It seems like I’ve stumbled upon this thread again after having just attended ZMFestivus II in Chicago yesterday after googling “JH 13v2 vs KSE1500” (and “KSE1200” when nothing substantive showed up for that). But more on that later.
I agree with a lot of what has been said here over the past few months – I know for a fact that this isn’t the first time someone has said something along these lines on head-fi, but it’s worth reiterating over and over that people tend to be enamored with the latest and (therefore, /s) ‘greatest’ offerings. For example, there seems to be a lot of hype over the Noble Khan as of late, although there are a lot of people who maintain that the electrostat Shure KSE1500s remain the best IEMs on the market.
I was lucky enough to spend over an hour with the KSE1200/1500s (KSEs), sourcing off my laptop plugged into both a Chord Mojo as well as a Chord Hugo2. After listening to the KSEs for about half an hour, I switched over to the Roxanne’s, the IEMs that I tend to reach for the most over anything else I have, and was immediately and extremely surprised by how dark and almost veiled they sounded in comparison. Now, after some more back-and-forth, I realized that when I’m doing casual or “fun” listening (99% of my listening), I actually prefer this sound signature, especially with the extremely deep and large soundstage that the Roxannes are able to convey.
I then went back to listening to the KSE1500s for a while and then decided to compare with the 13v2s for the heck of it. Now, if I was surprised when I switched over to my Roxannes just before that, that says nothing about my shock when I switched over to my 13v2s. I’m sure I need another 10 hours to do a reasonable A/B comparison between the two, but upon initial impression the 13v2s seem to have the same tonality/timber, similar transparency and speed, equal imaging – all with the added benefit of being able to neuter down or beef up the bass that the KSEs lack. On that note, one thing that I was most disappointed by was the lack of volume one could reach with the KSEs before they started to distort, whereas I could turn up the 13v2s an additional +20-30 dB past the same volume without their starting to distort.
So at the end of the day, although the KSEs were a real pleasure to listen to and I could definitely see myself picking them up for the right price in the future just due to the novelty of having that small of electrostats in my ears combined with the isolation that form factor can achieve that you cannot get with any other kind of over the ear electrostatic headphones such as the LCD4’s, STAX, etc. – I think I would be perfectly happy if I were to continue the Roxannes and 13v2s for a very long time to come.