 5S?  Or even some full size cans as well?  Would the ER-4S IEM's be too hard to drive?  They have a 100dB/mW sensitivity (vs. 106 for the 7506's) and 100 ohms (vs. 63 for the 7506's), and I definitely have plenty of headroom on the volume with the 7506's right now.  What sort of conversion do I need to do here?  (100/63*106/100) = 1.68 times harder to drive?

 

[vwinter]

The px100 doesn't appear to drop below 32 ohms but does have a bump that probably goes over 64 ohms just below 100 hz.

But you don't know the output impedance of the 5S. It's likely lower than the 5 though. Either way, it shouldn't be that big of an issue into a 32ohm minimum load anyway.

I can't help with the conversion but people say they can run the ER-4S just fine out of a Sansa Clip so take that as you will.

It likely just doesn't do well with the character of the 5S chipset and sound processing either in general or for your tastes.

Good luck though. It'll be a while before enough people have the 5S for solid recommendations.

 

[_js_]

I would really appreciate preliminary / educated guesses. I need to figure this out in the next few days.

Also, will the 5S "break in" over time like headphones? I wouldn't think so, but I can leave it playing music to see if it will.

 

[vwinter]

I would really appreciate preliminary / educated guesses. I need to figure this out in the next few days.

Also, will the 5S "break in" over time like headphones? I wouldn't think so, but I can leave it playing music to see if it will.

If you want something neutral then the ER-4S can hardly be faulted. Mids might be a bit bright if you're sensitive to that but I expect it'll have a very detailed smoothness as I've heard something that uses the same driver to similar effect. A few members who have been through quite a journey here that I would personally vouch for that just recently tried them think very highly of them.

I personally wouldn't hold my breath on the 5S experiencing any break in but other members would absolutely expect it to. If you want to give it a shot, I don't see any harm except a waste of time.

 

[woodcans]

Highly doubt my 5s will 'break in'. No change in sound over the past week, with moderate use.

 

[Baroninkjet]

I personally wouldn't hold my breath on the 5S experiencing any break in but other members would absolutely expect it to. If you want to give it a shot, I don't see any harm except a waste of time.

 
Two weeks will cost you $35 @ AT&T. FWIW, the guys I talked to at my local (Dallas) corporate AT&T store said sales were nothing like last year w/5.
 
I would love to hear if anyone compares Wolfson GS3 w/5s. 

 

[brofeelgood]

Can anyone recommend some IEM's that they think sound good straight out of the 5S?  Or even some full size cans as well?  Would the ER-4S IEM's be too hard to drive?  They have a 100dB/mW sensitivity (vs. 106 for the 7506's) and 100 ohms (vs. 63 for the 7506's), and I definitely have plenty of headroom on the volume with the 7506's right now.  What sort of conversion do I need to do here?  (100/63*106/100) = 1.68 times harder to drive?

 
I use my Ety 4S on my iP4 and iP5 and it sounds great and plenty loud as-is. In very rare occasions, employing an amp on really soft music can definitely bring out the more recessed elements and extend the sense of space. But under most circumstances, I don't consider it an indispensable supplement.