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Originally Posted by daveDerek /img/forum/go_quote.gif
that's great to hear that these top flight iems may make a hard to listen to disc listenable (yeah, i too love TCoL, as well as 'the power to believe'. finally a return to their roots instead of always trying to push the envelope. sometimes rather than being innovative they just sound like they're trying... hmmm, i gotta check out the Frippertronics release. i was probably at every nyc performance back then. was it one of those?)
i never got to see HC perform but i have seen Fred Frith perform. back in the 80s i took him to see a Grateful Dead show (a prog buddy of mine is friends with him). and VdG is once again doing limited touring - i saw them at Nearfest in june.). one of the things that's so intriguing about the reports of how the JH13s reproduce music is the repeated comments that all the detail is there, and that they are one of the most, if not the most, revealing transducer folks have listened through. yet instead of becoming unbearable on less than stellar recordings things always seem to sound good but don't sound glossed over or sugar coated. how the heck do they do that trick - truly pulling a rabbit out of the hat! you have to wonder if the perceptions about this will change as people live with them longer but the reports so far from experienced listeners who've spent a bunch of time with them give no indication of that happening. i'd like to hear more about this phenomena wrt the jh13s competitors and whether this generally seems to be true (music_4321, do you find this happens consistently with the esx3s or just on a few recordings) with these devices. is this part of the design features or do a few lucky ones manage this trick? can BAs be scaled up into larger headphones or loudspeakers (JH13 large and extra large )?
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Yes, the Frippertronics download is from 5th August, 1981 at a place called Inroads in New York.
So, you went to see the Dead with Fred Frith? That IS weird! And you attended several Frippertronics shows? Now, that makes me really very jealous. Those were some seriously daring performances, judging by the 3 recordings I have. I was lucky, though, to see VdGG with David Jackson twice in London in 2005 (first of those gigs being their first in 28 years - stunning performance, BTW)
As for the ES3X, I've been very impressed at how well they reproduce (very) low frequencies and the treble extension (plus extraordinary mids, IMO) on 90-95% of the recordings I have. I find they really excel. Just like on the TCOL album, Brian Eno's
On Land & perhaps more so on
Nerve Net, the VERY low frequencies are heard clearly, allowing for different bass tonalities to be discerned and, on Nerve Net, also ridding me of the ear-fatigue I'd found with other IEM's & headphones.
However, I would not say ALL recordings sound great. Some not so good recordings, mostly some older classical music (or, for instance, early Genesis CD's before the 1994 remasters or recent CD/ SACD releases), and more specifically orchestral music, don't sound so that great at all, but these same recordings don't sound great either on my harman/kardom & JBL speakers home system. So, to me it's quite clear it's the recordings themselves causing the 'problem'.
Also, remember -- and I've been flamed already for stating this -- I listen to my ES3X's straight out of the HP out of my iPod Classic and, shock horror, 256 kbps files, having sold my RSA Mustang amp.
